A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization (Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path) [1st ed. 2022] 9811930953, 9789811930959

Table of contents :
Series Preface
Translators’ Note
Contents
1 Introduction
Part I Theory and Methodology
2 An Interdisciplinary Paradigm of Mythology
2.1 The Significance of Mythology Beyond the Written Word
2.2 Mythology and Archaeology
2.3 Mythology and Art History
2.4 Mythology and Cultural Transmission
2.5 Mythology and Material Culture Research
2.6 Mythology, Ideology and Knowledge Archaeology
3 A New Methodology: The Quadruple-Evidence Method
3.1 Learning from the Ancients at Grand Temples: From Poetic Recitation to Documentary Evidence
3.2 From Documentary Evidence to Physical Evidence
3.3 The Triple-Evidence Method
3.4 The Quadruple-Evidence Method
3.5 Between Scientific Evidence and Interpretations Rooted in the Humanities
3.6 Mythology and the Multiple-Evidence Method
4 The Big Tradition of Chinese Culture: Reconstructing Cultural Concepts with the Quadruple-Evidence Method
4.1 Defining the “Big Tradition” and the “Small Tradition”
4.2 Relationship Between the Big Tradition and the Small Tradition
4.3 Exploring the Symbols of Big Traditions Before the Emergence of Chinese Characters
4.4 Mythological Concepts: The Gene of the Big Tradition
Part II The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization
5 The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization from an International Perspective
5.1 The “Jade Age” Theory Needs an International Perspective
5.2 Obsidian Myths: The “Sacred Stone” on the Eve of Civilization
5.3 Jade Myths: The “Crazy Stone” Accompanying the Formation of Civilizations
5.4 Jade Myths Driving the Birth of Civilization
6 Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Myths and the Origins of Civilizations
6.1 The Jade Road from an International Perspective
6.2 Precious Stone Myths: The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and the Auspicious Tree in India
6.3 Historical Information in Literature: Sumerian Epics and the Archetype of the Garden of Eden
6.4 Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Myths and Their Creation
6.5 The Dissemination and Influence of Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Mythology
6.6 Summary: Jade Road and the Origins of Civilizations
7 The East Asian Jade Age: Mythological Foundations
7.1 East Asian Jade Culture and Its Origins
7.2 Development and Historical Stages of the East Asia Jade Age
7.3 The Beginnings of Jade-Ware: Mythological Conceptualizations of Jade Jue and Jade Huang
7.4 Chinese and Japanese Jade Myths: A Case Study of the Kojiki and the Nihongi
7.5 Comparison Among Chinese, Japanese and South Korean Jade Myths: Archetypes of Red Jade and Curved Jade
8 Jade Worship: The Primitive Belief Systems of Chinese Civilization
8.1 The Origins of Chinese Civilization from the Perspective of Belief Systems and Mythology
8.2 Why Jade Worship Became the National Belief System
8.3 Jade Worship and the Archetype of Chinese Culture
8.4 “Sages” and “Jade Sound”
8.5 The Ethnography of Sage Myths: Wu and Xi as a Medium Between Heaven and Man
8.6 Jade Worship and Sage King Genealogy of the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties
8.7 Jade Virtue and Jade Beauty
9 A Mythological Analysis of the Origins of Chinese Jades: A Case Study of Jade Jue in the Xinglongwa Culture
9.1 Factors Behind the Formation of Jade Culture
9.2 Jade Jue: The Mythological Functions of Jade Earrings
9.3 Mythological Functions of “Jade Representing Eyes”
9.4 Snake-Jue-Er: Myths of the Unity of Heaven and Man and the Roots of Chinese Identity
10 Jade Myths and Chinese Identity
10.1 Introduction: From “Golden Bough” to “Jade Leaf”
10.2 Jade Treasures: A Mythological History of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties
10.3 Jade Treasures: The Social Integration of Object Worship and the Birth of Civilization
10.4 Mythological Genes of Chinese Identity
10.5 Dragon-Rainbow-Huang: Myths of the Unity of Heaven and Man and the Roots of Chinese Identity
11 Youxiong: The Mythical Etymology of the Yellow Emperor
11.1 The Yellow Emperor and His Names
11.2 The Archetype of Xuanyuan: The Mythological Interpretation of the Unity of Heaven and Man
11.3 The Second Type of Evidence: From Youxiong to Tianxiong
11.4 Youxiong: Reconstructing the Chinese Creation Myths
11.5 The Second Type of Evidence: The Myth of Youxiong in the Silk Book of Chu
11.6 The Third Type of Evidence: Interpreting Xuanyuan, Youxiong, Tianxiong and Xuexiong
11.7 The Fourth Type of Evidence: Bear Chariot of Emperor Xuanyuan
11.8 The Fourth Type of Evidence: Mythological Interpretations of the Three-Hole Jade with Double Bear Heads of the Hongshan Culture
11.9 Is the Lion the Symbol of China?
12 Conferring Rui: The Mythistory of Yao and Shun
12.1 Is the Legend of Yao and Shun True?
12.2 Conferring Rui: History or Myth
12.3 Rui in Literature and in Archaeological Discoveries
12.4 The Rationale for Conferring Jade Symbols
Part III Mythological History of the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin Dynasties
13 Yu’s Central Bear Flag
13.1 Jade Narrative and the Mythistory of Xia
13.2 The First Type of Evidence: The Transformation of Gun, Yu and Qi into Bears
13.3 The Second Type of Evidence: Yu’s Central Bear Flag
13.4 The Third and Fourth Types of Evidence: Bear Totem Cultural Memory
14 Erlitou Bronze Bells and Plaques: An Anthropological Perspective of the Origins of Civilization
14.1 Studies of the Origins of Civilization from an Anthropological Perspective
14.2 An Ethnographic Interpretation of the Three Medium-Sized Erlitou Tombs
14.3 The Overall Interpretation of the Ritual Instruments in Erlitou Tombs
14.4 The Origins of Sacred Ritual Instruments: The Sanxingdui and Qijia Cultures
14.5 The Origins of Ritual and Music Civilization
15 Yu Installing Drums in the Court
15.1 The Narrative of “Yu Installing Drums in the Court” in Inherited Literature
15.2 The Second Type of Evidence: The Bamboo Text of Rong Cheng Shi
15.3 The Third Type of Evidence: The Divine Right of the King’s Drum
15.4 The Fourth Type of Evidence: The Mythological Images of Divine Drums
15.5 The Cultural Genealogy of Chinese Drums
16 Jie Waged War on Mount Min: The Sanxingdui Archaeological Site and the Jade Road of Southwest China
16.1 Sanxingdui Culture and the Central Plain Culture
16.2 King Jie Seeking After Treasures of Ancient Shu Kingdom
16.3 Mythologized Ba and Shu States
16.4 Ancestors of Ancient Shu and Eye-Protruding God
17 Xuan Bird from Heaven: The Owl Archetype Theory
17.1 Predicament and Breakthrough in the Archetype Study of the Xuan Bird
17.2 The Fourth Type of Evidence: The Six Thousand Year Owl Image Genealogy
17.3 The Third Type of Evidence: The Xuan Bird with Rotating Eyes
18 The Origins of the Xuan Bird
18.1 Archaeological Theory of the “Owl Goddess” and Re-examining the Xuan Bird and Xuanpin
18.2 Hongshan Culture’s “Hooked Cloud-Shaped Jade” and “Vortex Eyes”
18.3 Longshan Culture “Eagle-Owl Patterned Jade Gui”
19 “Tiger-Devouring-Man” You Wine Vessel: The Image Narrative of Bronzes
19.1 Naming and Interpreting the “Tiger-Devouring-Man” You Wine Vessel
19.2 Interpretations of the Ring-Foot Gong Wine Vessel from Fu Hao’s Tomb
19.3 Western White Tiger: From the Queen Mother of the West to “Tigress”
19.4 Myths About Huwei and Zouyu
20 The Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi: Western Zhou Mythistory
20.1 The Western Zhou Dynasty, Xiyi and Qizhou
20.2 Interpreting Phoenix Myths
20.3 Myth of the Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi
20.4 Image Narrative of the Origins of Phoenix Myths
20.5 Descent Myths of the Phoenix and De of Heaven: Legitimacy Granted from Heaven
21 Jade Bi, Imperial Jade Seals, Jade Burial Suits: Mythistory of the Qin and Han Dynasties
21.1 Imperial Jade Seals and Jade Bi in the Narratives of Qin History
21.2 Great Wall, Straight Road and Epang Palace
21.3 Jade Burial Suit
22 Conclusion and Future Directions
22.1 Summary
22.2 Future Research Directions: Reconstructing Chinese Mythistory
Bibliography

Citation preview

Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path

Shuxian Ye

A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization

Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path Series Editors Yang Li, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China Peilin Li, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China

Drawing on a large body of empirical studies done over the last two decades, this Series provides its readers with in-depth analyses of the past and present and forecasts for the future course of China’s development. It contains the latest research results made by members of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This series is an invaluable companion to every researcher who is trying to gain a deeper understanding of the development model, path and experience unique to China. Thanks to the adoption of Socialism with Chinese characteristics, and the implementation of comprehensive reform and opening-up, China has made tremendous achievements in areas such as political reform, economic development, and social construction, and is making great strides towards the realization of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation. In addition to presenting a detailed account of many of these achievements, the authors also discuss what lessons other countries can learn from China’s experience. Project Director Shouguang Xie, President, Social Sciences Academic Press Academic Advisors Fang Cai, Peiyong Gao, Lin Li, Qiang Li, Huaide Ma, Jiahua Pan, Changhong Pei, Ye Qi, Lei Wang, Ming Wang, Yuyan Zhang, Yongnian Zheng, Hong Zhou

Shuxian Ye

A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization

Shuxian Ye Shanghai Jiaotong University Shanghai, China Translated by Hui Jia School of Foreign Languages East China University of Science and Technology Shanghai, China

Jing Hua School of Foreign Languages East China University of Science and Technology Shanghai, China

Supported by Chinese Fund for the Humanities and Social Sciences. ISSN 2363-6866 ISSN 2363-6874 (electronic) Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path ISBN 978-981-19-3095-9 ISBN 978-981-19-3096-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6 Jointly published with Social Sciences Academic Press The print edition is not for sale in China (Mainland). Customers from China (Mainland) please order the print book from: Social Sciences Academic Press. © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publishers, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publishers, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publishers nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publishers remain neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Series Preface

Since China’s reform and opening began in 1978, the country has come a long way on the path of Socialism with Chinese characteristics, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China. Over 30 years of reform, efforts and sustained spectacular economic growth have turned China into the world’s second largest economy, and wrought many profound changes in the Chinese society. These historically significant developments have been garnering increasing attention from scholars, governments, and the general public alike around the world since the 1990s, when the newest wave of China studies began to gather steam. Some of the hottest topics have included the so-called “China miracle”, “Chinese phenomenon”, “Chinese experience”, “Chinese path”, and the “Chinese model”. Homegrown researchers have soon followed suit. Already hugely productive, this vibrant field is putting out a large number of books each year, with Social Sciences Academic Press alone having published hundreds of titles on a wide range of subjects. Because most of these books have been written and published in Chinese, however, readership has been limited outside China—even among many who study China—for whom English is still the lingua franca. This language barrier has been an impediment to efforts by academia, business communities, and policy-makers in other countries to form a thorough understanding of contemporary China, of what is distinct about China’s past and present may mean not only for her future but also for the future of the world. The need to remove such an impediment is both real and urgent, and the Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path is my answer to the call. This series features some of the most notable achievements from the last 20 years by scholars in China in a variety of research topics related to reform and opening. They include both theoretical explorations and empirical studies, and cover economy, society, politics, law, culture, and ecology, the six areas in which reform and opening policies have had the deepest impact and farthest-reaching consequences for the country. Authors for the series have also tried to articulate their visions of the “Chinese Dream” and how the country can realize it in these fields and beyond. All of the editors and authors for the Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path are both longtime students of reform and opening and v

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Series Preface

recognized authorities in their respective academic fields. Their credentials and expertise lend credibility to these books, each of which having been subject to a rigorous peer review process for inclusion in the series. As part of the Reform and Development Program under the State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film, and Television of the People’s Republic of China, the series is published by Springer, a Germany-based academic publisher of international repute, and distributed overseas. I am confident that it will help fill a lacuna in studies of China in the era of reform and opening. Shanghai, China

Shouguang Xie

Translators’ Note

The translation of Prof. Shuxian Ye’s book A Mythological Approach to the Origin of Chinese Civilization has been a monumental, though thoroughly rewarding, task. Readers will immediately be struck by the innovation and rigour underpinning Prof. Ye’s approach to Chinese identity and prehistory, particularly in his use of the four types of evidence, a methodology that forms the backbone of his analysis. The author’s profound academic knowledge is on full display in this work as he seamlessly interweaves the fields of literature, anthropology, archaeology and mythology. It has been both an honour and a challenge for our team to translate this book. It is our hope that this English translation succeeds in effectively communicating the rationale behind the quadruple-evidence method, and that it carries across the author’s keen enthusiasm for the undeniably intriguing field that is the origins of Chinese culture. Non-Chinese readers will come across a number of terms that have their meanings rooted in Chinese history and culture. In such cases we have provided a combination of literal translations, pinyin transliterations and the simplified Chinese characters. Terminological explanations are predominantly given in-text rather than through footnotes, so as not to interrupt the flow of reading. Other scholars’ translations of certain Chinese classical texts are used and cited throughout where we deemed them to be an accurate translation of the original text. No translation of a text is ever exactly the same, in its intonations or meaning, as the original text itself. However, we have gone to great lengths and efforts to try and replicate the author’s intended tone and meaning as accurately as is possible. A tremendous thank you to Prof. Ye, who played an active role in our translation effort and regularly offered detailed suggestions in how we approach translating certain terms and passages. For instance, his proposition that we use the English terms “big tradition” and “small tradition” so as to distinguish them from Redfield’s concepts of “great tradition” and “little tradition” proved invaluable. Warm thanks also go to Xiong Tingting, Gong Xuexian, Cheng Yuting, Zhang Xujun, Gan Quan, Wan Yu, Xu Songjian, Zhang Lixia and Guo Ke for their support and assistance in producing this translation. Our appreciation also goes to Stephen

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Translators’ Note

Sandelius and Gerard Sharpling for their important help as proof-readers. Finally, special thanks go to Harry Webster, who completed the final revision of this text. Hui Jia Jing Hua

Contents

1

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Part I

1

Theory and Methodology

2

An Interdisciplinary Paradigm of Mythology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.1 The Significance of Mythology Beyond the Written Word . . . . . . 2.2 Mythology and Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3 Mythology and Art History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4 Mythology and Cultural Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5 Mythology and Material Culture Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.6 Mythology, Ideology and Knowledge Archaeology . . . . . . . . . . . .

13 13 14 19 23 28 35

3

A New Methodology: The Quadruple-Evidence Method . . . . . . . . . . 3.1 Learning from the Ancients at Grand Temples: From Poetic Recitation to Documentary Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.2 From Documentary Evidence to Physical Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.3 The Triple-Evidence Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4 The Quadruple-Evidence Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.5 Between Scientific Evidence and Interpretations Rooted in the Humanities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.6 Mythology and the Multiple-Evidence Method . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

37

4

The Big Tradition of Chinese Culture: Reconstructing Cultural Concepts with the Quadruple-Evidence Method . . . . . . . . . 4.1 Defining the “Big Tradition” and the “Small Tradition” . . . . . . . . 4.2 Relationship Between the Big Tradition and the Small Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.3 Exploring the Symbols of Big Traditions Before the Emergence of Chinese Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4 Mythological Concepts: The Gene of the Big Tradition . . . . . . . .

37 42 46 51 56 61 67 67 73 76 80

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Contents

Part II

The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization

5

The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization from an International Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 5.1 The “Jade Age” Theory Needs an International Perspective . . . . . 89 5.2 Obsidian Myths: The “Sacred Stone” on the Eve of Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94 5.3 Jade Myths: The “Crazy Stone” Accompanying the Formation of Civilizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 5.4 Jade Myths Driving the Birth of Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108

6

Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Myths and the Origins of Civilizations . . . . . 6.1 The Jade Road from an International Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.2 Precious Stone Myths: The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and the Auspicious Tree in India . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3 Historical Information in Literature: Sumerian Epics and the Archetype of the Garden of Eden . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.4 Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Myths and Their Creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.5 The Dissemination and Influence of Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Mythology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6 Summary: Jade Road and the Origins of Civilizations . . . . . . . . . .

111 111

The East Asian Jade Age: Mythological Foundations . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1 East Asian Jade Culture and Its Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Development and Historical Stages of the East Asia Jade Age . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 The Beginnings of Jade-Ware: Mythological Conceptualizations of Jade Jue and Jade Huang . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Chinese and Japanese Jade Myths: A Case Study of the Kojiki and the Nihongi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.5 Comparison Among Chinese, Japanese and South Korean Jade Myths: Archetypes of Red Jade and Curved Jade . . . . . . . . .

141 141

7

8

Jade Worship: The Primitive Belief Systems of Chinese Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.1 The Origins of Chinese Civilization from the Perspective of Belief Systems and Mythology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2 Why Jade Worship Became the National Belief System . . . . . . . . 8.3 Jade Worship and the Archetype of Chinese Culture . . . . . . . . . . . 8.4 “Sages” and “Jade Sound” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.5 The Ethnography of Sage Myths: Wu and Xi as a Medium Between Heaven and Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.6 Jade Worship and Sage King Genealogy of the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.7 Jade Virtue and Jade Beauty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

112 119 122 129 137

145 155 159 164 173 173 177 180 182 189 191 196

Contents

9

A Mythological Analysis of the Origins of Chinese Jades: A Case Study of Jade Jue in the Xinglongwa Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.1 Factors Behind the Formation of Jade Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9.2 Jade Jue: The Mythological Functions of Jade Earrings . . . . . . . . 9.3 Mythological Functions of “Jade Representing Eyes” . . . . . . . . . . 9.4 Snake-Jue-Er: Myths of the Unity of Heaven and Man and the Roots of Chinese Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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199 199 203 212 216

10 Jade Myths and Chinese Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.1 Introduction: From “Golden Bough” to “Jade Leaf” . . . . . . . . . . . 10.2 Jade Treasures: A Mythological History of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.3 Jade Treasures: The Social Integration of Object Worship and the Birth of Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.4 Mythological Genes of Chinese Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10.5 Dragon-Rainbow-Huang: Myths of the Unity of Heaven and Man and the Roots of Chinese Identity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

223 224

11 Youxiong: The Mythical Etymology of the Yellow Emperor . . . . . . . 11.1 The Yellow Emperor and His Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.2 The Archetype of Xuanyuan: The Mythological Interpretation of the Unity of Heaven and Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.3 The Second Type of Evidence: From Youxiong to Tianxiong . . . 11.4 Youxiong: Reconstructing the Chinese Creation Myths . . . . . . . . 11.5 The Second Type of Evidence: The Myth of Youxiong in the Silk Book of Chu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.6 The Third Type of Evidence: Interpreting Xuanyuan, Youxiong, Tianxiong and Xuexiong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.7 The Fourth Type of Evidence: Bear Chariot of Emperor Xuanyuan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.8 The Fourth Type of Evidence: Mythological Interpretations of the Three-Hole Jade with Double Bear Heads of the Hongshan Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11.9 Is the Lion the Symbol of China? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

249 249

12 Conferring Rui: The Mythistory of Yao and Shun . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.1 Is the Legend of Yao and Shun True? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.2 Conferring Rui: History or Myth . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12.3 Rui in Literature and in Archaeological Discoveries . . . . . . . . . . . 12.4 The Rationale for Conferring Jade Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

277 277 281 284 287

229 236 238 241

251 255 257 266 269 271

273 275

Part III Mythological History of the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin Dynasties 13 Yu’s Central Bear Flag . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295 13.1 Jade Narrative and the Mythistory of Xia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295

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13.2 The First Type of Evidence: The Transformation of Gun, Yu and Qi into Bears . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 300 13.3 The Second Type of Evidence: Yu’s Central Bear Flag . . . . . . . . . 305 13.4 The Third and Fourth Types of Evidence: Bear Totem Cultural Memory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310 14 Erlitou Bronze Bells and Plaques: An Anthropological Perspective of the Origins of Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.1 Studies of the Origins of Civilization from an Anthropological Perspective . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.2 An Ethnographic Interpretation of the Three Medium-Sized Erlitou Tombs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.3 The Overall Interpretation of the Ritual Instruments in Erlitou Tombs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4 The Origins of Sacred Ritual Instruments: The Sanxingdui and Qijia Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.5 The Origins of Ritual and Music Civilization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Yu Installing Drums in the Court . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.1 The Narrative of “Yu Installing Drums in the Court” in Inherited Literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.2 The Second Type of Evidence: The Bamboo Text of Rong Cheng Shi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.3 The Third Type of Evidence: The Divine Right of the King’s Drum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.4 The Fourth Type of Evidence: The Mythological Images of Divine Drums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.5 The Cultural Genealogy of Chinese Drums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Jie Waged War on Mount Min: The Sanxingdui Archaeological Site and the Jade Road of Southwest China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.1 Sanxingdui Culture and the Central Plain Culture . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.2 King Jie Seeking After Treasures of Ancient Shu Kingdom . . . . . 16.3 Mythologized Ba and Shu States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.4 Ancestors of Ancient Shu and Eye-Protruding God . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Xuan Bird from Heaven: The Owl Archetype Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.1 Predicament and Breakthrough in the Archetype Study of the Xuan Bird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.2 The Fourth Type of Evidence: The Six Thousand Year Owl Image Genealogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3 The Third Type of Evidence: The Xuan Bird with Rotating Eyes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

315 315 318 323 328 332 333 333 335 338 343 348 351 351 356 363 365 369 369 378 388

18 The Origins of the Xuan Bird . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393 18.1 Archaeological Theory of the “Owl Goddess” and Re-Examining the Xuan Bird and Xuanpin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393

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18.2 Hongshan Culture’s “Hooked Cloud-Shaped Jade” and “Vortex Eyes” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400 18.3 Longshan Culture “Eagle-Owl Patterned Jade Gui” . . . . . . . . . . . . 406 19 “Tiger-Devouring-Man” You Wine Vessel: The Image Narrative of Bronzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.1 Naming and Interpreting the “Tiger-Devouring-Man” You Wine Vessel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.2 Interpretations of the Ring-Foot Gong Wine Vessel from Fu Hao’s Tomb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.3 Western White Tiger: From the Queen Mother of the West to “Tigress” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19.4 Myths About Huwei and Zouyu . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 The Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi: Western Zhou Mythistory . . . . . 20.1 The Western Zhou Dynasty, Xiyi and Qizhou . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.2 Interpreting Phoenix Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.3 Myth of the Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.4 Image Narrative of the Origins of Phoenix Myths . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20.5 Descent Myths of the Phoenix and De of Heaven: Legitimacy Granted from Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Jade Bi, Imperial Jade Seals, Jade Burial Suits: Mythistory of the Qin and Han Dynasties . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.1 Imperial Jade Seals and Jade Bi in the Narratives of Qin History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.2 Great Wall, Straight Road and Epang Palace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21.3 Jade Burial Suit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

413 414 422 425 427 435 435 437 440 444 448 457 458 469 473

22 Conclusion and Future Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 22.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 477 22.2 Future Research Directions: Reconstructing Chinese Mythistory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 485

Chapter 1

Introduction

The lack of an appropriate mythological perspective in exploring the origins of Chinese civilization remains a significant obstacle when attempting to build a link between archaeological materials and the way they are interpreted in the humanities. In this respect, comparative mythology may be seen as an effective means of re-establishing the essence of the Chinese tradition, and of viewing numerous topics, such as literature, history, philosophy, religion and politics, from an interdisciplinary perspective. Mythology, as is well known, both shapes and is shaped by the cultural contexts in which it develops, playing a fundamental role in evolution of any given culture’s cosmology, value system and traditions. (1)

Comparative Mythology and the Study of the Origins of Civilization

Comparative mythology emerged as an academic field of study in the late nineteenth century, and grew to thrive in the twentieth century. It is an interdisciplinary field, heavily incorporating comparative religion and linguistics, and commonly drawing on various other subjects. Since the introduction of the concept of ‘myth’ in 1902, it has led to a fever for Chinese mythology in literature and the research of mythological periods in historiography. Representatives of the former include Zhou Zuoren (1885–1967), Mao Dun (1896–1981) and Xie Liuyi (1898–1945). The latter includes scholars of the Doubting Antiquity School such as Gu Jiegang (1893–1980), Yang Kuan (1914–2005) and the later scholars of the historical textual criticism school, led by Xu Xusheng (1888–1976) and Ding Shan (1901–1952), who were at the forefront of the confluence of archaeology and palaeography. These two aspects of mythological research were limited by the conditions of their time. One focused on carefully reconstructing myths by gleaning ancient Chinese texts, attempting to trace them back to their origin in literature and create a parallel to the history of Western literature (cf. Lu 1998). The other sought to relegate the sage-king genealogies that have been handed down for millennia to the status of myth or legend. The association of the mythology with the written word has remained dominant, nearly unchanged, for almost a century, and the myth itself has come to be associated © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_1

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with fiction and fantasy as a result. Mythology has come to play a very narrow role in broader Chinese academia. In terms of history and archaeology, Chinese scholars have generally attached little importance to myths, and what little systematic teaching of mythology there is can be found in folk literature courses. Myths have proven more popular outside of academia, and have served as an inspiration to numerous writers and artists. Humanities are generally considered to not be “science”, and the reason for this lies in the non-quantitative, and thus non-verifiable, analyses that they make. Despite this, scholars of the humanities that pertain to China have, over the past century, shown a bias towards empirical data. Mythology is thus placed in a very impractical position as a research object that is notoriously difficult to study in any empirical sense. Proposals to explore the origins of Chinese civilization from an interdisciplinary perspective, effectively combining comparative mythology with archaeological findings, have been met with deep scepticism from the academic community. The question arises whether the seemingly reasonable system of categorizing subjects into humanities and social sciences, inherited from Western academia, should be subject to introspection, criticism and reconstruction. This question has become more urgent with the rise of non-disciplinary cultural research in the latetwentieth century, and one is obliged to re-examine the approaches, scholarship and research tools of the discipline when one engages in exploring the origins of civilization. Karen Armstrong alerted modern people who ignore or disparage myths. It is, therefore, a mistake to regard myth as an inferior mode of thought, which can be cast aside when human beings have attained the age of reason. Mythology is not an early attempt at history and does not claim that its tales are objective fact. Like a novel, an opera or a ballet, myth is make-believe; it is a game that transfigures our fragmented, tragic world, and helps us to glimpse new possibilities by asking ‘what if?’—a question which has also provoked some of our most important discoveries in philosophy, science and technology (Armstrong 2005, 8).

The emergence of postmodern mythological study has, it seems, benefited from several important academic fields. For example, masters of psychoanalysis, such as Freud, Jung and Newman, urged their contemporaries to explore the soul, citing the discarding of myths as being the main cause of the loss of soul. Another example is anthropologists’ research into the relevance of myths and rituals in non-literary societies. The myths and epics behind rituals are not only the “history” of the oral memory of specific ethnic groups, but are the very basis of their cultural identity. Philosophers such as Cassirer and Levi-Strauss argue that one may discover the true source of human thinking and the “cultural code” in myths. The horizons of mythological research extend far beyond the mythological concept of the literary subject and can promote wider academic innovation in the humanities. The changes to the concept of history brought about by post-modern mythological study are equally breathtaking. Some theorists have even urged that the long-accepted word “history” be replaced by a new term such as “mythistory” (Cornford 1907; Kelley 1998). The substitution of terms offers a truer description of the field, and helps rectify two thousand years of error caused by the separation and opposition of “history” and “myth”. As the American historian Peter Heehs maintained:

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To summarize the different approaches to myth and history that we have considered, positivist historiography declares that myth has nothing to do with history; academic mythology replies that history has nothing to do with myth. Certain contemporary historians study myth as an object or category of historiography. Others go so far as to view history as a sort of myth. In the evolutionary view (represented by McNeill) and even more so in the extreme view advocated by White, the conventional distinction between factual and fictive events is blurred (Heehs 1994, 5).

From the writings of the representatives of new historicism, McNeill and Hayden White, and the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, it can be seen that the opposition between “factual” and “fictive” may be questioned and even overturned. Taking the oral mythology of the Maori culture in the Hawaiian Islands and New Zealand as an example, Sahlins illustrates that the myths the aborigines recount reflect their history, although Westerners mistakenly assume they have no history. On the contrary, the history of the Pacific islands recorded by Western colonists was in the eyes of the aborigines a fictional myth. He called the non-literate Hawaiian aboriginal society the “Islands of History”, identifying “history” with “myth–practice” or “culture” (Sahlins 1987). Sahlins creative ideas offer a new way of thinking to historical anthropological researchers aiming to find history beyond written records. At the end of the twentieth century, after completing the largest liberal arts project since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the “Xia Shang Zhou Chronology”, the country launched a follow-up project, “Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization”, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. To tackle the problems and questions at the heart of this project, a team was formed that brought together experts from multiple disciplines, with archaeologists forming the core. The other disciplines represented include history, astronomy, geography, paleoethnobotany, palaeontology, scientific history, and chemical composition analysis. Almost every conceivable field, but not comparative mythology. This evident deficiency not only reflects the impact of the narrow literary interpretation of the myth on Chinese academia over the past century, but also our relative ignorance of overseas research achievements in comparative mythology. The need to reflect critically on the literature-based myth that modern Chinese scholars have long been accustomed to and to re-establish a broader view rooted in cross-disciplinary perspectives has prompted one to apply comparative mythology to explore the origins of civilization and the study of ancient history in this study. In what follows, the tension that has arisen between a rampant globalism and a widespread renewed consciousness of local culture will be presented as a realistic driving force for academic development in the humanities and social sciences in the twenty-first century. In the post-colonial era every nation, big or small, has been faced with the task of looking inwards and to reconfirm and consolidate its own cultural traditions and identity. The search for cultural roots and the academic exploration of the origins of civilization are, and will remain, topical and difficult issues to tackle. Addressing these challenges, and building on advances made to interdisciplinary approaches, this author and his colleagues at the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the Committee of Mythology of the Chinese Folk Literature and Art Association (commonly referred to as “the

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Chinese Mythology Society”) have proposed looking the problem through a new lens: “Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization from the Perspective of Comparative Mythology”. The advantages of their suggestion are twofold: such research will support and strengthen what are arguably the most important academic projects in China, and in doing so will foster a framework for, and systematic training of, the serious study of mythology in China. This study explores the integration of crosscultural interdisciplinary knowledge into the humanities in China and the direction of academic innovation within the field. It further probes the significance and utility of the “quadruple-evidence method” in the study of literature and history. Extant research by Chinese academics that applies mythology in exploring the origins of civilization is, relatively to the work done by academics in other countries, lagging behind. The problem, it seems, lies in the fragmentation of knowledge about the humanities between literature, history and philosophy, and the fact that so many advances in the field are now becoming outdated. In the 1920s, Wang Guowei first proposed the “double-evidence method”. Then, in the 1930s and 1940s, Zheng Zhenduo (1898–1958) and Wen Yiduo (1899–1946) conducted case studies utilising anthropological methods and comparative mythology. Because of their capacity as writers or literary historians, scholars in historical and archaeological fields did not pay enough attention to their research paradigm, and largely ignored their research findings. Some conservatives even regarded such exploration as unorthodox. When the era of doubting antiquity came to an end in the 1990s, calls for a re-evaluation of the research of Zheng Zhenduo and Wen Yiduo’s research were steadily growing. This author summarizes their approach as the “triple-evidence method” and will seek to apply the research paradigm of cultural anthropology, in particular the anthropological means of analysing mythology, to further develop and expand the scope of the triple-evidence method in order to provide a modern interpretation of ancient Chinese classics. In modern Chinese historiography a more systemic study of the legendary and mythological times in ancient history was represented by Xu Xusheng’s The Legendary Times in Early Chinese History (1943) and Ding Shan’s An Examination of Chinese Ancient Religion and Myth (finished in 1950). Because of the frequent wars in the 1940s and the limited archaeological discoveries in China, the research sources were mainly inherited literature. The concept of myth was still limited to the literature-based myth of western modernity. Xu Xusheng entitled his book “Legendary times” rather than “Mythological times” because he thought that the terms “are two things that are very close but different from each other and must not be confused” (1985, 21). Myths are fictions, whereas legends imply historical events. The imagination of the ancient Greeks was highly developed and their legends include many strange elements. However, the ancestors of the Chinese people preferred to be practical, so there are not many elements of myths in Chinese legends. This is the main reason why Xu Xusheng chose “legends” instead of “myths” in studying ancient Chinese history. Because the “Doubting Antiquity School” relegated all ancient history in the minds of the ancients to myths and legends, it viewed “recorded history” as equivalent to “pseudo history” (Gu 1982, 59). As an historian and archaeologist, Xu Xusheng made an example of deliberately avoiding “myth”.

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His great works, like Gu Jiegang’s “pseudo-history” theory, left a clear “restricted area” for later generations. Its far-reaching side effects have yet to be reconsidered. The historian Zhao Guangxian, meanwhile, wrote an article in 1947 to evaluate Xu Shu’s research methods, hoping that the study of ancient history in China could follow the example of Egypt, Babylon, Persia and Greece by “taking off the cloak of legends and myths to embark on a scientific continent” (Zhao 1987, 20). The word “myth” in his works seems to be the opposite of “science”. The inheritance of the concept of opposing science with myth from Hu Shih and Gu Jiegang to Xu Xusheng and Zhao Guangxian is roughly illustrated by the basic neglect of mythology in historical and archaeological studies in New China. Ding Shan’s historical textual criticism generally follows the Doubting Antiquity School’s idea of discerning the part of religion and myth from the so-called historical records: that is, to distinguish the fictive from the factual (1988). Ding Shan’s goal is to turn a considerable part of ancient history into a literary myth. Although the title of his book does not evade mythology, it does not trust it, just like Xu Xusheng. It regards myth as the opposite of history and reality, that is, in Gu Jiegang’s words, “pseudo-history”. (2)

Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization: Possible Contributions of Comparative Mythology

In the past 30 years, Chinese historiography and archaeology have witnessed a growth in interdisciplinary approaches. However, most people are still reluctant to step onto the restricted area delimited by Xu Xusheng and others. Only a few historians or archaeologists with wide-ranging interests have entered the mythological field and achieved a degree of success. Recent studies include the book Mythology Archaeology written by Lu Sixian (1995), an archaeologist specializing in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. Lu focused on cultural relics and explored the possible connection between the myths of Fuxi and Nüwa1 and images found on excavated artifacts. The book was, in essence, written in isolation from the international community of scholars that practice comparative mythology (using references only from Chinese scholars), which unfortunately limits the theoretical background on which it draws and its methodological framework. The works Selected Essays on Comparative Archaeology (1997a) and Walking Out of the ‘Doubting of Antiquity’ Era (1997b) by Li Xueqin, the chief expert on the Xia–Shang–Zhou Chronology Project, are both closely tied to the theme of exploring the origins of civilization. They show profound knowledge of both literature and artifact archaeology, demonstrating a broad understanding of each which is almost unparalleled in China. They are, however, set back by their failure to include an adequate consideration of comparative mythological approaches to the materials. Had Li been aware of important trends and breakthroughs in mythological approaches to interpreting archaeology, he no doubt would have come to analyse certain artifacts differently, not least prehistoric jades and their role in myths and the mythological motifs of the Erlitou

1

Fuxi (伏羲) and Nüwa (女娲) are a pair of important deities found in Chinese mythology. They are credited with the creation of humanity.

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culture. In the case of the latter, for instance, Li’s interpretation of the taotie mythological creature is tenuous and relies too heavily on outdated assumptions. It fails to reveal the cultural origins of the bronze ornament with inlaid turquoise features, a task that this author will tackle from a mythological perspective in Chap. 13. Over the past 15 years literary anthropologists, building on Wang Guowei’s double-evidence method, have proposed using a triple-evidence method and more recently a quadruple-evidence method. These developments represent the academic background of, and inspiration for, this exploration into the origins of Chinese civilization using a mythological approach. The study of the origins of civilization focuses on the evolution that occurred between the Neolithic age and the formation of the Early State, in which mythological thinking and worldviews gradually gave way to the authority of rationality and science. Given the importance of mythology in this era, a comprehensive study of the myths and legends, and mythological narratives, thinking, representations and ceremonies can shed new light on archaeological materials, and help one to better understand the culture, beliefs and lives of the people that inhabited China in this period. In the past, mythological studies have been predominantly rooted in literature, and thus academics have shied away from studying the era before written records. Recent studies, however, have innovated to extend their research into the preliterate period, making full use of material objects (statues of gods, totem icons, pottery figures, jade images, etc.) and references to ethnographic evidence in order to make nuanced interpretations about ancient societies, achieving remarkable progress. In the past couple of decades outside of China, comparative mythology has developed rapidly as a field, and other projects tackling the theme of the “origins of civilization” have seen outstanding progress. Influential works include Archaeology of Mythology (1986), Mythology of Jomon Figurines (1986) and Japanese Beliefs in the Goddesses (1995), all written by the Japanese mythologist Atsuhiko Yoshida; a series of books by the American archaeologist and mythologist Marija Gimbutas such as Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe: 6500–3500 BC (1982), The Civilization of the Goddesses (1991) and The Living Goddesses (2001); Babylon, Memphis, Persepolis: Eastern Contexts of Greek Culture (2004) by the German scholar of Greek mythology Walter Burkert; The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory (2000) by the British scholar Cynthia Eller; Sumerian Mythology (1961) by Samuel Noah Kramer, an expert on Sumer; Greek Mythology and Mesopotamia (1994) by the British comparative mythologist Charles Penglase; and Prehistoric Religion: Mythology, Symbolism (2003) by the American scholar Ariel Golan. Golan’s book examines the relationship between religion, myth and ritual in prehistoric society. It is believed that in the preliterate age, images often contained significant religious content. With the passage of time, the religious dimensions of these images are forgotten and they come to be interpreted as merely decorative patterns. These international achievements in the field of comparative mythology are of great significance for scholars studying the origins of Chinese civilization. In view of this, the national project planned to set up a database of translations of those books (17 books initially planned, 21 completed at present

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and, conditions permitting, 30–50 in the future), providing a timely academic reference for the study of the origins of civilization and the construction of a mythological history of China. Although comparative mythology outside of China has made considerable progress, as a result of considerable linguistic and cultural gaps almost no mythologists have directly studied the origins of Chinese civilization. Apart from the late Harvard anthropologist Chang Kwang-chih’s research on the Bronze Age of China (1982) and Wu Hong of the University of Chicago using archaeological images to study the formation of myths in the Han Dynasty, there have been few related achievements in recent years. This indicates the need for an in-depth discussion among Chinese researchers. In constructing a theoretical framework for a (comparative) mythological approach to the origins of Chinese civilization, scholars might consider the following three aspects. Firstly, how one might apply comparative mythology in studying the origins of civilization. Since related research in China has, relatively speaking, neglected the perspective of comparative mythologists, it is necessary to systematically sort through the relevant international academic achievements from the twentieth century onwards and clarify how comparative mythology can provide a new perspective for the research. Looking at the unique contribution of mythology to the study of the origins of civilization in the twentieth century, one may focus attention on three important schools. (1) Comparative mythology focusing on cultural origins, represented by Georges Dumézil (1898–1986) (Ye 1988). In particular, their achievements in IndoEuropean comparative mythology are most prominent. (2) Mythological interpretation of archaeology and iconology, represented by Marija Gimbutas and Atsuhiko Yoshida; (3) Research on the origins of Western civilization and mythological biology, represented by Walter Burkert and Martin Nilsson. The academic qualities and unique contributions of the above three schools offer insight into the ways in which mythology, history, archaeology, linguistics and art history interact with one another to yield new interpretations, and thus can assist one in developing a methodological approach for the study of the origins of Chinese civilization. Secondly, a reflection on Chinese mythology and previous research on the origins of Chinese civilization is long overdue. A systematic mapping of the heritage of Chinese mythology, as has been theorized since the twentieth century, and of research findings pertaining to the origins of civilization is to be conducted. Older studies must be re-evaluated in light of new archaeological findings and developments in our understanding of the interaction between literary mythology and ancient history. Further fieldwork and literary text research must also be conducted in order to accumulate enough cultural knowledge to make considered ethnographic analyses of archaeological objects and images. It is also crucial for scholars to learn about the evolution of the double- and triple-evidence methods, and how they incorporate anthropology, folklore, archaeology and mythology in exploring the emergence of Chinese civilization.

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Thirdly, scholars must fully consider the quadruple-evidence method, which embraces comparative mythology as a core part of its methodology. Based on both international and Chinese comparative mythological research, and combining various multi-disciplinary perspectives, this method allows for the study of unique local myths and religious rituals in the prehistoric period, such as the sanctification of jade and metals. It also allows for a mythological and anthropological interpretation of archaeological objects found at key sites. As will be demonstrated, analysing the emergence of Chinese civilization through the lens of the quadruple-evidence method reveals that prehistoric myths and beliefs played an important role in shaping early civilization, and that they greatly influenced early Confucian/Daoist thought (for instance, the sage and sage-king myths are known to have been greatly valued by early proponents of both thought systems). In addition, this method can be used to systematically analyse the origins and evolution of many of China’s distinct mythical creatures (dragons, phoenixes, turtles, etc.). This author will use this method to show how the phoenix deity came to replace the earlier owl deity, and likewise how the dragon replaced the bear. Such analyses provide new clues in the search for the origins and development of Chinese thought, literature and art. Of the above three aspects, the first two are effectively a summation of existing academia, which can be regarded as theoretical preparation for new research, while the last calls for an improvement in methodology and the application of evidence. The “quadruple-evidence method” emerged from the interdisciplinary research experience of the literary anthropology school, an innovative group of scholars within China’s humanities. More specifically, the quadruple-evidence method refers to the full and conscious use of the following four types of data in research in order to fully reap the rewards of multidisciplinary knowledge integration: (1) inherited literature; (2) excavated literature; (3) ethnography and oral culture; and (4) excavated objects and images (Ye 2006a). The quadruple-evidence method is an attempt to explore and perfect a research approach based in multi-dimensional interpretation that sits outside the debates on “doubting the ancient” and “interpreting the ancient” that dominate modern studies of the ancient in China. Specifically, it combines four types of historical evidence— inherited literature, excavated texts (including those on bamboo and silk), the findings of ethnographic field studies, and newly discovered archaeological materials—in order that previously “silent” prehistoric relics can play a narrative function and thus allow for new interpretations of the cultures of the prehistoric age. As existing research demonstrates, these four types of data do not always play a consistently prominent and straightforward role. To be most effective, they must be applied in an interactive way, strengthening and verifying one another. This might, for example, include interpreting archaeological findings in the context of ethnographic findings, re-assessing textual myths in consideration of archaeological materials, or shedding light on Chinese myths by drawing on the mythological traditions of other ethnic or cultural groups. It is hoped that through attempts to apply this method, innovative teams of academics might be established that will foster refined methods suitable for globalizing knowledge.

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The possible breakthrough of comparative mythology into the paradigm of Chinese studies.

Exploring the origins of civilization through comparative mythology would represent a breakthrough in the field of Chinese studies in three key ways. Firstly, it would represent a breakthrough in the research paradigm of Chinese studies, encouraging a “second excavation” of archaeological culture and objects by viewing them from a new perspective. One will be able to better understand the myths and beliefs represented by unearthed “sacred objects”, to map the evolution of objects (e.g., from pottery drums and pottery bells to bronze drums) from the prehistoric period into the age of early civilized states, and to find the unique dynamic functions of dominant myths and rituals. Efforts should be made to highlight the cultural interpretation of the comparative perspective of globalization in research. For example, combining religious and ritual instruments excavated from the tombs of wu (巫, shaman or sorcerer) and priests of the Taosi and Erlitou cultures with the mythological narratives presented on excavated bamboo and silk manuscripts would be conducive to discussing the credibility of Xia Dynasty myths, legends and rituals contained in the inherited literature. The integration of new mythological knowledge and methods into the research paradigm of Chinese studies would encourage a higher degree of interdisciplinarity across literature, history, philosophy, archaeology and art history, with the result of promoting overdue innovation within the humanities. Secondly, it will lead to the exploration of a new series of important academic questions. On the one hand, integrating a mythological perspective into research will lead to new and unique interpretations of issues that have eluded explanation since ancient times, such as Gun (鲧) transforming into a bear, and the Jade Gate. On the other hand, it will raise questions about aspects of ancient history that were formerly accepted without query, and at the same time gives one clues towards their solutions. For example, the question of why Yu, when creating five directional flags, only used the central bear flag as his state flag. Another example of this is how one is to interpret newly discovered jade ritual traditions among the Hongshan, Liangzhu and Qijia cultures, and whether they are confirmation of a “Jade Age” unique to Chinese civilization between the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age. If this is the case, which the evidence suggests it was, 6000–8000 years of jade sanctification provides a telling backdrop to later literature, from King Mu of Zhou’s westward search for jade in the Kunlun Mountains to Jia Baoyu being born with a piece of jade in his mouth in Cao Xueqin’s Qing Dynasty novel The Story of the Stone (also known as A Dream of the Red Mansion, Hong Lou Meng, 红楼梦). In adopting a mythological approach to the study of the origins of civilization, one thus might reveal much about the characteristics of later Chinese culture and literature. Thirdly, it would lead towards a large-scale integration of mythological data into mainstream academia, would lay the foundations for future developments in mythological reconstruction in China, and, in bringing scholars into contact with a variety of new research and literature, would provide a rich source of theoretical references and

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case studies for the cross-disciplinary development of literature, history and philosophy. Currently, the national plan is to translate and publish a series of monographs on mythology, focusing on mythological approaches to archaeology and iconography, such as the six volumes of Theories of Myth (1996) edited by the English mythologist Robert Segal. It is hoped that as a result the predominant conception of mythology in Chinese academia, purely based on inherited literature, can be updated to reflect current academic trends. In this regard, the book A Brief History of Greek Mythology Research in the 20th Century (2011), a doctoral dissertation by Wang Qian that this author supervised, has already made an attempt to review English-language academic writings on the topic. At present, the plan is to continue the project of translations and to expand the scale of research (to include German, French and Japanese writings among others) with the aim of introducing 50 works within 10 years, so that the fruit of modern comparative mythology may be presented to the Chinese academic community in a more comprehensive and palatable way. To summarize, it is hoped that the introduction of comparative mythology as an interdisciplinary resource into the study of the origins of civilization will provide an opportunity to innovate in terms of both theory and method. In writing this study, this author sincerely hopes to change people’s perceptions on the value of mythology as a historical tool, to remove prejudices and in the process shed light on some of the more difficult and opaque parts of ancient history. Perhaps most excitingly of all, this study will re-evaluate the narrative genealogy of the sage-kings from Emperors Yan and Huang to Wen and Wu, thereby providing a new theoretical basis for understanding Chinese cultural identity.

Part I

Theory and Methodology

Chapter 2

An Interdisciplinary Paradigm of Mythology

2.1 The Significance of Mythology Beyond the Written Word The study of mythology developed considerably in the twentieth century and mythological perspectives have been gradually applied to cultural studies across various fields including literature, historiography, philosophy, religion, law, politics and psychology. Studies on the origins of civilization and intellectual histories have seen great success in applying these new interpretations and methods. Like linguistics before it, mythology emerged as a frontier of innovation in the humanities and allowed great strides to be made in methodology. It has now successfully broken through the limitations of being a “standalone discipline” and is increasingly used to great effect in interdisciplinary studies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, studies of mythology rooted in literature were introduced from the West via Japan and soon took root and flourished within the field of Chinese literature. Back then, a huge number of researchers focused on folk literature. Since the 1980s, the mythological community in China has had many various discussions about the nature and role of the mythological view in a broad sense. However, mythological studies in China failed to go beyond the boundary of literature and folk literature. Myths and legends closely linked to more ancient times could therefore not be understood properly. Consequently, mythology did not initially play an active role in research into the origins of Chinese civilization. Realizing this academic bias, the school of Chinese literary anthropology proposed in the late twentieth century a mythological view that goes beyond literature alone. In light of pioneering international research in this field, this chapter will discuss the necessity of, and possibilities presented by, the study of mythology that goes beyond writing. Emphasis will be placed on the expansion of and inspiration for mythological studies brought by increased attention to “image narratives” and “physical material objects”, drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective. More weight will be given to a new, non-literary approach to understanding “myth” that focuses more © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_2

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on traces of the original ideological and cultural contexts in which they were formed. In doing so, one can expand the scope of mythological study into the preliterate age and build a cognitive bridge between the big tradition1 of the preliterate age and the small tradition of the literate age. Hence, a new paradigm of mythology will be proposed that seeks to reinterpret cultural symbols and ideological codes by means of reinterpreting the small tradition in light of new understandings of the big tradition. The following sections of this chapter will discuss how mythology can help historians and anthropologists break the restrictive shackles of writing, with a focus on the origin and application of four interdisciplinary paradigms.

2.2 Mythology and Archaeology As a branch of cultural anthropology, archaeology represents a relatively new field of knowledge that has brought about great changes to traditional scholarship in the twentieth century. It has exerted a great influence on the original humanities: literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, art history and religion, all of which have had to borrow research methods and adopt focuses that highlight the interpretation and analysis of cultural relics. Mythological studies can also draw on archaeology, since myths came into being during prehistoric times and continued to be created into the early stages of civilization. In adopting an approach that draws on mythological and archaeological evidence, researchers will be able to overcome previous limitations in understanding and integrate the big tradition of the preliterate age with the small tradition represented in writing. The school of psychoanalysis led by Freud and Jung has connected mythical heritage with fantasy and the unconscious, and adopted a number of paradigms of archaeology in order to study the human mind. The importance of archaeological materials can be seen clearly in pioneering works such as Aion by Jung. It could even be said that archaeology and mythology constitute the two cornerstones of psychoanalysis. For example, Aion (1970) is a work, written by Jung in his later years, that studies the symbology of the “self-archetype”. It was named after the Mithraic god Aion of ancient Rome, just as Fraser’s Golden Bough was named after the religious myths of ancient Rome. The title page of Aion displays an image of the titular god on a Roman relic from around 2nd or third century AD. It is a majestic yet slightly unnerving image, creating an atmosphere of mystery. In his book, Jung attempted to illuminate the mechanism of human psychological integration through exploring symbolic manifestations of the concept of self. Centering on the image and story of Christ, Jung tried to trace Jesus’ death and resurrection back to the mythological understandings of fish. His book also covers Gnosticism and alchemy. To make clear the connection between the image of the resurrection of Christ and the mythological symbol of the fish, Chap. 6 cites abundant archaeological evidence, much of which 1

Big tradition and small tradition are a pair of new concepts different from Redfield’s great tradition and little tradition (see details in Chap. 3).

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consists of non-textual artefacts. The symbol of the fishes “has a long and colourful prehistory, from the Babylonian fish-god Oannes and his priests who clothed themselves in fish-skins, to the sacred fish-meals in the cult of the Phoenician goddess Derceto-Atargatis” (Jung 1970, 72–73). In this way, psychotherapists have opened a door to new evidence and considerations for professional literary critics. Following the example of such great psychotherapists, academics of literature focusing on the analysis of myths cast their eyes on archaeological evidence and cultural relics. From prehistoric Chinese culture to the jade and bronze fish unearthed from tombs built in the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the mythological significance of legends and creatures that cross the boundary between life and death and their relation to the imaginary world hereafter, the Kingdom of Huangquan (黄泉, Yellow Springs), are all worthy of in-depth discussion. In the Shang Dynasty (c.1600–1100 BC) and Zhou Dynasty (c.1100–256 BC), the jade fish was a funerary ceremonial decoration for those of high rank, used most commonly both inside and outside of the coffin. Although jade fish, stone fish, copper fish and tin fish are all recorded in many archaeological reports of the Western Zhou Dynasty (c.1100–771 BC), few analyses of their mythological meaning have been conducted. Inspired by psychoanalysis, Joseph Campbell, a mythologist, extended the boundaries of literary research and looked to archaeology and prehistory. In the 1950s, he coined the key phrase “The Archaeology of Myth”, using it as the title of the fourth part of Primitive Mythology, the first volume of The Masks of God. There are two chapters in the fourth part. Chap. 9 “Mythological Thresholds of the Paleolithic” and Chap. 10 “Mythological Thresholds of the Neolithic”. Both cover with unequalled depth and vision a time span of hundreds of thousands of years, a chronological range on which most professional literary critics remain unqualified or unwilling to comment. Campbell felt proud when talking of the old age of myths circulating around the world. In Chap. 10, he told of how the serpent is the initial mythological theme of farming cultures, thus illustrating the tale of degeneration of human ancestors caused by Eve in the Garden of Eden when she is tempted by the serpent, as recounted in the Old Testament. The archetype of the serpent in myth has a history of at least 9500 years and “first appeared somewhere along the arc of the primary tropical diffusion from Africa, through Arabia and the Near East, to India, Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and Melanesia” (Campbell 1960, 385–386). The concept of archaeological cultural types offers a space–time coordinate system with which to reorient and relocate purely literary mythological studies. Its significance is thus self-evident, and its side effects may lead to the dismantling and reconstruction of literature-based mythology. Marija Gimbutas, an American archaeologist, has gone further on this transdisciplinary course. She studied goddess cults in the Paleolithic Age and put forward the theory of “The Civilization of the Goddess”, who later, in various forms, became an influential figure in ecology and feminism. In her book The Living Goddesses (2001), Gimbutas sought to integrate the myths of various ethnic groups that circulated in early European civilizations, combining prehistoric mythological images. She attempted to see them as different manifestations of the same big cultural tradition, established before and surviving after the establishment of patriarchy. She also

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endeavoured to find the blind spots of knowledge caused by the mechanical demarcation between “civilized” and “prehistoric” times and to restore the cultural link between mythological coding (the original societal and cultural elements that led to the formation of myths) and mythological narratives as they existed later. Under the influence of Campbell’s archaeological perspective toward mythology and Gimbutas’ theory of the Goddess Civilization, Karen Armstrong, a comparative religions scholar in the United Kingdom, presented a history of human mythology as developing over an uninterrupted period of tens of thousands of years, tracing from the cave paintings in the late Paleolithic Age to the works of modernist artists such as Eliot’s poetry and Picasso’s paintings. Armstrong pointed out that the shortcoming of modern civilization lies in its suppression of its ancient mythological legacy in the name of reason and science: Our modern alienation from myth is unprecedented. In the pre-modern world, mythology was indispensable. It not only helped people to make sense of their lives but also revealed regions of the human mind that would otherwise have remained inaccessible. It was an early form of psychology. The stories of gods or heroes descending into the underworld, threading through labyrinths and fighting with monsters, brought to light the mysterious workings of the psyche, showing people how to cope with their own interior crises. When Freud and Jung began to chart the modern quest for the soul, they instinctively turned to classical mythology to explain their insights and gave the old myths a new interpretation. (Armstrong 2005, 10-11)

Armstrong named the great psychoanalysts in order to raise the prospect of a mythological revival in contemporary knowledge. The supporting role that archaeology has played in the new interpretation of mythology is unprecedented, and Armstrong took full advantage of the new knowledge and evidence provided by archaeology to outline the different stages of prehistorical spiritual revolution from the hunter myths (20,000–8000 BC) to the farmer myths (8000–4000 BC). She rebuilt a prehistory of myth on the basis of archaeology (Armstrong 2005). Metaphorically speaking, the prehistory of myth is equivalent to a cipher book that provides the keys for one to understand the original coding behind myths in written literature. Thus, one can decode the small tradition by reinterpreting the big tradition. The people of the Paleolithic period had regarded hunting as a sacred act and now farming also became sacramental. When they tilled the fields or gathered the harvest, the farmers had to be in a state of ritual purity. As they watched the seeds descending into the depths of the earth, and realised that they broke open in the darkness to bring forth a marvellously different form of life, planters recognised a hidden force at work. The crop was an epiphany, a revelation of divine energy, and when farmers cultivated the land and brought forth food for their community, they felt that they had entered a sacred realm and participated in this miraculous abundance. The earth seemed to sustain all creatures—plants, animals and humans—as in a living womb. (Ibid., 41-42)

For people today, Mother Earth is a commonly used metaphor. But for Neolithic farmers, it was a steadfast belief and mythological worldview. From reproductive worship in the hunting era to the worship of Mother Earth in the farming era, the goddess’s footprints can be seen everywhere. Archaeologists can describe with detail the initial trajectory of agricultural production on earth based on relatively abundant excavations.

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Mithen (2006) in his book After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000–5000 BC confirmed that this phenomenon, known to have occurred in the settlement on the Jordan Valley, was also seen elsewhere in the Middle East. About five hundred kilometres northeast of Jericho is the site of Mureybet, whose Neolithic stratum is rich in cultural relics. There is evidence of complex architecture, indicating that people of the late Natufian culture probably rebuilt their settlements at this location. They were semi-subterranean. In the centre there were posts supporting roof timbers mounted on the surrounding walls. Grinding stones were set into the floor of grain storage areas. This was obviously the site of an agricultural settlement. Female figurines were discovered. “Jacques Cauvin proposed that a cult of the ‘mother goddess’ had existed throughout the Neolithic world. According to Cauvin, this deity has been joined by another: the bull. Skulls and horns of wild cattle were found below floors and within its walls. As the plants and animals remains from the site were from wild species, he held that the new Neolithic worship of such deities caused the development of farming” (Mithen 2006, 63–64). Ideological change came before economic change in the period from 10,000 BC to 9,000 BC. In other words, in the Near East during the Neolithic period, religious and social ideologies came into being before agriculture. Although they did not necessarily directly promote the development of agriculture, they gradually evolved into ideologies and cults that incorporated the characteristics of farming and exerted influence on the form of social organization followed in these societies. Many Neolithic sites were scattered throughout this vast area from the east coast of the Mediterranean to the Iranian plateau in the west, from the southern part of Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf to the Anatolian plateau in the north. This was the origin of agriculture and the home of a great number of goddess worshippers. In the Near East, a growing number of female images were found in excavations. From this period onward, symbols of the goddess and worship of the female appeared in the economic context of farming and livestock husbandry. Influential Neolithic discoveries include the Jordan Valley, the Levant and the Anatolia regions (ibid., 95). Çatalhöyük in Anatolia is a famous Neolithic site where many buildings, artifacts and tombs were unearthed. In the late 1950s, James Mellaart, the British scholar who first discovered the site, believed that Çatalhöyük was an agriculture-dependent civilization, essentially living from cereals and herds. But some scholars held different opinions, arguing that there was insufficient evidence to validate such a conclusion. After all, the facilities found there for milling grain were much sparser than those in the Jordan Valley. However, the latest research shows that its economy, like many of the Near Eastern societies, was based on the domestication of wild animals and plants, such as goats, sheep, cereals and beans. Jacques Cauvin’s book The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture (2000) explores the origin of mythology based on relatively recent archaeological findings. As a pioneer of prehistoric archaeology of the Middle East, Cauvin has over twenty years of field experience in Neolithic archaeology. He is familiar with the settlements and agrarian cultural relics and aspires to reveal the changes in mythological thinking and religious beliefs that took place along with the dawn of the Neolithic age. According to Cauvin, a seated female sculpture from 7000 BC, unearthed in

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Çatalhöyük, is a sign of a “new religion”. He discussed this in his third chapter titled “The revolution in symbols and the origins of Neolithic religion”: The goddess, obese, giving birth, seated on panther that serve as her throne; at Hacilar, the same person, equally seated on a panther, holds in her arms sometimes an infant, sometimes a young feline. Thus, in surreal assemblages which bring evidence of the world of the imagination, there are ideas of fertility, of maternity, of royalty and of being the mistress of wild animals. Here are all the traits of the mother-Goddess who dominates the oriental pantheon right up to the time of male-dominated monotheism of Israel. (Cauvin 2000, 29-31)

Jacques Cauvin also noticed a mural unearthed in Çatalhöyük which portrays a crowd of people surrounding a huge bull, their arms raised towards it. This was thought to be the embryonic form of the bullfighting ceremonies that appear later in Mycenaean culture. In Çatalhöyük, there were also temple-like structures with bull heads hung vertically on interior walls. All of this implies that there was also worship of male power alongside the feminine worship of reproduction and fertility. Cauvin referred to this phenomenon as a new type of religion called “Goddess and Bull”. Its basic doctrine is thus, “She was not only a ‘fertility symbol’ but a genuine mythical personality, conceived as a supreme being and universal mother, in other words a goddess who crowned a religious system which one could describe as ‘female monotheism’ in the sense that all the rest remained subordinated to her” (ibid., 32). The Neolithic religions and mythologies of western Asia help shed light on the Neolithic culture of China. The East Asian mythical system featuring goddess temples as well as the worship of goddesses and of animal symbols came into being 8000–5000 years ago. In particular, a symbolic system of ritual jades was gradually formed during the same period with distinctive features unique to the region. Influenced by The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture, some later published books on the origin of agriculture invariably discuss myth and religion, such as First Farmers: the Origins of Agricultural Societies (Bellwood 2005) and The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory (Barker 2006). The latter focuses on one question: “If producing food has had so many advantages for the competitive success of our species, and if the first farming began many thousands of years ago, why did some people become farmers so quickly, but others take so long?” (ibid., 10–11) It is emphasized in this work that “ideologies control behaviours: changes in ideology preceded and stimulated their eventual commitment to agriculture, rather than the other way around” (ibid., 38). Such an argumentation reminds one of Weber studying the rise of capitalism with the view that it was spurred by the Protestant ethic. If consciousness and ideology truly can drive behaviour, then the study of mythology will play an even greater role in exploring the behavioural patterns and changes in prehistoric humans. Chinese civilization is an agricultural civilization with the largest population and the longest uninterrupted history in the world. These facts alone highlight the indispensable significance of archaeology to the study of Chinese mythology. There is an increasing tendency for researchers of mythology to incorporate new archaeological materials when studying China.

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2.3 Mythology and Art History In The World: A History (2007), Felipe Fernandez-Armesto stressed that art is of great importance for historians. Art history mainly studies images rather than literature. Moreover, the history of art began earlier than the history of civilization. Thus, there is a strong connection between art history and mythology (Fig. 2.1). The visual art of ancient times has precious archaeological and cultural value as evidence in the study of mythology, as does early classical art. The titles of books like Myth into Art: Poet and Painter in Classical Greece (1944) written by H. A. Shapiro, and Gods and Heroes in Later Archaic Greek Art (1992) written by Karl Schefold demonstrate the extant interest in an interdisciplinary study of art and myth history. Nowadays, Chinese literary studies tend to place equal emphasis on text and image. In addition to special fields such as Dunhuang studies, the study of the Classics of Mountains and Seas (Shang Hai Jing, 山海经) bears considerable fruit. Today, it would appear that art history, or at least Western art history, begins with the cave frescos of southern Europe, and these images illustrate a myriad of prehistoric female goddess forms not unlike the later statues of Venus. This is because this image archetype is inseparable from the background of mythological thinking and prehistoric religious beliefs in which it formed. It is for this reason that the study of Greek and Roman marble sculpture is steeped in an understanding of mythological narrative, without which the study of Greek vase paintings and Roman mosaics would be hard to initiate. Art history needs to refer to mythology in order to restore the ancient spiritual “layer” that produced prehistoric art, instead of ubiquitously blindly applying modern rational analysis. The difference here is the difference between experience and cognition, and anatomy. For instance, one cannot analyse the qilin (麒麟), an imaginary animal in Chinese culture by the rules and standards of modern animal anatomy. But if one imbues it with artistic imagination, it would come alive both in Chinese literary history and art history in ancient times and the animation games of nowadays. The Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges described qilin (k’i-lin) in a specifically imaginary way:

Fig. 2.1 A jade carving of a divine bird with long crown, unearthed from the Yin Ruins. Photographed at the Anyang Yin Ruins Museum

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2 An Interdisciplinary Paradigm of Mythology The Chinese Unicorn, the k’i-lin, is one of the four animals of good omen; The others are the dragon, the phoenix, and the tortoise. The Unicorn is foremost of all the creatures that live on land. It has the body of a deer, the tail of an ox, and the hooves of a horse. Its short horn, which grows out of its forehead, is made of flesh; its coat, on its back, is of five mixed colors, while its belly is brown or yellow. It is so gentle that when it walks it is careful not to tread on the tiniest living creature and will not even eat live grass but only what is dead. Its appearance foretells the birth of an upright ruler. To wound the Chinese Unicorn or to come across its dead body is unlucky. The span of this animal’s natural life is a thousand years. When Confucius’ mother bore him in her womb, the spirits of the five planets brought her an animal ‘having the shape of a cow, scales of a dragon, and a horn on its forehead’. This is the way Soothill reports the annunciation; a variant of this given by Wilhelm tells that the animal appeared on its own and spat out a jade tablet on which these words were read: Son of mountain crystal [or of the essence of water], when the dynasty crumbles, thou shalt rule as a throneless king. (Jorge Luis 1974, 148)

It is obvious that Borges still categorized unique Chinese mythical animals according to western classification of knowledge when he refers to the qilin as the Chinese unicorn, yet his description strictly follows the Chinese way of understanding myth by citing legends from the Chinese classics. It proves that the ability of artistic imagination is universal to all human beings, but the manner and fruits of this imagination are bound to be conditioned by cultural particularities. In other words, people in different ages and from different cultures will exercise imagination differently. Thus, the study of art history and the study of mythology remain highly complementary. Both fields of study have to operate at a deeper, more symbolic level in order to advance together. The history of human art, seen as visual symbols conveying meaning without using words, extends at least back to the Neanderthal Age 100,000 years ago, a period which has attracted extensive research due to its unique properties. According to The Singing Neanderthals (Mithen 2005), human oral capacity and the ability to sing and perform may be traced back to the Neanderthal era. The work When Neanderthals and Modern Humans Met (2006), edited by Nicholas J. Conard, enumerates the Neanderthal heritage of art and myth that was been handed down after the race became extinct. The book was originally a collection of papers first presented in an international symposium held in Tubingen, Germany, in July 2004. Twenty chapters of this work discussed new materials pertaining to, and new understandings of, this change in species in the middle and late Paleolithic period of Europe, known of since the discovery of Neanderthals in 1856. In the first chapter “Changing views of the relationship between Neanderthals and modern humans” written by Conard, he lists three kinds of behavioural pattern passed on from the Neanderthals: “elaborate burials, beliefs about a spirit world, and image-making” (ibid., 10), each of which are vividly shown in the artistic heritage of the end of the Paleolithic Age. Image-making is thus seen as the foundation of the early art. Image-making, rooted in the imagination, reflects the unique wisdom and creativity of human beings, a premise developed by Renfrew and Morely, two British archaeologists, in their edited work Image and Imagination: a Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation (2007). The contributors are experts in the field of prehistory. Chapter 24, “The worship and destruction of the image”, written by Robert A.

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Hinde, advances the argument that belief in deities and a conscious use and comprehension of the image occurred at the same time and may be seen as interchangeable. Thus, the images presented of deities that appear in mythology are not only important in understanding religious history, but also art history. This explains why the study of mythology should not only be conducted in consideration of writing or written literature, but must primarily look to art and the human imagination. A question then arises: When did this kind of artistic imagination begin? The answer given by Paul G. Bahn is breathtaking, as stated in “The Earliest Imagery around the Globe” (Chap. 1). His research looks at evidence from the late Pleistocene era, much earlier than the Neanderthal age, about 8000 years ago. Any image made in the human ancestral era is put under investigation by him, even scratches that can be characterized geometrically and images imitating nature in the broadest sense. In this case, did mythological thinking precede even abstract language? Many examples of image narratives seem to give an affirmative answer. The behaviours behind image creation may be studied from the point of view of both the producer and the receiver of the image. Indeed, the work Image and Audience: Rethinking Prehistoric Art (2009) by Richard Bradley provides a new perspective on this matter. Chap. 1 discusses the common issues concerning prehistoric art, while Chap. 3 discusses image and audience in the Bronze Age of Scandinavia, from which one learns that a variety of painted and pecked designs associated with stone tombs in the Neolithic Age are common in Western Europe from Portugal and Spain to Germany and the British Isles. The two most common images found are faces and eyes. Unlike the “animal images”, created in a context of hunting and witchcraft, of the Palaeolithic Age, megalithic art features human features. The popular interpretation is that the face and the eyes are the part of the human body used to symbolise the goddess, a view popularized by Crawford and Gimbutas. Bradley, however, disagrees with this theory. In light of the prehistoric mythological cosmology reconstructed by David Lewis-Williams, who classifies the images into paintings and carvings based on their position in the tomb, Bradley believed that these two types of images had different audiences, and that they played different roles in the funeral rituals for the dead. Chapter 4 of Bradley’s book probes into the art of open-air stone tombs and carvings from the viewpoint of the receiver. In China, the silk manuscripts and paintings unearthed from Chu tombs in the first half of the twentieth century provoked discussion of the integrated study of mythology and art history. Among the representative works of the late twentieth century were Art, Myth and Ritual (1983) by Chang Kwang-chih and “Art in a Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui” by Wu Hung (1992). At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the study of this field became popular. Analyses of the abundant images found on stone reliefs from the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) were particularly fashionable, as can be seen in works such as Han Paintings and Folklore (2002) by Chen Jiangfeng, Study of the Painting of the Han Tomb: the Investigation and Analysis of Mythology (2004) by Li Li, Study of Religious Thought of the Paintings in Han Tombs (2010) by Wang Xiaoyang and The Beauty of Han Paintings (2011) by Zhu Cunming. Judging from the large number of images that exist from this period, these authors are fully aware that people in the Han Dynasty were obsessed with

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the mythological world. However, no larger-scale research of mythology in fields other than the Han images and Dunhuang frescoes has been conducted. Worthy of particular mythological study in the domain of folk art are paper cuttings, paper horses for rituals and the Spring Festival pictures, as well as ancient bronzes and ancient jade, Tibetan Buddhist art and the mythology of Thangka. One universal form of prehistoric goddess worship is that of Mother Earth worship. At this point in the discussion, it is useful to examine the vestige of the Mother Earth image as it existed into patriarchal civilizations. Generally, the gender is changed. The god of earth is later called Grandpa Earth in Chinese folk religion. However, the belief in “Grandma Earth” and related folk stories are widespread in Neiqiu, a county in southern Hebei Province. Following is a story of the Great Jade Emperor and Little Jade Emperor told by a local villager: It is said that “Grandma Earth” was enlightened by the Jade Emperor and became celestial afterwards. She had a dream that everyone in this world could live and work in peace. But villains were everywhere. Therefore, she asked for help from the emperor, who sent down a few immortals to manage the world. That is why we always heard about the stories of stars coming down to the earth. In order to let people know that, and to help them to renounce evil and turn to virtue, Grandma Earth led those guilty people to repair the temple. Grandma and the Jade Emperor travelled across thirteen provinces, and people who had done something wrong in these areas came thousands of miles to donate money to repair the Jade Emperor Temple after being enlightened. (Feng 2009, 346-347)

In this story, two elements of the big tradition are retained: the worship of the goddess represented by Grandma Earth and the worship of jade represented by the Jade Emperor. In patriarchal societies, folk belief unavoidably encountered the restrictions and transformations brought about by male chauvinism, and thus came to reflect the political idea that gods or immortals were sent to the earth to be good emperors. “Repairing temples” in the story can be seen as a materialized symbol of the original function of the myth, with practical social and psychological functions to its existence; but unfortunately there have been few studies on this. Han Qiuchang (2009, 8), a local scholar, sought to investigate gods in a broad sense in Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism. However, folk deities are seldom mentioned. Since rich mythological heritage has been found in such a small county, it is not hard to see that there are many mythological resources worthy of exploration in the whole of China. Mythological researchers should not limit themselves only to the literary field. The history of art provides visual material for the study of mythology, whose space–time range extends well beyond the invention of writing. Even in the periods abundant with texts, visual material can make up for the deficiencies of textual materials. Take the image of the Queen Mother of the West in Chinese mythology as an example. Ancient records portray her as having a human form with a leopard’s tail and the teeth of a tiger, while the Han stone relief unearthed in Shaanxi shows an image of a human body and bull’s head. These visual materials help break the shackles of the written texts and provide new insights into this area of mythology, as well as raising new questions (Ye 2008a). More visual materials remain to be

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discovered and questions to be answered when viewed from the research paradigm of “using images as historical evidence”—a lynchpin of the new historiography.

2.4 Mythology and Cultural Transmission In examining the agricultural revolutions that came with the Neolithic Age, an unresolved question remains, namely whether ideological factors or material factors played a bigger role in driving people to turn to agriculture. In other words, how did humans evolve to the point where they grew grains? (Fig. 2.2). In this regard Mithen, in his book After the Ice: A Global Human History 20,000– 5000 BC (2006), offered a typical explanation of cultural transmission by combining new materials and ideas taken from the archaeological community. In short, every type of crop invented by humankind spread from a central point of origin to other places and eventually formed a cultural circle or cultural belt. Today, on the basis of sufficient chronological materials, scholars are able to draw a road map and a process map of wheat-based agriculture, starting in the Middle East and then going northwards through the Near East to reach Europe. Apart from the crops themselves, there were other factors that drove the spread of agricultural planning, such as the spread of stone tools and the materials necessary to make the tools, among which in particular a mythologized volcanic rock called obsidian. This kind of black translucent hard rock witnessed the dawn of the earliest large-scale, long-range “international trade” on earth. Çatalhöyük, the famous village site in Turkey mentioned earlier, acted as a transit station for such cultural transmission around 7000 BC. The large-scale mining of obsidian resources and their transportation were necessary economic conditions for the Çatalhöyük settlement to form and flourish. The foreign trade of obsidian grew and was accompanied by the spread of precious stone mythological concepts, which added value and significance to this mysterious stone. Regarding the image of birds of prey eating human bodies in the Çatalhöyük temple murals, Mithen did not forget to remind readers that myths are also transmissible:

Fig. 2.2 Bone farm tools—bone spades of the Hemudu Culture. Photographed at the Hemudu Site Museum in Yuyao in 2010

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2 An Interdisciplinary Paradigm of Mythology Turning to look southeast, to the modern lands of Israel and Jordan where his journey had begun. Lubbock recalls that birds of prey had been revered and heads detached from human bodies at the earliest farming villages: Jericho, Netiv Hagdud and WF16. And so, the paintings and sculptures of Çatalhöyük are perhaps not so horrific after all—simply an expression of the mythology that had grown alongside of the fields of wheat as farming was invented and developed in western Asian. (Mithen 2006, 96)

Within the history of anthropological theory, the cultural transmission school gained huge popularity after the fever of classical evolutionism had waned. Proponents of the cultural transmission theory at that time refuted the single evolutionary model of world culture at the expense of going too far, as may be seen through the popularity of the pan-Egyptianism and pan-Babylonianism movements. Later theorists corrected the biased views of cultural transmission school and held that the global culture was not spread from one or two ancient sources to the entire world. However, local and regional cultural transmission remains a highly valued consideration by researchers. Research in this field continues to make progress through the continuous emergence of new materials. The research paradigm behind cultural transmission theories has a lot to offer to the study of mythology and religion. Elliott Smith, a pioneering anthropologist, studied the field of world history from an anthropological perspective and wrote the book Human History (1930), bringing the academic concept of cultural transmission to general readers of literature and history. Due to the limited knowledge of the time, Smith’s research seems somewhat approximative nowadays. Some of the hypotheses seem too general and even improper. In contrast, recent studies of cultural transmission are increasingly moving from hypotheses to evidenced models. The chronological roadmap of cultural transmission based on physical evidence has thus emerged as a popular means of academic expression. For example, Jacques Cauvin studied the divinity personified in the Neolithic Age. Ten thousand years ago, corresponding motifs of women and bulls appeared in the Levant region as the key imagery of god worship. Evidently, this phenomenon was of significance to cultural transmission because in the ensuing millennia, the motif spread across Mesopotamia through the Mediterranean to Crete, Mycenae and Greece. Such religious and mythological concepts spread from their place of origin to other places far afield. Broadly, the early Neolithic period had a clear trajectory of regional transmission. “This aceramic culture lasts a long time. It begins around 8600 BC and its end is conventionally set around 7000 BC, when pottery comes into general use. For archaeologists, pottery has a role of major importance since ceramic styles, which can be very diversified on a regional pattern, come to serve as the means of defining different cultures” (Cauvin 2000,76). The cultural transmission closely related to the origin of human civilization is divided into two interactive parts—the dissemination of material culture and the spread of mythological concepts—and has thus opened up a promising new avenue of research. To take another example, the chronological span of time between the prehistoric era and the early civilized period was a key period in the spread of myths. In addition to transmission through text and imagery, myths were also transmitted by means of oral communication. Contemporary mythologists must recognize that the evolution of oral culture is often obscured by the power of written symbols, and should explore

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the continuation of the big tradition hidden behind the written classics. For example, innovative studies on Greek mythology from the perspective of the evolution of oral traditions include Kingship in the Mycenaean World and its Reflections in the Oral Tradition by Shear (2004) and Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet by Powell (1991). Powell made a bold hypothesis in his book: a singer invented Greek script independently in order to record Homer’s epic. When the archaeological discovery of Qin Shi Huang2 ’s terracotta army emerged as one of the eight wonders of the world in the 1970s, it did not immediately occur to the academic community to discuss the military combination of troops and horses, either in the context of nomadic civilizations or as a cultural phenomenon from a global perspective. According to some history books, the ancestors of the Qin people did well in breeding horses for the royal family of the Western Zhou Dynasty and were consequently rewarded with land in the eastern Gansu Province and given the “Qin” title. What needs to be pondered is who the Qin people were and why, among so many agricultural peoples, they were the ones most adept at keeping horses. Today’s mainstream understanding in archaeology and anthropology is that horse-breeding culture was gradually disseminated across the globe from a single source. The place of origin was the vast prairie in the hinterland of Eurasia. It is no coincidence that the domestication of the horse and the origins of equestrianism and of carriage-making technology all appeared first in this area. The Making of Bronze Age Eurasia, one of the Cambridge World Archaeology series published by Cambridge University Press in 2007, provides a reference for thinking about this issue, closely related to the Chinese civilization. To the west of Xinjiang, China, and to the east of Mesopotamia in West Asia, there was a traditional civilization famous for its vast grassland. Unlike the Sumerian and Babylonian civilizations in western Asia and the Chinese civilization in East Asia, it did not establish cities as centres of civilization nor maintain written records; instead, it was characterized by village communities and the use of bronze tools. Philip L. Kohl, mainly based on Soviet and Russian archaeologists’ excavation reports, made great progress in reconstructing this civilization which was lost due to a lack of written records. In his second chapter he estimated that this civilization existed between 4500 and 3500 BC, which is roughly as early as the Yangshao culture along the Yellow River Basin. This ancient civilization relied on the production and exchange of copper from the Balkans to the Volga (Kohl 2007, 28). The process of cultural transmission not only involves the spread of materials and production technologies, but also the dissemination of the mythological concepts embodied by the material. It is yet to be determined, however, which one of the two is of greater importance in cultural transmission. If one starts from the viewpoint that material determines consciousness, there is no dispute about this issue. But things are not quite so simple: there exist areas where, despite them being close to jade mines, there existed no mythological conception of jade and thus no tradition of jade object production emerged, such as the regional vassal states in the ancient Kunlun

2

The first emperor of the Qin Dynasty (259–210 BC).

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Mountains in Xinjiang. However, in the Central Plain3 region, far away from highquality jade resources, a tradition of mythological imagination had developed that saw jade as related to the deities and eternal life. Driven by these myths, a system of luxurious jade sacrificial offering ceremonies, with the ruling class wearing jade, was established that extended from the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties to the Qin and Han Dynasties. In civilizations without the tradition of horse keeping, the domestication of the horse and the spread of domesticated horses inevitably created a mythological imagination related to this animal. Myths about horses were spread in various ways, such as through artistic designs and textual narratives. The horse pits and harness of the funeral car found in the high-grade tombs built during the time from the Shang and Zhou Dynasties to the Qin Dynasty have attracted much attention. However, such a phenomenon has rarely been examined from the perspective of mythology. When admiring exquisite horse adornments made of jade, bronze or even gold, people tend to wonder why horses two or three thousand years ago were treated so royally. Looking to mythical horse images in Chinese idioms like “a heavenly horse walking in the sky (tian ma xing kong, 天马行空)” and mythical animals like the “dragon horse (long ma, 龙马)” is useful in the understanding of such luxurious harnesses and helps one reconstruct the mythological cosmology of these ancient peoples. It is not surprising that nomadic ethnic groups extolled the horse as a manifestation of the divine, such as in described in the Mongolian epic “Jiang Geer” (Ye 1991, 17–27). As for the Central Plain civilization, which imported horses and wagons from foreign cultures, the horse circulated first as a mythologized animal. Horse myths relating to Chinese emperors are not uncommon. Literature about horse myths abounds. Qu Yuan (340–278 BC), a poet and politician of the Warring States Period (770–221 BC), wrote in The Verse of Chu (Chu Ci, 楚辞): “Riding on the steed I would rush and charge ahead. As pathbreaker, though sweat and blood I might shed” (2006, 4–5). Meicheng (?- c. 140 BC), a Han Dynasty poet, wrote in “Seven Discoveries” (Qi Fa, 七发): “I will train for thoroughbred horses, harness them to a carriage with flying railings, and you can ride a team of powerful steeds. (Xie 2013, 71). From the horse myths to the carriage myths, the principle remains the same. Obayashi Taryo, a Japanese mythologist, looked at Chinese myths of carriages during the pre-Qin era from the perspective of cultural transmission routes. He quoted the opinion of Sinologist Henri Maspero that the carriage appearing in the late Shang Dynasty was the product of the external influence of Central Asian and West Asian groups. Even the production methods used in the creation of carriages was related to a mythological concept that the sky is round and the earth is square: a domed canopy over a square carriage. Obayashi analysed mythical motifs such as the carriages of the sun, of the moon, of the thunder god, Kuafu (夸父), and of King Mu, and took these prehistoric mythological archetypes to be the foundation and the “source code” of ancient Chinese carriage culture. The carriages imported from foreign cultures were mythologized and projected onto the experience of observing stars. Following this, 3

The Central Plain, or Zhongyuan (中原), is the area on the lower reaches of the Yellow River which formed the cradle of Chinese civilization.

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new myths such as “the Northern Dipper being the imperial carriage” described in the Records of the Historian: Celestial Phenomena (Shi Ji: Tian Gong Shu, 史记·天官书) were developed (Obayashi 1991, 38). People at that time imagined the supreme deity as an emperor sitting in his carriage. In this regard, the myth of the horse and carriage realizes the imaginary goal of linking heaven with earth and helps achieve harmony between man and nature. From the material to the spiritual, from the spiritual to the material, the myth is ubiquitous. For conceptually-thinking creatures like human beings, the reality of their lives is no longer a purely natural, objective reality, but “the social construction of reality” (Berger and Luckmann 1967). The emerging goal of mythological research is such a process of cultural deconstruction—understanding the goals behind, and cultural origins of, mythological motifs and archetypes. The above examples show the potential for breaking new ground that looking at the appearance of ancient myths from the fresh perspective of cultural transmission and acceptance provide. In doing so, what people are familiar with, but is not true, can be reinterpreted with the aid of mythology. Recently, some Chinese scholars have sought to use mythology to study the bronze chariots and horses unearthed in Qin Shi Huang’s Buried Sculpture Legion (Liu 2011). They hold that these cultural relics were not practical vehicles, but rather carriages that expressed ancient people’s desire to transcend the boundary between heaven and earth. Although such a novel opinion might cause academic controversy, the perspective behind the study deserves our attention. This type of case study helps academics re-understand “mythological China” as it is portrayed and captured in cultural texts, rather than blindly searching for “Chinese myths” in historical documents. The study of mythology from the perspective of cultural communication is making steady progress. In his paper, “A Brief Discussion of the Images and Western Sources of China’s Early Heavenly Kings”, Li Song (2002) held that the image of a patron saint wearing a hat in the appearance of a tiger’s head first appeared in Gandhara art and was later introduced into China through the Hexi Corridor and evolved into the image of a warrior figure wearing a hat appearing as a tiger’s head. In “Hercules in the East—the Circulation and Transformation of Its Image in Ancient Central Asia, India and China’s Arts”, Xing Yitian (2004) put forward a bolder point of view that the image of Hercules, a hero in Greek mythology who wears a hat made of lion fur and holds a stick, spread into Central Asia and India during Alexander’s eastward expedition. This image was then introduced into Gandhara art and became the king or Gandharva, who wears a hat made of tiger or lion fur, before evolving further into the imagery of a warrior figure through the Buddhist art of the Tang Dynasty (618– 907 AD). Ye Shuxian (1998a) studied the spread of mythological motifs from the perspective of comparative literature in the articles “On the Spread and Variation of Culture from the Origin of Flood Mythology in China and India” and “On the Origin of Altai Culture from Mythology and Folklore”. Later he discussed the “Jade Road” and “Wheat Road” that preceded the Silk Road in the book Hexi Corridor: Western Mythology and Origin of Huaxia (Ye 2008b). He also studied the prehistoric worship of bears and related mythologies in China, Japan and South Korea in “The Totem of Bear and Prehistoric Mythology in Northeast Asia” (Ye 2010a). “Observations on the Tomb Figures in Two Capitals of the Tang Dynasty” by Yang Jie (2011) and On

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China’s Winged Mythical Animals by Li Ling (2004) shed light on where and when these foreign mythologies spread into China based on the chronological comparison of the images found on unearthed cultural relics.

2.5 Mythology and Material Culture Research The four eras described in Greek mythology—the Golden Age, the Silver Age, the Bronze Age, and the Iron Age—show the increased importance of certain metallic materials. In the Chinese classic History of the State of Yue (Yue Jue Shu, 越绝书), it was said that “weapons were made out of jade” in the era of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi, 黃帝) (2717–2599BC). Is there any historical truth contained in such mythological narratives? It would be interesting to review the conceptualization of historic time in such myths from the perspective of physical evidence. There is room for interaction between mythology and the study of material culture. Drawing on new research and thinking about historiography, iconography and mythology, research driven by material culture has recently made great strides. Indeed, the paradigm of such research has become increasingly independent and worthy of promotion. The cultivation of wheat, the domestication of horses, the exploitation of copper mines, jade and the invention of carriage, all discussed above from the perspective of cultural transmission, fall within the scope of studies of material culture and are invariably subject to some kind of mythological ideology. As far as the modern Western academic tradition is concerned, the combination of mythological research and material culture research, that is, the interaction between spirituality and materialism, did not have a wide-ranging influence until Mircea Eliade’s book The Forge and the Crucible was published in 1956. Eliade, a scholar of modern comparative religion, conducted a study into the connection between mythology and fetishism with a focus on the mythological ideology behind metal smelting and processing technologies. After its English version was published in 1962, its academic influence expanded remarkably. The first two chapter headings, “Meteorites and Metallurgy” and “Mythology of the Iron Age”, immediately reveal the orientation of his study—the study of the mythological background of new materials and technologies. In the foreword, Eliade indicated that his “aim was to gain an understanding of the behaviour of primitive societies in relation to Matter” (1962, 7). He pointed out that “The principal sources for the myths and rites connected with metals are Africa, Indonesia and Siberia, and these are areas whose cultural history and mythology are either largely unknown or only just beginning to become known. Furthermore, there are considerable gaps in our knowledge of the history of the general spread of metallurgical techniques” (ibid., 8). He also stated that the ideology and techniques of alchemy constitute the main theme of the second part of this work. Needless to say, the ideology includes the mythological views held about metal; the development of related and corresponding technologies is undoubtedly driven by this view. Without mythology, it would be impossible for the history of material culture to unfold as it did. The gold mythologized by human ancestors and

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the gold mine that has slept in nature for millions of years are the same in terms of physical quality, but totally different in terms of their mythological value. Behind the origins of copper-smelting and copper iron-smelting technologies lies a dominant mythological ideology. In the past it was commonplace to study this kind of cultural material in a scientific manner, seeing “things” rather than people. Influenced by Eliade, however, changes occurred within the field. Only the interaction between the humanities and the sciences can truly bring one into the world of ancient relics, and researchers need to look deeper to see the mythology and ideology carried by these unearthed materials. Following the theoretical path pioneered by Eliade, Naomi Janowitz, a scholar in religion at the University of California, examined the origins of alchemy in her book Magic in the Roman World. In Chap. 4, “Using natural forces for divine goals: Maria the Jewess and early alchemy”, it is pointed out that “the term alchemy is itself medieval; in the first centuries CE the term Sacred or Divine Art was used instead” (Janowitz 2001, 60). At the conceptual level, for alchemists, metal is changeable, just as the universe itself. Regardless of the position of metal in nature and its rank in the cosmic order, all metal eventually becomes gold. Alchemists speed up the process and make it possible for these changes to happen in hours instead over many generations. The complex procedures of alchemy have only one goal, namely to make the metal undergo a series of colour changes from black, white, and yellow to purple. They show to the outside world the inherent changes taking place within metals as they seek to ascend a ladder from earth to heaven. According to Zosimos’ letter to Theosebeia, his “sister” in the Sacred Art, the ancient sacrifices of the Hebrews were prefigurations of the Sacred Art. More specifically, and most importantly regarding Maria, Zosimos repeated the popular story that knowledge of metalworking came down from heaven by means of angels who revealed it to Jewish women. The ancient and divine books say that certain angels were taken by passion for women. They descended to earth and taught them all operations of nature. As a result, he [Zosimos] says, they fell and remained outside of heaven, because they taught men all that is wicked and of no profit to the soul. These Scriptures also say that from them the giants were born. Their initial transmission of the tradition about these arts came from Chemes. He called this book the Book of Chemes, whence the art is called “chemistry.” (Janowitz 2001, 63)

When the famous sinologist Joseph Needham in Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology (1988) claimed that China’s chemistry began with alchemy, many readers felt puzzled. Now wonder how one might feel when one learns that chemistry was named after western alchemy. When it comes to making pills of immortality and turning base metals into gold, the driving force behind the pursuit of the mysterious material is the same: that is, the myth of immortality. Eliade commented on the history of alchemy in his book Yoga: Immortality and Freedom that it is often the case that mythologies are more vivid than historical facts and mythological documents enable one to better understand the meaning of a historical event. He also notes that the process of perfecting and purifying metals was a sacred one, intimately linked with the pursuit of immortality. Alchemy, in aiming

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to perfect metals, was a natural evolution from the already mystical processes of metallurgy that had “purified” metals before (Eliade 1958, 163). What was the mysterious smelting technique inherited by the early Jewish magic practitioners? According to Janowitz, there were understood to be four stages of alchemy before Maria (a famous early Jewish alchemist): blackening, whitening, yellowing and purple-tincturing (2001, 64). The four stages seem to be a reprogramming of the four periods of Greek mythology. In the final stage of alchemy gold is created, and it seems that people thus attempted in a way to restore the lost “golden age” via metallurgical technology. Just as Eliade (1962, 143–144) has cautioned that if modern people want to relive the experience of alchemy of early practitioners, they must not look at the changing of metals as the pursuit of a natural phenomenon, but see it instead as a primitive religious practice. Various symbolic changes performed during the initiation rites of becoming an alchemist can be seen to simulate the suffering, death and regeneration of a certain god. The enlightened person, having experienced the full ritual process, symbolically gains the energy of immortality, or regeneration. This author has already analysed in detail the relationship between myths and rituals in a four-stage cycle (cf. Ye 1997a). Judging from evidence of the origins of metallurgy, copper mining preceded the mining of gold, silver and other non-ferrous metal minerals. There were copper mines in Rye Nagrava, Serbia, as early as 4500 BC. Following the mineral veins, miners dug mines with deer horns, reaching a depth of 60 feet. In the centuries that followed, tens of millions of tons of ore were extracted, making the Balkans an important source of copper in the ancient world (James and Thrope 1995). At about the same time or earlier, in the second period of the Mechegher site in South Asia in 5000 BC, bronzes were unearthed, such as copper rings and bronze beads. In the third period of the Melgheh site dating back to 4000 BC, crucibles containing traces of copper were found, indicating that metallurgy was well developed by this time (Dani and Masson 1996). From smelting copper to gold and silver and then to iron, humankind brought about a material revolution in tools and weapons and gave birth to great civilizations. Compared with the traditional method of seeking answers through the study of literature, history, and philosophy re-examining the origins of civilization from the perspective of mythology has promising prospects. The following are some of the achievements in this field. In terms of metallurgy and alchemy, Peter Marshal’s The Philosopher’s Stone: A Quest for the Secrets of Alchemy (2001) may be seen as a good primer. The following paragraphs, meanwhile, introduce seven serious English works in the field. The first one is Social Complexity in Prehistoric Eurasia (2009). This work, focusing on the relationship between the origin of metal production and political ceremonies, explores the connection between the concentration of social power, the trade of metal ores and the production of metal. It finds that material production and technological progress are closely connected with Shamanism and mythology. Chapter 12, “Complexity of Early Alchemy and Social Culture: Archaeological Discoveries in Northwest China” by Mei Jianjun, reviews the controversy over the origins of China’s metallurgy that has occurred between academics over the past

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50 years. Was the practice homegrown or imported from other regions? As the close association between bronze production in northwest China and the bronze civilization in the central Asian grassland zone has been supported by newly discovered archaeological materials, small-scale or indirect contacts existed between the two, and there were long-term interactions between Central Asia and Xinjiang. However, the chapter fails to adequately draw on research conducted from the perspective of mythological ideology, leaving the issue in suspense. The second work is entitled The Humanized Mineral World: Towards Social and Symbolic Evaluation of Prehistoric Technologies in South Eastern Europe (2003). The title hints that there is a trend towards a new kind of interdisciplinary study: an integrated perspective of the history of material and spiritual life, the history of religion and mythology brought together. In his book, Boban Tripkovivc’s article “Quality and Value in Neolithic Europe: An Alternative View on Obsidian Artifacts” points out the religious and mythological aspects of obsidian production. This is inspiring because obsidian as a material was the earliest to be mythologized, and its role in leading people out of the Anthropolithic Age cannot be underestimated. In recent years, the remains of obsidian mining and tool manufacturing centres of the later Paleolithic Age were discovered in Jilin Province, China (Fig. 2.3). A study of the process of mythologization, from obsidian to turquoise and jade may be expected soon. The third book is Prehistoric Religion: Mythology, Symbolism (Golan 2003). This book, utilizing a combination of comparative mythology, archaeology and anthropology, interprets 43 intercultural mythological symbols, such as the tree of life, the double-faced god, the trinity, the white god, the black god, the divine snake, carriage and boat, sunrise and sunset, the moon god, the deity bear, four directions and four seasons. Many of these involve the study of the mythological cosmologies behind material cultures. The fourth is Indo-European Origins: The Anthropological Evidence (Day 2001). Day conducted a comprehensive study on the cultural origins of Indo-Europeans who Fig. 2.3 An obsidian axe of the Yangshao culture. Photographed at the Xi’an Banpo Museum in 2009

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experienced vast migrations around the time that many of the Eurasian civilizations were forming. From a methodological point of view, the book goes to great lengths to search for physical evidence, which is a major expansion of and challenge to the traditional paradigm that has relied solely on literature. However, it seems to depend unduly on science and fails to identify the ideological and psychological motivations behind these large migrations in the hinterland of Eurasia. Within Western civilization, what attracted the Greek allies to the eastern capital Troy and what drove Columbus to the oceans was the same motive—the dream of gold that would help them meet their desire for wealth and power, which had already been revealed in the myth of ancient Greeks looking for the golden fleece. In addition, attention may be paid to gold products found in the Neolithic sites located in the Indus Valley. According to “Food Producing Communities in Pakistan and Northern Indian”, a paper co-authored by the Pakistani archaeologist Sharif and the Indian archaeologist Thapar, a rectangular bead made of gold with flat holes was unearthed as early as 5,000 years ago from the site of Jalilpur in the Indus Valley (1996). This gold artifact appeared more than a thousand years earlier than the first golds unearthed from the Hexi Corridor region in China. The fifth work of relevance here is Bruce Trigor’s book, Understanding Early Civilizations (2003). The 29 chapters of this book can be divided into three parts, namely: sociopolitical organization, economy, and cognitive and symbolic aspects. This book is a systematic study of the spiritual concepts of early civilization. According to this book, researchers must have a full understanding of the mythological thinking and concepts held by the people of the civilization period. Just like Eliade, Triger (2003, 411) cautions that “the religious concepts of early civilizations differed far more radically from those of later transcendental religions than nineteenth-century anthropologists assumed. Like band and tribal societies, early civilizations do not appear to have distinguished between what we perceive as the natural, supernatural, and social realms”. The sixth important book in this field is entitled Changing Materialities at Çatalhöyük (2005), an archaeological report (1995–1999) regarding the early Neolithic site Çatalhöyük. It can be seen as a case study of material cultural research. The book explores the changes in material culture over 1100 years in this early Neolithic village. Among the materials studied were pottery, obsidian artefacts, stone and bone tools, crop and livestock remains, and temple construction. If supplemented by mythological analysis, this intriguing classic case study of the Neolithic Age would have been richer in content and analysis. The seventh book is Minoan Kingship and the Solar Goddess (2010), a recent work by a professor at Illinois State University, Nanno Marinatos, which traces cultural exchanges and similarities among the Mediterranean civilizations. From a religious and cultural point of view, Crete and the Mediterranean coast, as well as areas such as Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Syria, the Levant and Egypt, were parts of the Mediterranean cultural community. The Cretan civilization that spanned from 1700 to 1400 BC was closely linked to the Mediterranean coast and shared many of the same cultural elements as other civilizations in the region. Therefore, the study of Minoan kingship mythology should not be conducted solely from a western perspective, but

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from a cross-cultural perspective in the context of all Mediterranean civilizations and their exchanges. The available written resources are extremely limited, but one may interpret and reconstruct the specific cultural connotations of the images presented on and by the Cretan gold ring by turning to the methods of visual anthropology and mythology. In addition to the above-mentioned academic monographs and collection of research papers, there are also interesting and informative collections of material and cultural research, such as The Tomb of Agamemnon (Gere 2006). All these works will enable readers to become aware that the eastern country of gold described in Greek mythology and Homer’s epic is not pure fantasy or fiction but based on a historical reality. The discovery of the mask of Agamemnon caused a great stir. How can the “big book” of the history of civilization, which is made up of material culture, help one read the small printed books on our shelves? One way will be demonstrated by the following example. As a mythological driving force for historical events, the dream of jade and the dream of gold played an important role in the development of eastern and western civilizations. One can perceive the cultural differences in the sacred pursuits of the ancient emperors of the East and West by drawing a contrast between The Biography of King Mu and The Gold of Troy: Searching for Homer’s Fabled City (Antonova et al. 1996). Gold emerged during the rise of civilization in the Central Plain at a much later time than jade and a little later than bronze. Whether it was an indigenous invention or an imported product is a moot point. The physical evidence provided by archaeology shows that it may have come from the west and north. The earliest known goldware in China so far is a pair of gold earrings from Huoshaogou in Yumen County of the Hexi corridor. This archaeological discovery is of great significance, showing that, like the development of jade culture, gold culture first developed somewhere outside the Central Plain and then spread to the Central Plain. In a royal tomb from the late Shang Dynasty, there was no complete goldware unearthed, only gold foil. In the Tomb of Fu Hao (妇好墓) of the Yin Ruins, the ruins of the last capital of China’s Shang Dynasty, among the thousands of funerary objects, there were hundreds of bronzes and jade items, but not a single piece of goldware (Chang 1980). Therefore, it can be seen that gold production came to the Central Plain much later than jade and a little later than bronze. How did this happen? Can the route of gold to the Central Plain be traced? Ma Jian (2009) in “Interflow between Ancient China and Central Asian Steppes through Gold” argued that since the Bronze Age, the tribal leaders or aristocrats of the Central Asian grasslands had formed the customs of decorating the human body, weapons and harnesses with gold to symbolise status and power. By comparing the process of the production and evolution of goldware in the Central Asian grasslands to the farming-pastoral zone in the north of China and the Central Plain in the period from Chalcolithic Age to the end of Warring States Period, it can be better ascertained that the gold customs and gold processing techniques in the Central Asian grasslands spread to the Central Plain through the northern grasslands. In 1993, the American art historian Emma Bunk conducted a comprehensive study of early Chinese golds. According to Bunk, the aristocrats of China’s Shang

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and Zhou dynasties mostly used jades and bronzes as symbols of status and wealth; later, gold was gradually included in this system of symbols after the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BC) under the influence of an external northern culture. Bunk took into consideration the background of the cultural exchange between south and north in early Eurasia while studying gold, which provided a reference point for Ma Jian and other researchers. With the enrichment of materials in recent years, Chinese academia has discovered that the customs of decorating people with gold in the Central Plain countries started in the Zhou Dynasty. According to a classification and comparison of gold based on the regions in which it appeared and the functions it performed, it can be seen that the cultural exchanges were mainly concentrated in three regions: South Siberia and the Central Asia grasslands, the farming-pastoral zone in northern China, and the Central Plain. In Andronovo culture and other Central Asian prehistoric cultures, people started to produce gold items very early, with earrings, bracelets and other decorations being popular. By following them, people in Xia and Shang Dynasties in northern China began to imitate the production of similar items and created new styles. Aristocrats in the capital of the Shang Dynasty also used a small amount of gold for luxury items—gold-plated decorations on wood or lacquer—rather than personal accessories. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, some aristocrats under the rule of the Zhou acquired the custom of gold decoration in the north of China and started producing belt ornaments with characteristics unique to the Han ethnicity. In the Spring and Autumn Period, with the rise of nomadic tribes in Central Asia, apart from personal accessories, the tribes in northwest China and the Han aristocrats near the north were influenced by the custom of aristocrats using weapons and harnesses decorated with gold in Savannah-Altai and other places. It may be seen that such a custom of wearing gold ornaments was first introduced from the Central Asian grasslands into northern China during the Xia and Shang dynasties and was imitated by some Han aristocrats during the Western Zhou Dynasty (Ma 2009). The above viewpoints can be summarized as “the gold road through the Northern Grassland region”. This view should be evaluated in a comprehensive way by considering the golds excavated at the site of Sanxingdui and Jinsha in Sichuan Province. This means one needs to take full consideration of “the gold road” in southeast China in the late Shang Dynasty and determine the cultural origins of the gold production in ancient Shu State (represented by the Sanxingdui site). One must also understand the construction of rituals and civilizations that integrated the small tradition of goldware with the preceding big tradition of jades. It is also important to note that mythology and religion are often ignored in studies of the transmission of material culture, as if the subject being studied were the same as studying the flight of a migratory bird in Siberia or a wildebeest through the African savannah, in which case it might be enough simply to ascertain the route of their migration. It is, rather, self-evident that the producers’ conceptualization of the world and their mythology exerted influence on the products. Mythological ideology also played a role in the origins of metallurgy and alchemy. According to the age and geographical distribution of the excavated golds, it is indeed possible to reconstruct the route of gold propagation, but hard to gain any insights into the

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speed or degree of acceptance of the gold mythological cosmology or the beliefs regarding wealth worship accompanying the relocation of these objects. However, combining mythology and material culture may help solve this question, and this is precisely what makes the prospects of the combination of mythological studies and material cultural studies so exciting. From the mysterious images (human face— fish and bird—arrow) (Chen 2000) on the gold sceptre unearthed in Sanxingdui, the four phoenixes circling the sun (gold leaf unearthed at the Jinsha site), and the gold owls used as coffin decorations in the tombs of Qin Shi Huang’s ancestors unearthed in Dabozi Mountain, Li County, Gansu, it may be observed that early gold items apparently also functioned as a means of narrating myths. In particular, the study of the sanctification of gold needs support from mythological research.

2.6 Mythology, Ideology and Knowledge Archaeology The extension of knowledge and changes to academic research patterns brought about by the interaction between studies of myths, archaeology, art history, cultural anthropology, cultural communication and material culture research has been unprecedented. Through interdisciplinary study, undertaken with a keen awareness of mythology, significant changes have taken place in the study of mythology based solely on literature. The study of mythology has conventionally focused on the appreciation and analysis of literary works; but now it increasingly acts as a bridge that integrates disciplines, and in doing so can shed new light on issues that have long plagued historians and archaeologists. Furthermore, it may lead to a new trend in the reform of the humanities. Professor Dumezil, an academic from the Institut de France, introduced a comparative multi-ethnic study of Indo-European myths to reconstruct the lost Indo-European cultural community and its three functional ideologies. His student Atsuhiko Yoshida, in the same vein, studied the multicomponent composition of Japanese mythology and its impact on the origins of Japanese culture. Integrating multiple disciplines, mythological study is vital to exploring the ideologies that existed at the beginning of civilization. A representative work in this regard is Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship by Bruce Lincoln (1999). After being transformed and extended, mythological studies are likely to run parallel with the original literature-based research paradigm and give full play to the unique advantage of “archaeology of knowledge” and “archaeology of ideology”, leading in turn to the interaction between and integration of the humanities and social sciences. The trend toward integrating the knowledge of multiple disciplines will thus enable the academic community to discover new ground-breaking findings.

Chapter 3

A New Methodology: The Quadruple-Evidence Method

3.1 Learning from the Ancients at Grand Temples: From Poetic Recitation to Documentary Evidence The field of traditional Chinese studies is an academic tradition with its roots in the Confucian classics and the humanities. Its research paradigm is rooted in the long-term practice of the interpretation of ancient classics but has little to do with natural sciences. The Chinese classics have been at the centre of much scholarship and learning in China for thousands of years. The official education system in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties was based upon them, as were numerous schools of thought throughout the Warring States Period. Later, they were central to the studies of scholars in the Han and Song periods, and formed the basis of textual criticism in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Hu Shi (1986a, 4) was not exaggerating when they summed up the three centuries of achievements in Chinese studies with this metaphor: “All ancient traditional learning is a servant to classical studies”. Traditional Chinese studies is generally divided into three parts: textual criticism, argumentation and rhetoric. Traditional scholars have tended to be strong in one or two of these parts, but few have excelled in all three aspects. The most basic and common method of studying the classics is textual criticism, an approach which is quintessential within the field of traditional Chinese studies. Scholars who have excelled at it are often praised as clever judges because of their skill in verifying authenticity. The most accomplished scholars in traditional Chinese studies in modern times, such as Liang Qichao, Wang Guowei and Hu Shi, have attached great importance to methodology. In a private letter to Wang Guowei, Liang Qichao disclosed his purpose in establishing the Tsinghua Academy of Traditional Chinese Studies, which gathered scholars who had a firm grasp of methodology and knew how to apply it. Liang views methodological awareness as the main criteria for judging the worth of a scholar. This represents a significant break from traditional academic standards, and demonstrates the extent to which Western methods, which encouraged a strong conscious awareness of one’s methodology, was influencing modern scholars in China. © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_3

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Dating back to the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods, the act of reasoning things out by reciting poetry was once very popular. In order to win an argument then, one had to have a wide knowledge and a degree of eloquence. Poetry, lyrics, ballads and proverbs that condensed the ancient wisdom of oral tradition could be used as evidence by the intellectuals in public. The view that poetry serves to stimulate the mind can be traced back to the customs of primitive society, in which oral testimony was used to judge a case. The archetype of oral testimony was myths, functioning as the statute book. According to the findings of anthropologists, proverbs were used to judge cases of law in nonliterate tribes. On the contrary, in ancient Greece, when Plato discussed the origin of justice in The Republic, he allowed Socrates to quote freely two major epics of Homer, not as reasonable evidence but as an object of criticism. Greek philosophers’ criticisms and transcendence of consciousness and Chinese intellectuals’ adopting metaphors and associating categories form a strong contrast. At one time, poetry was not understood to be a means of stimulating the mind, but was instead a way of reasoning. Quoting the classics as evidence became a common practice, and was not questioned by Chinese intellectuals who, unlike Socrates, did not seek to criticize the classics. In this context, to recite a poem was not merely a literary or aesthetic flourish, but to utilise a form of logical proof. In China, after the rise of a literate civilization and the popularization of books, the tendency to use ballads in divination, and to cite poems to illustrate ideas was quietly transformed into a means of quoting books. Chapter “Metal-bound Coffer” (Jin Teng, 金藤) in The Book of Documents (Shang Shu, 尚书) and Jia Yi’s (贾谊 200–168 BC) rhyme-prose “On the Owl” (Fu Niao Fu, 鵩鸟赋) demonstrate how the style of “seeking a book to divine” (fa shu zhan zhi, 发书占之) promoted the codification of early book knowledge. Its predecessor was undoubtedly the “documents and volumes” (you dian you ce, 有典有册) system that was overseen by the royal power in the Shang Dynasty. These documents were mainly oracle bone inscriptions of royal genealogies and divination records. Once written texts had been codified, the records were bound to be mythologized. Therefore, the popularization of pictographic Chinese characters did not lead to metaphysical thinking as similar developments did in ancient Greece, but instead to the fetishisation of, and the emerging mythologization of, Chinese characters. The civilization of China after the so-called “Axial Age” did not give birth to philosophical thinking, but rather inherited mythological thinking traditions such as adopting metaphors and associating categories. The popularization of writing that occurred between the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties did not fundamentally change the habit of thinking, as is evidenced by the following materials: the Day Book (Ri Shu, 日书) on the Qin bamboo slips, the medical books in Han bamboo slips, doctrines on the interactions between heaven and man formulated by the Han Dynasty scholar Dong Zhongshu (179–104 BC) (which Sima Qian recorded in inherited literature), and numerous theological writings of the Western Han Dynasty. The efforts to “inquire into the interaction between heaven and man” made by outstanding scholars in the Western Han Dynasty was nothing more than a continuation of the ancient official education which sought to “inquire into the interaction between deities and man” in the

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Shang and Zhu Dynasties. The formally dominant non-textual means of transferring knowledge and information, which relied on oral tradition and ritual inheritance, had been challenged by the new medium of writing and resultantly gradually declined and decayed. Myths recorded in books were soon put to great use. Against this background, one may perceive a contrast between the popular myth of Can Jie (仓颉) inventing Chinese characters (created in the climate of Chinese character worship), and the philosophers’ critique and satire of Thoth, the inventor of ancient Egyptian writing, in Plato’s dialogues. This contrast reveals some of the striking differences between Chinese and Western civilization, in their way of thinking and their value orientation. When studying preliterate societies, rituals such as oral narratives and methods of divination may be regarded as the most authoritative evidence available. The discovery of inscriptions on the oracle bones of the Shang and Western Zhou dynasties, for instance, evidences that the tradition of seeking knowledge by divination spawned a new written medium: Chinese characters. Whilst written mediums developed in numerous locations around the world around this time, oracle bone inscriptions were unique in their function from those emerging in Egypt and Sumer. Oracle bone inscriptions were solely religious in nature, used to record the results of divination. The inscriptions themselves were fundamentally sacred. In contrast, early Sumerian cuneiform script (named for its characteristic wedge-shaped impressions) was used to record a variety of subject matter, from royal genealogies to state finances and taxation. The Babylonians would later adapt Sumerian cuneiform to make written records. This largely logographic style of writing was gradually replaced by the use of a system more akin to the modern alphabet, which the Phoenicians brought to Europe. It is when Greek came to be adapted from the Phoenician writing system that writing became an activity no longer restricted to, or monopolised by, royals and leaders. Thus, alphabetical writing was soon used for abstract reasoning and gave birth to a written tradition of philosophical thinking. Greece, surpassing all nations that used an ideographic writing system, achieved the first “breakthrough in philosophy” in the world. Using documentary evidence to compare the different roles that Cang Jie and Thoth played in early Chinese and Western Civilization reveals cultural differences in their respective perceptions of the role of writing. In ancient China, judging a case in the preliterate age relied on the experience of the ancients, inherited from oral tradition. In the literate age, drawing on the ancient’s wisdom by means of consulting written texts became prevalent. The advent of the written text merely served to codify the inherited knowledge of myths and oral traditions. Although Zhuangzi and Mencius expressed doubts as to the shortcomings of writing and written records, such sceptical voices were ultimately drowned out in the tide of character worship and the sanctification of Cang Jie that defined the period. In contrast, the critical attitude displayed by early Greek philosophers towards Thoth helps one to understand the conditions necessary for philosophy to emerge. As is well known, the rise of ancient Greek civilization benefitted from the ancient Egyptian and Mediterranean civilizations that preceded it. Even the Greek alphabet was adapted from that of the Phoenicians (Burkert 2010).

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In developing an alphabet, the ancient Greeks were able to utilise language in new and unprecedented ways. Greek philosophers were quick to turn on the myths surrounding the god Thoth, regarding him with great cynicism and considering him a clever and convenient invention. This is reflective of a wider change that was occurring, a shift towards rationalism that rejected and transcended the worship of words and instead threw doubt on them insofar as they could limit thinking. It is not surprising that, in this age of rational and independent thinking, the “speech-wordlogic” logos and the “dialogue-dialectics-philosophy” mode of thinking emerged. The emergence of an alphabetical writing system correlates with important philosophical breakthroughs. The meaning of “speech” in the logos however, which emphasized the importance of utterance, prevented the blind worship of the written word. In early Greek literature, the spoken words of the oracles of Delphi maintain a powerful presence, their prophetic mutterings circulating widely and often holding greater power than written words. Confucius is representative of the “old guard” that sought to retain the oral traditions. His doubts and misgivings about the function of writing led him to “transmit but not create” (shu er bu zuo, 述而不作), and in line with this he always carried out his education in a question-and-answer format. That is to say, he was an avid oral transmitter, but neither an author nor a writer. Whilst worshipped as a sage by his disciples, who maintain that all the important Confucian classics were written or compiled by him, the fact that the Analects of Confucius (Lun Yu, 论语) was not written by him is telling. In addition, his remark “When the Master enters the Grand Temple, he asked questions about everything there” (Waley 1999a, 25) further evidences Confucius’s reverence of the spoken medium as a means of teaching. In the Spring and Autumn period, the grand temple served as both a place of worship for the state founders and as the “ancient school” for intellectuals to learn from the ancients. In the State of Lu, the grand temple (or the temple of the Duke of Zhou) was the place in which the most religious leaders from the vassal states gathered at that time. It was also the place in which the Western Zhou ritual system, which Confucius had tried to preserve in the regions inhabited by the Dongyi tribes in the East, was passed on. As well as housing sacrificial ceremonies, the grand temple played a vital role in disseminating political and moral ideals. When Confucius asked his student, Gongxi Chi, what his aspirations were, he answered, I do not say I could do this; but I should like at any rate to be trained for it. In ceremonies at the Ancestral Temple or at a conference or general gathering of the feudal princes I should like, clad in the Straight Gown and Emblematic Cap, to play the part of junior assistant. (Ibid., 121)

It is clear that at least some of Confucius’s disciples wished to engage in a religious occupation in the ancestral temples. The quote also provides interesting circumstantial evidence of the religious origins of Confucian education, casting doubt on the traditional perception of Confucian belief replacing religion with moral education. In the pre-Qin period, when sacrifices and war were among the greatest affairs of

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the state, it is easy to understand Confucius’ praise for his disciples’ ambition, “The business of the Ancestral Temple and such things as conferences and general gatherings can only be undertaken by feudal princes. But if Chi were taking a minor part, what prince is there who is capable of playing a major one” (ibid., 123). Chi, out of modesty, said he should engage in ceremonial sacrificial work as a “junior assistant”, Confucius then pointed out that such things were national affairs. Confucius himself once served as a “junior assistant” to accompany Duke Ding of Lu to form an alliance with the State of Qi. The alliances of the Spring and Autumn period were unlike the international economic and diplomatic ties forged today. In the former, the oath of alliance was a form of social religious activity. The ceremony, which involved praying and offering sacrifices, demonstrated the politicians’ awareness of their limited strength (Luo 2007). Whilst on the surface the alliances of the period were the result of rational and pragmatic thinking, they were deeply influenced by irrational religious belief. Li Zehou (1999), who has built on the views of Feng Youlan and Liang Shumin, emphasizes that “the trait of wu is firmly preserved and continued in the form of rationalization in the great Chinese tradition and has become the key to understanding Chinese thought and culture”. However, all of these scholars ignored an important factor: the indigenous tradition preserved in myths. As a result of this, there has been slow progress in the discussion on the origins of Confucianism. Breaking apart from the wu tradition of history, Hu Shi has claimed that Confucianism originated amongst the priests of the Shang people. Now this author hopes that the “re-discovery of Confucian mythology” can help one better understand the mainstream beliefs that dominated early Chinese civilization and, on this basis, restore the identity of the historical figures that were able to answer every one of Confucius’s questions at that time. In doing so, one hopes to re-affirm the status and role of Confucianism in the history of mythology. Ultimately, the above is an attempt to re-examine how knowledge was passed on in early Chinese civilization. There is a Confucian teaching style, “the master says, the poetry reads”. It comes from a time in which oral education was gradually being replaced by written teaching. Reciting poems had no less authority than citing from classic texts. The Confucian lament that the state of Song supplies inadequate documentation about the rituals of Yin is proof of this. In the modern period, scholars of comparative culture, anthropology and folklore have found that the so called “Books of Saints”, later termed the “Classics”, had for a long time being passed on by oral transmission rather than through written texts. They were not even strictly “books” in the modern sense. Hundreds of officials recorded in the Rites of Zhou (Zhou Li, 周礼) that held important roles in the royal court (many responsible for maintaining and passing on ritual and musical culture) were blind. Much like the blind Greek poet Homer, they all had a sharp sense of hearing. This similarity is not a coincidence, but rather a universal phenomenon of the preliterate age. Blind officials in the Shang and Zhou dynasties lived in an era in which oracle bone inscriptions had emerged, yet they could not read nor did they require knowledge of books. The writings of the Shang and Zhou dynasties were primarily a symbolic means of communicating with deities, an activity monopolized

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by religious figures in the royal family, far from being popular among the common people. Without exception, the earliest classics such as The Book of Poetry (Shi Jing, 诗经), The Book of Documents (Shang Shu, 尚书), The Book of Rites (Li Ji, 礼记), The Book of Music (Yue Jing, 乐经), The Book of Changes (Yi Jing, 易经) were transmitted orally. Before it came to be understood that early documentary evidence was often oral narratives put down in words, there was a sense of doubt and discrimination shown by modern scholars towards early documentary evidence. This new understanding represented an unprecedented challenge to the sole authority of inherited literature in Chinese studies, and subverted a faith that had been placed in the classics for three thousand years. In its essence, this challenge has roots in the wisdom of Laozi, Zhuangzi and Mencius, who also did not trust book knowledge. In analysing the inheritance of historical knowledge in non-literate societies, one can begin to understand why they had such misgivings. The system of transmitting oral history in the Tsou society in Taiwan is one commonly seen across largely non-literate cultures. Around the age of 15, adolescent Tsou males leave their homes and head to a meeting space for men, the kuba, to train in the art of hunting. Each night, the elders tell stories and dole out admonitions. According to research by the anthropologist Wei Huilin (1904–1992), the Tsou are committed to maintaining their heritage. The stories recounted by the elders tell of the tribe’s history, of their ancestors and their heroic deeds (Wei et al. 1951). The Mamameoi, the tribal elders, play a pivotal role in preserving their history. Kang Demin (2011) noted that just as the Han people traditional tell stories around their stoves at night, the Tsou gather around the fire to pass on knowledge and history to the younger generations. The fire itself is of great importance, and is kept burning all year round in the kuba. Each clan maintains its own fires, and smaller clans will come to fetch the fire from them. Many aspects of Tsou life—storage, hunting, expeditions, funerals—are all tied to fire. Whilst the passing of oral history is not necessarily linked to fire, the act of gathering around brings people together in an atmosphere of comfort, thus enhancing social identity and leaving people tranquil. This is the ideal setting in which to pass on oral tradition. In the absence of a written culture and ancestral temples, this is a common and effective means by which knowledge is passed down from generation to generation, “transmitting but not creating”, as Confucius put it.

3.2 From Documentary Evidence to Physical Evidence The fundamental change brought about by the advent of writing was the idea of textual authority. This led to a situation in which written texts might be followed blindly as they were passed down through history. The Debate on Ancient History (gu shi bian, 古史辨) in the 1920s was the most influential modern movement in the field of Chinese history. It sought to challenge traditional precedent and approach classical culture from an empirical standpoint

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rather than assuming all historic texts were entirely factual. The School of Doubting Antiquity, led by Gu Jiegang, deconstructed many ancient histories, showing them to be myths, legends and pseudo-histories. Another school exposed contradictions in Gu’s theory in order to defend the authority of ancient histories (Wang 1987, 223– 224). Hu Shi commented in 1924 on the debate, reiterating Gu’s redating of “the textual layers” of classical works, a process he dubbed “peeling bamboo shoots” (Hu 1986a, 117). Hu also noted that the method could date back to the scholar Cui Shu in the Qing Dynasty. Gu extended the scope of the method’s application and studied how these “layers” were stacked up. He observed historical legends from the perspective of historical evolution (ibid., 118). Hu Shi, whilst recognising that Gu made minor mistakes in his early work, saw that Gu’s basic approach was indisputable. Hu Shi also suggested that scholars observe Gu’s study of myths and legends. Gu’s article “The Study of Meng Jiangnü’s Tale” demonstrates that the method of studying myths and legends did not differ from that of textual criticism when applied to the verification of ancient history. It is clear from this article that certain creative approaches used by Western neo-historicist scholars, notably the idea of “history as literature”, had come to influence Chinese historians by this time. Gu utilised the new mythological approach to its fullest effect when approaching Meng Jiangnü’s Tale. As much of the historical information that had been passed on by classical texts was falsified, a series of scholars returned to China from studying overseas, eager to reconstruct a credible and evidentially sound ancient history. The Institute of History and Philology of the Academia Sinica, established in 1928, spearheaded this school of thought. Its first director, Fu Sinian (1896–1951), encouraged researchers to find new historical evidence beyond the ancient documents. Only a few years prior to Fu Sinian being appointed as director, Wang Guowei (1877–1927) held a course entitled “New Evidence for Ancient History” at Tsinghua University, and proposed the “Double-Evidence Method”. He called upon scholars to use “buried materials” or “oracle bone inscriptions” to prove “material on paper”. Scholars like Luo Zhenyu (1866–1940) and Wang Guowei did not only pay attention to oracle bone inscriptions, however. Recently unearthed artifacts and new forms of inscription also aroused their interest, then gained attention in wider academia. He Rizhang (1893–1979) brought rubbings of inscriptions found on unearthed bronze ding (鼎, tripod cauldron) in Xinzheng, Henan to Wang Guowei for analysis (Ma 2010, 90). Additionally, the phonologist Shen Zengzhi (1850–1922) asked Wang to appraise paintings, calligraphy and porcelain, and the Canadian archaeologist James Mellon Menzies (1885–1957) took pictures of the pottery and bronze objects he had collected in Anyang and asked Wang to identify them (ibid., 129). The third chapter of Wang Guowei’s “New Evidence of Ancient History” reexamines the ancestors of the Yin1 King lineage, using the newly discovered oracle bone inscriptions. The content of the chapter was completed in 1917 in an influential essay which indirectly motivated Gu Jiegang’s compilation of Debates on Ancient History. In a letter written to Wang Guowei, Gu (Ma 2010) expressed his desire to 1

Yin is the capital of the Shang Dynasty. The Shang is sometimes referred to as the Yin or Yin-Shang.

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explore new evidence. After the debate had cooled off, Gu began his probe into a third type of evidence in his articles “Historical Knowledge” and “Langkou Village Essays” (written after completing field work in the northwest). Yu Yingshi (1982a) believed that these two notable works represented an important transformation in Gu’s academic career and development, from being “bravely doubting” to prudently “interpreting the ancient”. Around the same time, Guo Moruo’s Study on Ancient Chinese Society, Wen Yiduo’s Myths and Poems and New Interpretations of Ancient Terms, and Zheng Zhenduo’s Responsibilities of Ancient Kings and Emperors were all written, and were each innovative works that drew on Western anthropological methods. When Hu Shi was writing “Explaining Confucianism”, he also cited the concept of the Messiah in Judaism when illustrating the perception of Confucius as a sage and hero of the people of the Yin period (Hu 1986c, 62–64). In the same book, he used the example of the Romans inheriting the culture of the Ancient Greeks to describe the relationship that existed between the Western Zhou and the Yin people. Facing growing doubts about the authenticity of historical narratives’ descriptions of Chinese antiquity, scholars such as Hu Shi and Fu Sinian also looked to an evidence-based approach. The question they wrestled with was this: if inherited literature has lost the credibility and sanctity, it once held, how might history be validated? It became clear that they needed new evidence. What, then, could be considered new evidence, beyond documentary evidence? New materials played a large role in this emerging school of Chinese historiography. Cultural relics, alongside the classics, grew in importance. Wang Guowei’s “double-evidence method” had gained favour in the eyes of Hu Shi. In summarising three hundred years of Chinese studies, Hu identified three key aspects of the field: classifying ancient books, discovering ancient books, and discovering antiquities. (3) The discovery of antiquities. Qing dynasty scholars loved antiquities. The objects they collected were not limited to ancient books. The excavation, recording, and collection of ancient objects became a fashionable hobby during this period. There were many ancient materials like tripods, coins, steles, murals, sculptures and ancient pottery in circulation, though there was a lack of systematic organization of these items. In the past 30 years, the discovery of oracle bone inscriptions has provided historical evidence for the existence of the Yin-Shang Dynasty and for the study of the origins of Chinese characters. The recent discovery of the Stone Age culture in Liaoyang, Henan is also a very significant. (Hu 1986a, 3)

Hu Shi’s “discovery of antiquities” incorporates what one would today call the second and fourth types of evidence. In order to understand the origins of the modern approach to historiographic materials, in addition to antiquarian and archaeological studies as they existed in the Qing Dynasty, one must consider the thought of the German historian Ranke. The Japanese scholar Shiratori Kurakichi (1865–1942), who first proposed “discarding Yao, Shun and Yu”, was admitted to the newly established history department of the Tokyo Imperial University in 1887 and became the first student of the German historian Riess to study Rankean historiography. After receiving a doctorate from Koizumi Kuji in 1901, he went to Berlin for further study. Fu Sinian, one of Hu’s disciples, also studied in Germany. The concepts and methods behind Ranke’s “historical science” became catalysts for their determination to build

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and improve upon the old school of Chinese studies. Hu Shi saw new archaeological explorations of the Stone Age as “extremely important”; the approach was enlightening to scholars so accustomed to the study of literature. This new evidence was, however, not quick to gain wider acceptance. Even the radical revolutionary Zhang Taiyan (1868–1936) did not believe that the oracle bone inscriptions were textual materials from the Shang Dynasty, believing them to be faked. After 1949, Hu Shi went to Taiwan, where he continued to emphasize the importance of new evidence. He often drew comparison between the study of ancient history in China and the West. The former, he claimed, lagged behind because of its over-reliance on books. Gu Jiegang, a student of Hu Shi at Peking University, spared no effort in challenging the documentary approach to ancient history, and worked hard to find other forms of evidence. Gu admired the work of Wang Guowei and his belief that oracle bone inscriptions were the only credible form of historical data when studying the Shang Dynasty. Gu also commented on the achievements of Guo Moruo, Wu Qichang, Rong Geng, Ding Shan and Chan Menjia in examining and interpreting the bronze scripts (1998, 97). Gu also explored the third type of evidence. For instance, when conducting field work at Lanzhou University, he saw locals inflating sheepskin rafts as a means of travelling down the Yellow River. Upon reflection, he realised this to be the origin of the allusion “blowing cow skin”, which refers to someone who is talking big (1963). His fieldwork in Gansu inspired him to look beyond book knowledge and led him to consider the formation of the Huaxia2 ethnic group. In a study note titled “Huaxia and Manyi”,3 he wrote (1990, 2108) “the poetry and the documents contain the records of the Zhou people calling themselves “Shixia” (时 夏) or “Youxia” (有夏). They might pretend to be the Huaxia to marginalize the aborigines from the east. The racial consciousness is in fact just a clan consciousness”. Another note states that it was no coincidence that many places were called Xia (夏) or Daxia (大夏) in the northwest, and calls for further investigation on this matter (1990, 2026–2027). This “third type” evidence gained from field experience would play a catalytic role in Gu Jiegang’s exploration of the relationship between the appellation Xia ( 夏) and northwest China. Scholars were deeply divided on the origin of the name (Ye 2008b). Wang Guowei insisted that the Xia people had originated in the east and had moved westwards, with the Zhou people being their descendants. Gu’s disciple Yang Xiangkui (1989, 230) would argue in favour of Wang’s view. Historiography in Contemporary China is an example of Gu Jiegang’s exploration of the fourth type of evidence. The third chapter of Part One is devoted to antiquarian studies; In Part Two, the second chapter is about the discovery and philological study of bronze vessels and their engravings. The third chapter in the same section concerns the archaeological excavation and study of ancient artifacts, with the fourth does the

2

Huaxia华夏 refers to a confederation of tribes Hua and Xia, who were the ancestors of the Han ethnic group in China. 3 Manyi 蛮夷 is an old generic term for non-Han peoples, but sometimes also used as a common designation for barbarians.

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same but specifically applied to the northwest. Finally, the fourth chapter of Part Three considers research conducted in the academic study of the history of art. Looking at his progression as a scholar, it is clear that Gu was influenced from an early age by the folk culture, myths, and ancient artifacts of his hometown. As he wrote in the preface of the first volume of his autobiographical book The Debates on Ancient History: Whenever my grandfather saw a plaque, a decorated archway or a bridge on the street or on our way to sweep the grave, he would tell me its history and write a list of what he saw in sequence. Therefore, my perception of the history around me grew, and I began to understand the nature of history: I knew that the things I saw were built up slowly. They did not all exist in ancient times, nor are they purely a product of our own time. This was useful for my whole life. (Gu 1982, 5)

Gu’s youthful memories vividly illustrate his view on the role that objects have in reminding, and informing, one of the past and thus promoting historical awareness. His grandfather embodied the “investigating things to attain knowledge” approach to education, an approach that descended from the ancient means of passing on knowledge—“asking questions about everything at the Ancestral Temple”. The above discussion has revealed that in the development of new approaches to traditional Chinese studies after Wang Guowei, scholars who were more influenced by Western studies tended to separately explore the third and fourth types of evidence and their application in textual criticism. However, conscious theoretical attempts to clearly define the framework by which scholars could apply the third and fourth types of evidence were rare at this time. It was the academic renaissance that occurred after the reform and opening up of China that ushered in a new degree of theoretical consciousness when constructing research methodology. The triple-evidence method and the quadruple-evidence method, for instance, have only been proposed and put into practice in the past half century.

3.3 The Triple-Evidence Method After Wang Guowei presented his concept of the “double-evidence method”, empirical research continued to linger as an ideal to strive for. Attempts to achieve empirical conclusions on the ancient world had been clearly demonstrated in Han studies, and reached its peak by the Qian-Jia School, flourishing during the Qianlong (1736– 1796) and Jiaqing (1796–1820) reigns of the Qing period (1644–1911). It was not until Western academic currents had spread to the East that scholars made it clear that the study of the humanities was not simply empirical, but necessarily interpretive. What the researchers proposed were not hard empirical conclusions, but instead hypotheses. The multiple-evidence method exists to verify academic hypotheses. Indeed, the third type of evidence involves making cross-cultural references and attempts to explain indigenous and local phenomena based on them. In this sense it too is hypothetical. Verifying these hypotheses depends on ascertaining whether there is enough, if any, physical evidence to back it up. If not, one can expect the

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inquiry to be made immediately “is there any tangible physical evidence to evidence this claim?”. Such problems highlight the need to upgrade from the triple-evidence method to the quadruple-evidence method. Before one does so, however, one must consider some of the issues that have arisen with the triple-evidence method in the course of its fifty-year climb to replace the double-evidence method. As a member of a school of thought that doubts traditional approaches to antiquity, and a student of Gu Jiegang, the historian Yang Xiangkui was at the forefront of efforts to promote the triple-evidence method. This could possibly be a result of Gu Jiegang’s own academic development, in which he shifted from doubting ancient history to interpreting it. The book Contemporary Chinese History (1947), published in Gu’s name but in fact written by Fang Shiming and Tong Shuye, broadly made use of what one might call the “triple- or quadruple-evidence method”, but there is no conscious awareness (or at least, indication) that a new research paradigm is being employed by the authors. The concept of the triple-evidence method was developed by scholars half a century later. As Yang Xiankui stated in the preface to Religion and Civilization in the Zong Zhou Period (Revised Edition): The lack of documentation can be bolstered by archaeological materials, and further by ethnological comparison. In the past, the study of ancient Chinese history valued double evidence, i.e., inherited literature combined with archaeology. As a result of the unbalanced social transformation of ethnic groups in China, ethnological materials can make up for what is lacking in the literature and archaeology. Thus, the triple-evidence method replaces the double-evidence method. (Yang 1997, 1)

Whilst calling for the triple-evidence method, Yang failed to fully interpret the method theoretically. Nonetheless, he expressed his belief that ethnological materials are as important in traditional Chinese studies as literature and archaeological materials. Totem theory is a concept in the academic field of ethnology and anthropology. Yang Xiangkui, unlike those who rejected ethnology outright, bravely applied totem theory in a bid to explain genealogy in ancient history (1989). Using Totem theory, Yang observed that the various names of the Yellow Emperor, Gun and Yu for instance, are associated with mythical or sacred animals like snakes, dragons and turtles. He was aware that the evidence one could obtain through an ethnological approach was of great value in interpreting ancient texts, and thus he categorized such materials as a third category of evidence. Sadly, he only mentioned this in his preface and did not expand on the theoretical motivations and implications of this decision. As a result, the concept did not become widely known. However, totem theory remains an enlightening means for scholars to move beyond double-evidence—Rao Zongyi has made great use of it. Rao did not entirely agree with Yang in his use of ethnological and anthropological references as a third evidence type. In a speech given to the Xia Culture Symposium in Hong Kong in the 1980s, Rao instead argued that oracle bone inscriptions were of decisive significance. Many of the ancestors of the Shang kings that are recorded in oracle bone inscriptions likely lived in the Xia Dynasty. The inscriptions are in essence a record of

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the Xia compiled by the people of Shang. This is a more reliable source of information than that contained in inherited literature. In short, Rao (2003a, 16) argued that in order to understand Xia culture, scholars had to incorporate archaeological findings, inherited literature and oracle bone inscription evidence into their research. In other words, they must utilise a “triple-evidence method” that considers oracle bone inscriptions in addition to the sources used in Wang Guowei’s “double-evidence method”. Rao ended his aforementioned speech to the Symposium with the following words: “We are looking forward to the early arrival of this day”. His vision was set firmly on the future, rather than on summarizing the research of those that came before. Nonetheless, he still had reservations about Yang Ziangkui’s view that ethnological materials constituted a third type of evidence. In the postscript to an article written by Rao, he stated: Ethnological material can only help explain the problem and derive a related understanding from comparative reasoning, but it is not positive evidence of a direct record. It can only serve as ‘supporting material’ rather than direct historical material. Ethnological materials and ancient historical materials, from foreign nations but contemporaneous or of a similar role/function may be helpful in explaining certain things. As to whether we regard them as formal evidence, however, warrants a serious discussion. (Rao 2003a, 17).

Rao’s views were consistent. He both praised and criticized Ling Chunsheng’s method of studying the Verse of Chu. He commended the way in which new ideas and materials had been drawn from mythology, ethnology and archaeology to probe into issues regarding the “Nine Songs” (Jiu Ge, 九歌) and “Questions to Heaven” (Tian Wen, 天问). For example, Ling Chunsheng’s analysis of the “Nine Songs” in the context of patterns found on bronze drums was innovative and came to shape scholarship on the matter. Questions do, however, remain on how this method can be applied appropriately. To give an example: one might draw a comparison between the nine gods of Bornean rituals and the “Nine Songs”, for they share a common number, yet in space and time these two things are so remote as to render any such similarities entirely coincidental (the Native Americans also had nine lords of the underworld). Rao concludes that it is reasonable to use such evidence if it comes from the same region (Rao 1982, 109–110), though his own research often crosses vast temporal and spatial boundaries. It seems then that the core of the problem lies not in where the materials were collected, but how one interprets them. Rao Zongyi’s concerns are not without foundation. There are many ethnic groups that have developed similar cultural symbolism across the world. If one does not consider differences of time and space at all and use evidence arbitrarily, one abuses comparative methods. How then can novice scholars be prevented from blindly falling into the trap of comparing X to Y when they bear surface level similarities? Rao’s idea of limiting the use of ethnological evidence to when materials are collected from the same region is one solution. However, it must first be ascertained just how much explanatory potential there is in the ‘circumstantial evidence’ of ethnology. According to Rao, circumstantial evidence is clearly not as effective a tool of analysis as direct evidence such as archaeological findings. As a result of this denial, the

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theoretical significance of circumstantial evidence is hard to ascertain, and is not universally recognized by scholars. In his book Shang Civilization, Chang Kwang-chih suggested that an appropriate theoretical model can make up for the shortcomings of the circumstantial evidence provided by ethnological and anthropological materials. The prolegomenon is titled “Five Doors to Shang”, i.e., traditional historical texts, bronzes, inscriptions, archaeology and theoretical models. Chang Kwang-chih considered these five aspects as the entirety of available materials for the study of Shang civilization. They are not only the gateway to studying to the Shang Dynasty, but also the Xia and Zhou dynasties (Li 1997, 61). He divided modern research into the Xia into two categories according to their theoretical tendencies: “historical data” (represented by Fu Sinian) and “historical view” (represented by Guo Moruo). In this way, he hoped to draw from both and create a “middle-level theoretical model” to reconstruct Chinese history: They are laws because cultural elements covary and discreet elements must be placed together in accordance with definite and specifiable rules. Historians (and archaeologists) employ these rules in reconstructing past societies and restoring their missing elements. (Chang 1980, 64)

At the same time, Chang pointed out that the use of these models was unprecedented because his theoretical field of vision was based on cross-cultural comparisons through the framework of anthropology (ethnology). He quoted two anthropologists in succession to formulate his views: Ethnographical laws of cultural and social behavior can be cross-culturally derived. “In recent years a number of cross-cultural studies have been reported ... studies which seek to establish relationships between certain variables in human existence through cross-cultural comparisons.” The number of cultures involved in the comparison need not be large, but the purpose of is to seek a statistical concomitance of the variables and a satisfactory explanation of this concomitance. (Ibid., 65)

One may thus discern from the general trends in which the methodology of Chinese studies was reformed that the cross-cultural comparison approach of Chang Kwang-chih was inherited from what Hu Shi had advocated, namely a comparative approach to explain Chinese classical texts. However, while the anthropological model of cultural interpretation quoted by Chang was non-existent in Hu Shi’s time as an academic, it did exist during Rao Zongyi’s. Unfortunately, though Rao’s approach utilised global comparisons, it did not take anthropological theory into account. In view of this, great scholars such as Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang and Rao Zongyi were unable to match the competency of Chang Kwang-chih in the study of ancient history, most notably because of their lack of training in anthropology. Traversing the boundaries of academic disciplines remains a key means by which scholars achieve innovation and establish new academic paradigms. Chang’s attitudes towards the study of Shang history are shared by Yu Yingshi, who articulates his views in the article “The Current Stage of Chinese History: Reflections and Prospects”. Yu notes that, compared with the veneration the field once received, modern Chinese studies is on the decline. The reason for this lies in the limitations and resultant negative influences of both the major schools of thought:

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“historical data” and “historical view”. The former presents evidence without explanation, and the latter appropriates abstract foreign models in a flawed way. The way to transcend this lies in overcoming the limitations of both by “drawing nourishment from other relevant disciplines”; it is thus necessary to carry out comparative studies and avoid false analogies. Yu also advocated utilising advances in the social sciences in approaching history (Yu 1982b, 22). He spoke highly of Geertz’s cultural interpretation theory and Merton’s “distance range theory”. This call for an interdisciplinary approach by Yu demonstrates that multiple-evidence methods are growing in popularity. It is instructive to take Chang Kwang-chih’s own research on the genealogy of the Shang kings as an example. Chang proposed that six rules governed the Shang royal succession. This was based on a creative study that involved interpreting inherited literature and archaeological material in light of anthropological and ethnographic considerations (Chang 1982). Recent interpretations regarding the mythology of the xuan (玄) bird in the Shang Dynasty illustrates the role that the quadruple-evidence method plays in reconstructing lost historical information (see Chap. 17). In the preface to Cultural Interpretation of the Book of Poetry (1994), this author discussed the significance of the triple-evidence method and attempted to reveal its vital role in the modern transformation and reform of Chinese studies. Since Rao’s writings were not available in China at that time, there was no mention of his views about the triple-evidence method. Increasingly, it seems necessary to rethink the third type of evidence, ethnology and anthropology, and classify it into two categories: isolated examples and case studies of heterogeneous cultures, or as Rao put it, “circumstantial evidence”, and practices that rise to become general rules of thought or cultural conduct, which are more effective than circumstantial evidence in deductive reasoning. In the words of Hu Shi: “There are many phenomena that cannot be interpreted in isolation; when they are compared with others, one naturally understands them” (1986, 16). What scholars need to pay special attention to is that this feeling of “natural understanding”, making assumptions and connections where they might just seem naturally related, is sometimes just an illusion. Therefore, careful multi-party verification and reference to precedents are needed. These ways of thinking and cultural generalizations that have been reached using the triple-evidence method are not the result of one man’s research, but the accumulative outcome of years of debate between many scholars across countries and time. This is, in itself, consistent with Chang Kwang-chih’s theoretical models and Hu Shi’s view of studying a wide range of references for comparison. The question is how to make reasonable comparisons. Hu Shi suggested that there was a need to study widely so as to avoid making far-fetched comparisons.

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3.4 The Quadruple-Evidence Method The previous section mentioned how pioneers of modern Chinese scholarship attached great importance to the enlightenment brought about by developments in cultural anthropology and how methodology might be adapted in light of them. In this regard, Wen Yiduo made the following suggestion to another alma mater of Tsinghua University in the 1930s on adjusting the disciplinary setting of the liberal arts college: Although literary criticism and research also adopt scientific methods, literature is not science in a strict sense. Nor does it need science. Linguistics is closer to historical archaeology and especially social anthropology than literature. So, making linguistics an independent department can not only promote its own development, but also promote the development of historical archaeology and social anthropology. (Wen 1993, 439)

After more than ten years of research on the triple-evidence method, this author has studied new materials in Chinese archaeology, including a large number of antiquities in various museums and collections, and noticed that these objects often held clues important to understanding the myths and beliefs of the time of their creation. Once again, this author put forward the concept of the quadruple-evidence method. What, then, is the fourth type of evidence? It refers to materials of comparative iconology or iconological anthropology, as the author has written in the preface of The Goddess with a Thousand Faces (Ye 2004), and since explained: The material culture and its iconological materials in the field of comparative culture are the fourth type of evidence in the study of humanities. Hopefully, we can explain why even those images from different contexts with huge space-time differences can help us to study the local literary and ancient cultural truths. In a sense, this kind of effect is similar to the cognitive effect of the phenomenological reduction method of “facing the thing itself”. (Ye 2007a)

The theoretical basis for putting forward the fourth type of evidence is, on the one hand, to echo the trend of anthropological “material culture” research and, on the other hand, to conform to the trend of new historiography in breaking out of the limitations imposed by use of single textual materials and by reconstructing the cultural history of humankind and the lived history of common people beyond the hegemonic discourse of power. In exploring these new materials, researchers need to clarify the following questions: to what extent can the narrative of objects and the narrative of images replace the narrative of words? To what extent can the anthropological and archaeological means of cultural reconstruction of a non-literate society apply to a literate society? When the information given by the fourth type of evidence and the first type of evidence are inconsistent or even contradictory, how should one deal with their respective credibility? (Ye 2008a) What can one reflect on in terms of the debate over comparison and middle-range theory in the development of new archaeology when discussing the interaction or inter-evidentiality among the four types of evidence? In addition, it is instructive to consider which elements in the Chinese tradition of epigraphy and artifact study can be connected with today’s

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archaeology, art history and museum studies, and where one can find precedents to this multi-evidence approach in the inherited literature itself. In tackling the last question, an important clue can be found through the words of the sage. In the following quotation, taken from the Analects, hints at the use of multiple sources of evidence. Drawing on this train of thought, the author will attempt to interpret the bronze mosaic of a turquoise unearthed from the Erlitou archaeological site, and to emphasize its significance in understanding the religion of the Xia Dynasty. When Yan Hui asked Confucius how states come to be formed, the master sage cited three generations of institutions and artifacts as ancient models to be follows by future generations. One would go by the seasons of Xia; as State-coach for the ruler one would use that of Yin, and as head-gear of ceremony wear the Zhou hat. For music one would take as model the Succession Dance. (Analects of Confucius: Duke Ling of Wei) (Waley 1999a, 175)

Confucius’ answer is brief and rich in its cultural connotations. More specifically, “going by the seasons of Xia” refers to inheriting the calendar and the of work and rest systems used in the Xia Dynasty. The “using State-coach of Yin” and “Wearing the Zhou hat” refer to inheriting the ritual traditions indicated by the cultural artifacts of past generations. The “Succession Dance” falls, as people would say today, into the category of oral and intangible cultural heritage. According to the quadrupleevidence method, inherited literature and excavated written materials belong to the first and second type of evidence, oral and intangible cultural heritage as a living culture provides the third type of evidence, and the “State-coach of Yin” and “Zhou hat”, representing material and cultural heritage, form the fourth type of evidence. A hat is an accessory used to dress up the human body, as are the bronze ornaments worn on the chest of the human body in the Erlitou tombs. One is unable to see today what “wearing the Zhou hat” was like in the Confucian era more than two thousand years ago, but fortunately one has had the honour of seeing the iconic ornaments worn by the aristocracy of the Xia Dynasty about four thousand years ago. There is no evidence more credible than this (Ye 2008c). From Confucius’ strong identification with the cultural artifacts he lists, one is even able to glimpse at something resembling a common objective between modern and ancient “archaeologists”, a deep-held interest in investigating the past and carrying knowledge of the past forwards. In the words of Matthew Johnson (2010, 12): “Most archaeologists fall in love with the subject by getting ‘hooked on things’”. The fourth type of evidence is thus not only part of a research method, but is also of great personal interest to many scholars. Scholars like Wu Dalai, Liu Huan and Luo Zhenyu, who preferred the second type of evidence (oracle bone inscriptions), were originally infatuated with antiques. Luo Zhenyu was the first to pay attention to the second type of evidence, and was also among the earliest to notice the value of the fourth type of evidence in approaching ancient history. Unfortunately, when he was living in exile in Japan, he was forced to sell his 20-year collection of ancient jades to Japanese collectors, and his plan to study ancient jades following Wu Dalai was aborted. Wang Guowei, his

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disciple and friend, was able to propose the double-evidence method but failed to put forward the fourth type of evidence. Later, archaeology and anthropology were flourishing, and the possibility of exploring lost histories through cultural relics became a reality. Fu Sinian and Hu Shi emphasized new historical materials and the excavation of antiquities. Li Ji, who received a doctoral degree from the Department of Anthropology at Harvard and was engaged in archaeological excavations after returning to China, proposed ideas that went beyond the double-evidence method by summarizing seven types of materials: (1). materials related to human primitiveness; (2). scientific materials related to the study of the topography of East Asia; (3). human cultural relics unearthed by archaeological methods; (4). materials of physical anthropology; (5). materials in the literate era unearthed by archaeological methods in a narrow sense; (6). ethnographic materials/evidence; and (7). historical records handed down from pre-Qin dynasties. Bringing in an element of cultural comparison that borrowed from his anthropological training, Li Ji also emphasized that only by examining the historical background of all humankind can China’s history show its full glory (2000, 347–365). Li Ji’s theory, with its seven types of materials, was difficult to popularize. The “five doors” advocated by Chang Kwang-chih were a simplification of Li Ji’s methodology, and can be further simplified into four “doors”. The specific method utilised involved breaking down its second approach, “bronze”. Bronze artifacts with inscriptions are classified as the second type of evidence and those without inscriptions fall into the category of the fourth type of evidence. In this way, there are four types remaining, which essentially correspond to the quadruple-evidence method. Chang’s study of ancient myths and legends involves a multi-perspective integration of ancient historiography, mythology and art history. His explanation of the animals seen in the fine arts of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties represented a path different from tradition (1982, 420–421). He applied the popular theory of shamanism in explaining the images and saw them as a medium for shaman to communicate with heaven, earth and deities. The nature of his discussion goes beyond the scope of art history and is instead an example of mythological history studied through images. In 1994, at the International Symposium on the Integration of Chinese Archaeology and History Studies held in Taiwan, Chang Kwang-chih submitted his thesis “A Proposal for a New Historical Structure of Pre-Qin China”, in which he no longer emphasized the “five doors” approach and returned to his teacher Li Ji’s point of view, advocating multidisciplinary approaches by combining natural sciences with humanities. He maintained that pre-Qin history experts must be educated and trained in a specialized department of pre-Qin history in China. They cannot be fully trained in the departments of history, anthropology or archaeology in universities across the Taiwan Strait (Chang 1997, 11). This author believes that before the Department of Pre-Qin Studies is established, a more practical solution would be to encourage interdisciplinary learning and the restructuring of knowledge instead of relying on a single discipline such as literature, history, philosophy, archaeology or anthropology. Considering the status quo in academia, the triple-evidence and quadruple-evidence methods are easier to understand and apply not only in the study of pre-Qin history, but the humanities in

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general. For example, changes in societal thoughts and beliefs about immortals were studied by means of analysing bronze mirrors of the Han Dynasty (Zhang 1981). The discovery of the images of Tang monks’ pilgrimage in murals of Xixia in Yulin grottoes, Dunhuang, led to a “Westward move” in the study of Journey to the West (Xi You Ji, 西游记). The wider application of the quadruple-evidence method will see an immediate rise of innovation within the field of Chinese studies. In determining the exact nature of various types of evidence, what needs to be clarified is the nature of archaeological materials. If it is written, it shall be regarded as the second type of evidence; if there is no text, it shall be the fourth type of evidence. If those materials are from foreign regions, which are used to interpret similar cultural phenomena, they cannot be counted as the second or the fourth type of evidence. Because of their cross-cultural nature, they can only be seen as ethnographic materials. That is to say, they can be seen as the third type of evidence obtained from field investigations. In other words, the third type of evidence provides circumstantial evidence for analysis and reasoning. Inferences made based on this type of evidence are hard to prove, and tend to function more as interpretive assumptions. Take the bronze figure unearthed from the Jinsha site (Fig. 3.1) as an example. Such artifacts, in allowing one to construct narratives through image and object, belong to the fourth type of evidence. As can be seen in the peculiar shape of the figure, there is a so-called “crown” ornament that sits high above the head. With reference to the third type of evidence provided by ethnology, one may thus interpret the crown as follows. The fact the Tibetan Gesar performers must wear a high hat with feathers before singing helps one to speculate that the hat on the sculpture is a ritual prop, its function lies in the distinction between the everyday and the extraordinary, the profane and the sacred. In other words, a long, tall hat is a sacred symbol. The “spirit” or “inspiration” given by deities comes to the wearer’s body through the symbolic “heavenly ladder” or mysterious passage above his head, so that he might be the exclusive possessor of the gods’ power and the energy of singing. The towering crown or feathers above the figure’s head, in light of the ethnographic analysis above, have been used as evidence to cast the figure of the Jinsha site as a medium, used communicate with the deities. In this way, silent unearthed cultural relics can be restored to the cultural context in which they were created. According to the singers of the Epic of King Gesar, without the two props of hat and cane, it is impossible to communicate with the deities and sing an epic poem. In this way, one can decipher the meaning behind the fourth type of evidence (archaeological objects) by referring to the third type of evidence (ethnographic fieldwork materials), and the two taken together can flesh out the wider cultural context that is then used for verifying, examining and re-understanding the first type of evidence (inherited literature). This is indeed a research method that integrates multi-disciplinary knowledge, and constitutes a reform in research thinking. On occasion, evidence taken from foreign cultures might have a greater significance if it can be demonstrated that it is not isolated within a single group or region, but instead has a degree of universality about it. In other words, that the practice or material in question can be seen across numerous cultures over a wide-ranging

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Fig. 3.1 A bronze figurine displayed at the Jinsha Site Museum

area. In such cases, comparisons can act as a frame of reference for analysing and interpreting the specificities of a local occurrence of that same phenomenon. To conclude this section, one may reorder the functions of the four types of evidence and illustrate them according to the law of evidence (i.e. the legal definition of each form of evidence, were it brought before a court of law) and the five categories of cultural evidence in anthropology or semiotics (Table 3.1). Table 3.1 Correlations between types of evidence among disciplines Anthropological/semiotic categorization

Categorization under the quadruple-evidence method

Legal definition

Textual

First/second type

Documentary evidence

Oral

Third type

Human testimony

Imagery

Fourth type

Physical evidence

Physical objects

Fourth type

Physical evidence

Ritual materials

Third/fourth type

Human testimony/physical evidence

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3.5 Between Scientific Evidence and Interpretations Rooted in the Humanities This section discusses the criticisms and controversies that have been raised, on both a theoretical and practical level, about the triple- and quadruple-evidence methods. This section will in turn argue that the purpose of the multiple-evidence approaches is to strike a balance between hard evidence and interpretation, to bridge the gaping schism that lies between the sciences and the humanities. It is the interaction between evidence and interpretation, between proof and explanation, that may, after extensive discussion and gradual improvement, pave the way to an ideal research methodology. Tang Qicui (2006), building on the emergence and general acceptance of the four types of evidence, sought to explore the roots and significance of “the science of evidence” from an epistemological standpoint. The amount of “evidence” required to satisfactorily demonstrate a point, the reliability of sources, and the degree to which evidence is deemed to be relevant all depend on peoples’ agreement on the validity of that evidence, and consequently the processes by which one authenticates evidence. The development of the quadruple-evidence method not only reflects the way in which types of evidence are recognized, highlighted and the way in which they strengthen one another, but also that academics were beginning to question the “nature” of evidence itself, and how one might use different types of evidence in tandem to interpret the ancient world, and reconstruct lost cultural memory, in a more holistic manner. In order to better grasp and understand new forms of evidence, scholars engaged in the humanities must cultivate a desire to learn from the other academic disciplines. If they do not, they might be inclined to turn a blind eye to new evidence. Such selfcultivation by academics is eminently achievable: Gu Jiegang, for instance, conducted much field work to enhance the knowledge he had attained from books, and in the process of seeking to “prove the ancient history” used popular songs, folk beliefs and archaeological evidence (1982, 214). From what he witnessed in his field studies, he proposed that the pickers in The Book of Poetry were not necessarily all women as had previously been thought. Though he did employ the terminology of the multipleevidence methods in his work, it is clear that he was using an early form of the triple-evidence method in re-interpreting the classics. Here is another example. The Japanese anthropologist Ryuzo Torii discovered a prehistoric tapering stone axe when conducting research on the aboriginal cultures of Taiwan’s mountainous region in 1900. Wishing to understand how the axe would have been used at the time of its creation, he gave it to the local people, the Bunun, who quickly tied it to a branch with canes and fashioned it into a light and effective tool. Torii was satisfied with the results of his experiment. From this, we can better understand the lives of Taiwanese mountain peoples in the Stone Age, and the ways in which they fashioned and used stone tools. Here, I think of the stone axes unearthed in rural Japan. There are many different opinions about the use of these stone axes. The Bunun’s binding method may suggest that Japanese stone axes were also used in this way. (Torii 1996, 321)

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Looking at this using the framework of the quadruple-evidence method, one can see that Torii has made great use of the third type of evidence in interpreting materials that belong to the fourth type: the Bunun know how to use prehistoric stone axes, and this in turn might shed light on how similar axes were used in prehistoric Japan. Here, the ethnological evidence has a clear significance, and calls one to question whether such evidence must always be “circumstantial”. Whilst the experiment itself took place over 100 years ago, it is an inspiring example of the way in which one might use different forms of evidence to complement one another today. Wang Binghua, director of the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, also utilised ethnological evidence in explaining unearthed cultural relics. For example, he discussed the burial custom of the Gumugou Culture in the lower reaches of the Peacock River in Xinjiang, who was about 4000 years ago. The deceased was buried and wrapped naked in wool cloth or blankets. These are plain woven fabrics made of cashmere or wool. The maximum width of the blanket is 1.8 meters, and the shortest is about 1 meter. The wool is not very fine. The number of warp and weft yarns per square centimetre is usually 6, with or without tassels on the edge. Wool fabric of this width is obviously woven by a relatively primitive vertical machine. When we were working in some remote villages in the Tarim Basin and Tashkurgan, we saw these vertical machines, and farmers still used them to weave carpets or woollen cloth. (Wang 2009, 325)

Can Wang Binghua’s comparison bridge the 4000-year chronological divide that separates the modern inhabitants of the region with their ancestors of the Gumugou Culture in Xinjiang, such that one can still learn something of the production methods of the latter? One can assume that the life of farmers in the Tarim Basin today is, to at least a small degree, a continuation of those that lived 4000 years ago. Evidence from other sources that support this assumption will enhance the comparison greatly. The work of both Torii Ryuzo and Wang Binghua point towards the emergence of a new interdisciplinary approach—ethnoarchaeology, a combination of archaeology and anthropological ethnography that gained traction in the late twentieth century. The archaeologist Su Bingqi cited Fu Sinian when discussing the difficult process of detaching archaeological evidence from the framework of traditional historiography. This effectively meant getting rid of the shackles that were historical documents and not rigidly adhering to them in interpreting evidence. Archaeological materials are incredibly important when compiling an official history (Su 1999, 6). In this sense, the second and fourth types of evidence are superior to the first, and allow scholars to delve into largely unknown eras of ancient history without being biased towards inherited literature. Fu Sinian, who himself led a large excavation team, made a famous assertion that historiography is, in essence, an assemblage of historical data. He encouraged scholars of history and art to find new materials and called for academics to broaden the scope of their research. As he stated: “Where a discipline expands the material it studies, it progresses. If not, it regresses” (1996, 177). Fu was mistaken in equating methodology with the scope of materials being studied, though his intention to learn from Western social sciences and utilise new materials is understandable. Fu Sinian sharply criticised the conservative attitude of Zhang Binglin, the “great authority” of the national heritage school at that time for refusing to use new materials

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(1996, 176). In the past 80 years, the new materials and methods of Chinese studies advocated by Fu have become more relevant than before, especially archaeology, folklore and ethnology. However, issues remain regarding how these new materials can best be utilised together to yield new results, the laying out of a clear theoretical framework for new research methods, and how one can make full use of the methods one has inherited to create changes that have a lasting impact on the field into the future. Historical retrogression, as criticized by Fu, due to the limitation of academic methods and scope of materials used is still not uncommon today. In line with recent international academic trends, such as the increased prevalence of “material culture” (Buchli 2004) in cultural anthropology, the author proposes a “quadruple-evidence method”, having had experience practicing the triple-evidence method. It is hoped that the importance of materials other than written texts, mainly physical objects and images, will be highlighted. It can be seen that without Wang Guowei and Fu Sinian’s attention to the second type of evidence and archaeology, there would be no third or fourth types of evidence. The purchase of oracle bones by Wang Yirong and Wang Guowei’s use of the bones in his study of the Shang history greatly boosted the reputation of oracle bones from the Yin Ruins. While academics hesitated and questioned the credibility of these so-called new materials coming from Chinese medicine shops, grave robbers and antique dealers flocked to the site, damaging the ruins. Fu Sinian organized a team of professionals from the Institute of History and Language to conduct excavations 15 times from 1928 to 1937, rescuing the cultural heritage of the Shang Dynasty. The decoding of inscriptions that lay unseen for 3000 years were the greatest stimulus to the development of Chinese studies in the twentieth century. One of Fu Sinian’s disciples, the historian He Ziquan, has called Fu Sinian the greatest hero in the history of modern Chinese archaeology. His work regarding the oracle bones was his greatest contribution to China’s academic development. When Fu Sinian proposed that the modern study of history was in essence the study of historical data, new forms of evidence were subsequently thrust into the spotlight. Of course, such an assertion implies that the only thing that matters in the pursuit of history is hard evidence. Fu emphasised the importance of historical data in order to guard against the tendency of academics to arbitrarily conduct research through the framework of preconceived theories. Hi disciple, He Ziquan, commented in the preface to Fu’s book Nation and Ancient Chinese History (2005, 24) that different people have different explanations for the same set of materials/evidence. He nonetheless maintained that Fu’s interpretations of these materials were all of the highest calibre, displaying “originality” and containing “breakthroughs” in the field. In addition, Fu Sinian once said that where there is a large gap between two remote facts, making an inference based on them both is a dangerous thing (1996, 181). He Ziquan amended and rephrased it when he said, “There are countless connections between things. Sometimes the connection cannot be seen, but it does exist. The inference is not dangerous but instead reveals the true meaning of things. As far as historians are concerned, Chen Yinke was good at connecting materials that had no apparent connection and at solving a number of important historical problems. Even Fu Sinian was brilliant in this regard. In his writings, he often achieved a better

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understanding of a topic by linking two seemingly remote facts, or sometimes even more, by making inferences” (Fu 2005, 25). Falling into the trap of making assumptive conclusions unsupported by fact is common, especially among newcomers to the field. Through trial and error, engaging in numerous comparisons that ultimately yielded no results, the comparative literature community has started to warn beginners about the dangers of unfounded comparisons in a bid to stop researchers letting their assumptions carry forward their work. All possible connections between two things must be considered, unclouded by prejudice or assumption, before a comparison can be made. Once these have been established, researchers can decide if there is enough evidence to make a hypothesis. After putting forward one, it must be examined and verified using the quadrupleevidence method, which can sometimes bring unexpected results. Not every topic can be interpreted using all four types of evidence, for example, the origin of the Yellow Emperor’s clan name, Youxiong (Ye 2007a). When tackling a specific question, researchers much weigh up which evidence is relevant. One way in which the quadruple-evidence method might be considered a pioneer is in its in-depth exploration of “inter-evidentiality”. Among recently discovered archaeological materials there were a large number of images of bear and owl deities, a religious tradition that was existed in the Xia and Shang Dynasties but gradually faded out over the course of the Western Zhou Dynasty. In order to demonstrate the decline of bear, dragon, owl and phoenix worship, one must connect and utilise numerous pieces of evidence available to us. Archaeological findings clearly demonstrate that owl worship preceded phoenix worship. Third-type evidence, ethnological, can help one better understand the basis of owl worship—the Shao Clan4 had an owl god that oversaw female pregnancy. Turning to first-type evidence, inherited literature, it can be learned that “the xuan bird does not arrive, so the woman cannot get pregnant” from The Remaining Zhou Documents (Yi Zhou Shu, 逸周书). One can interpret the xuan bird, the ancestral god, to be an owl in Yin-Shang totem myths. Finally, one looks to the fourth type of evidence—a group of funerary objects with exquisite owl images unearthed from the high-ranking tombs of the Yin-Shang Dynasties (the marble owl unearthed from the Royal Tomb 1001 at the Yin Ruins, the bronze owl statue unearthed from the Tomb of Fu Hao, etc.). It is clear that a tradition of owl worship had been well-established long before the creation and popularisation of the Phoenix Singing on Mount Qu myth from the Western Zhou Dynasty. Taking a wider view of Eurasian prehistoric owl worship, one can see that a large number of cultures had an owl deity, and it was usually connected with the cycle of death and rebirth. The owl, as the incarnation of a goddess, came to symbolise the transformation of yin and yang, death and birth, because it emerges at night. Various jade and ceramic owls created by the Neolithic societies of China are a testament to the degree to which owl goddess myths were common in the vast area ranging from the Liao River Basin in the north to the Yangtze River Basin in the south in the preliterate age. By the Han Dynasty, when writing was flourishing and patriarchal structures had come to dominate society, the worship of owl goddesses vanished in 4

The Shao Clan is the earliest clan that lived in the Sun Moon Lake region.

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China. The sacred value of the owl had disappeared. Jia Yi’s poem, “On the Owl” has thus been culturally misunderstood. His poetry represents a turning point—the tradition of loathing owls in literature had emerged once again. If the cultural tradition of Chinese characters is regarded as the small tradition, then that of the pre-Chinese character era is to be regarded as the big tradition. Scholars have often failed to grasp the cultural tradition of the preliterate age on account of a lack of archaeological evidence. As a result, in interpreting the ancient poem “On the Owl”, academics tended to view it through the cultural paradigm of the “small tradition” of Chinese characters, failing to discern the large tradition of owl worship that preceded it. The example employed here is intended to illustrate the way in which the four types of evidence can mutually support one another, allowing one to re-create lost historical contexts and embark on a “multi-dimensional interpretation of ancient China”. The theoretical framework underpinning the “big” and “small” traditions, as well as their subdivisions, will be explained further in Chap. 4. Some scholars, such as Duan Congxue, Meng Hua, Dai Yunhong, and Lin Keji, have been critical of the triple- and quadruple-evidence methods. Duan (2010) saw the triple-evidence method advocated by contemporary scholars as following the academic practice of Wen Yiduo and Guo Moruo and recognised that it created an innovative paradigm for the study of ancient Chinese classics and culture from a cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspective. However, Duan also believed that the effectiveness of the triple-evidence method lies in enhancing understanding and explanation, not scientific verification. Meng Hua divided evidence into three types: language, text and image, approaching the subject through a semiotic lens. He claimed (2018) that “strictly speaking, there is no essential difference between the third and fourth types of evidence proposed by Ye Shuxian. In fact, they include all symbolic forms other than traditional historical texts: myths, folk customs, rituals, objects, images, etc. These symbols constitute another means of cultural memory as important as written historical texts”. Lin Keji (2010) has commented that while Meng Hua’s claim is acceptable, it is not conducive to the practical procedures of academic research since myths, folk customs and rituals belong to the third type of evidence and they exist through oral tradition and the performance of cultural events. Conversely, physical objects and images can be obtained through field work. It is not appropriate, therefore, to mix or conflate the two. Meng Hua’s contribution to the debate on the nature and use of evidence is in his advocacy of “inter-evidentiality”, the concept that evidence sheds light not only on the immediate context in which it was created or existed, but is related to and interacts with other forms of evidence to yield a greater result (2009, 9). Meng Hua’s “inter-evidentiality” has its roots in semiotics and structuralism. He emphasizes the meaning of a symbol is not self-evident, but can be understood only through study of its relationship with other symbols. It is instructive to apply this principle when dealing with the inter-evidential nature of multiple evidence types. What requires further consideration and discussion, however, is whether the third and fourth types of evidence are empirical or explanatory. In the author’s earlier research, no strict distinction was made between terms such as “use of evidence”

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and “verification”. At the time, the quadruple-evidence method had not yet been formulated. Now it is necessary to make a distinction between the third and fourth types of evidence—the main function of the third type of evidence is to allow for a more nuanced and informed cultural interpretation. The function of the fourth type of evidence, on the other hand, is more empirical. There is however a degree of inter-evidentiality about the two forms of evidence. As was the case in the research of Ryuzo Torii and Wang Binghua, the third type of evidence can be used to better understand the meaning and purpose of fourth-type evidence. Lin Keji (2010) believed that the differences between images and written texts are more fundamental than their surface-level distinctions. Literate civilizations were mainly formed in the context of rampant male chauvinism and patriarchal structures. The abstract nature of writing and the gender prejudices that dominated the age in which it first flourished have led to a huge shield being erected that stands between modern scholars and the cultural achievements of preliterate societies. As a result, one has long failed to detect the subtle but fascinating evolution of human culture from the Palaeolithic era (sometimes even earlier) through to the advent of literate societies. In this sense, the task of the modern scholar of humanities is to restore a truthful understanding of the history of human culture. In studying modern civilizations, by cutting through the distortions of ideologies and abstractions of writings, one can discover civilizational “archetypes”. In this regard, “images” can show the “silent beauty” of cultures. No one can match the masters of traditional Chinese studies in terms of their profound knowledge pool and memory, but it may be argued that they make learning lifeless, in a sense, because of their obsession with written texts. Over time, mythologies change and adapt in parallel to social developments. By the time they were written into texts, they have often been so distorted and edited that they hardly resemble the original myth. In discovering the truth behind ancient myths, images are a powerful tool. This section has presented a number of critical viewpoints that have emerged in recent years regarding the multiple-evidence methods. These objections should be understood as a necessary part of the “trial and error” stage the method must go through, it still being in its infancy as an approach. In the nineties, the author advocated the triple-evidence method, hoping to demonstrate how an anthropological approach to the study of non-literate societies is able to inform, in a methodological sense, the study of the literate Huaxia civilization. The issue of methodology is a complicated one, involving many different disciplines and insight from Chinese and Western cultures both ancient and modern. Fortunately, there exists a research field that walks the line between anthropology and literature that is instrumental in exploring the origins of Chinese civilization, that field being mythological research.

3.6 Mythology and the Multiple-Evidence Method This section illustrates how one might apply the triple and quadruple-evidence methods in conducting mythological empirical research. It will also demonstrate

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how to achieve mediation and balance between evidence and interpretation. As a first case study, this author will attempt to interpret the “frogman-sun” schema found on Xindian pottery by utilising ethnographic archaeology (Ye 2008d). In 2004 a report compiled by the Qinghai Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, titled Hetao Village Minhe County, reported over 400 archaeological objects that were discovered in the Xindian tombs, constructed around 1000 BC along the upper reaches of the Yellow River valley and its tributaries the Huang and Tao rivers. The semi-abstract frogman image is commonly found on pottery from the period, and shows both change and continuity from the frogman imagery painted by the Majiayao culture (c. 3300–2000 BC). The frogman depicted in the image below, on the M211 tomb urn, whilst retaining a body similar in shape to those often found on Machang-phase pottery, has become more abstract in its form. The pottery decoration is divided into upper and lower spaces. The upper neck of the utensil was painted with four suns opposite to two frogmen, their heads facing upwards in the lower part. Is this image purely decorative, or does it have a symbolic meaning? The clear symmetry of the picture and strict composition reveal this pattern is well-designed. Why did the ancestors of the Xindian culture add conspicuous sun symbols to the frogman models of Banshan and Machang phases of the Majiayao Culture that had been passed on for hundreds of years? Is there a mythological factor at play here? Frogs and toads are commonly accepted to have been important mythological symbols connected with the moon. Does then the placement of the frogmen opposite suns on the urn reflect an early incarnation of the concept of yin and yang in Xindian culture? It is difficult to ascertain an answer to this question in ancient Chinese literature as the Xindian culture was nonliterate. Reference can, however, be made to the myths told by some Chinese ethnic minorities about the appearance and disappearance of the sun and moon. In the myths of the Zhuang people in Guangxi, the frog is a messenger of the gods. Baeuqloegdoz, the god of ancestors, helped human beings to thwart a plot by the thunder god to stop the growth of the human population by culling the elderly. He taught humans how to make drums from horse skin, which the humans subsequently used to defeat the thunder god, drowning out his drums with their own. The thunder god sent his son, a frog, to investigate what had happened. The frog, however, felt sympathy for the humans and taught them to make a large bronze drum, decorated with six frogs, that was far louder than his father’s drums. The thunder god was forced to abandon his murderous plans. Worship of the frog is also seasonal, with the Zhuang Frog Festival, in which people pray to the frogs for peace, harmony and a good harvest, taking place in the spring of every year. Since ancient times, the frog has remained a sacred creature in the manner of Zhuang mythology to numerous peoples. In folklore, some believe the frog to have supernatural powers than can even directly interfere with changes in celestial bodies. A creation myth of the Tujia ethnic group is an example of this: When Zhang Guolao started to create the sky, the earth was flooded. As a result, Zhang made 24 suns to shine over the earth day and night. This angered the frog. It jumped on the last mulberry tree and ate 22 of the suns. Just as it was about to devour the remaining two, it

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was seen by Guanyin Bodhisattva. Guanyin was so angry that she picked up a stick to whip the mulberry tree. Therefore, today the mulberry tree is very short and twisted. The frog could no longer swallow the suns. Because the suns were girls, they said to Guanyin, “It’s so embarrassing that everyone looks at us in the daytime.” Guanyin gave them five sewing needles and said, “If anyone wants to see you, use a needle to prick them.” Thus, two suns stayed. The one that comes out during the day is called the sun and the other that comes out at night is called the moon. (Momota 2005, 130)

The above non-Han myths can be summed up in two key points: The frog is the son of the thunder god. (Fogs or toads = gods). The frog eats the sun. (Frogs or toads = opposites of the sun).

In mythology, the opposite of the sun is often the lunar or the moon, and here the frog eating the sun suggests its association with the moon. The rising sun and the glowing moon are also symbolic of resurrection in mythological thinking. Frogs, as creatures that are mythologically related to water (rain) and the moon, are considered to be yin. This story is an interpretation of the cosmic cycle of the yin and yang. What the myth reveals is why there are eternal natural phenomena such as the cycle of sunrise and sunset, alternating day and night, darkness and light. Given this, the pattern of suns opposite frogmen on unearthed pottery of the Xindian Culture can be seen to connote the rhythm of the cosmos. The Tujia myth demonstrates the frog’s function in creating the cosmic status quo. Here, frogs bear the same role as the goddess Nüwa in Han mythology. Tujia mythology thus suggests a connection between frogs and toads and the broader theme of creation. In the 1970s, toad images found on pottery excavated from a Yangshao cultural site in Jiangzhai, Lintong, Shaanxi Province, led to a new interpretation of Nüwa’s origins in relation to frog mythology: Nüwa (女娲) is a female frog (娲 is a homophone to蛙 which literally means frog). Linguistically, according to the phonetic loan rules of ancient Chinese characters, there is merit to this case (Ye 2004). The question that remains to be explored, however, is why the people of the Stone Age worshipped frogs. Chevalier and Gheerbrant have provided a convincing explanation of the symbolic origins of the frog: Frogs have many symbolic meanings, the most important of which is related to the water and the natural environment in which it lives. In ancient China, people used or imitated frogs to seek rain. The frog’s image appears on the bronze drums, because the drums remind one of thunder and lightning. Frogs or toads, like the water, are associated with the lunar yin. It is believed that quails (yang) become aquatic frogs (yin) during the vernal equinox and the autumn equinox. They are then transformed back to quails in accordance with the basic regular movements of nature. In India, “Giant Frog” carries the entire universe, a symbol of chaotic, undifferentiated matter. Therefore, people sometimes refer to the mandala of sixtyfour squares as a frog. It is said that the mandala is the remains of a defeated Asura. In western countries, it was once regarded as a symbol of the resurrection due to the metamorphosis of frogs. (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 731)

A symbolic parallel can be found in the Tibetan Buddhist concept of a frog-shaped cosmos in the Naxi Ba-geq-zeeq. Ancient Sanskrit documents provide the earliest evidence that in Vedic poems, frogs are a symbol of the land that is conceived by the spring rain. The chorus of the frogs was understood to thank heaven for bringing

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Fig. 3.2 A gold frog unearthed from the Jinsha site in Chengdu

fruit and wealth to the earth. The frogs are both singers in the chorus and priests of Mother Earth herself. The sudden arrival of their “singing” is a signal that nature has awoken following the quiet and sluggish winter and dry season (ibid., 731–732). Through carefully engaging in the comparative study of mythology, one can see that frogs and toads are understood to be representative of seasonal cycles. This is key to understanding their near-universal divinity in the prehistoric age. The regular appearance of certain types of animals indicated the changing of the seasons, and further indicates that these cultures followed cycles of seasonal agricultural production. All of this evidence taken together helps paint a conceptual background in which the suns and frogmen would have been painted on the pottery unearthed in Qinghai. The mythical connotations of frog gods and frogmen in the prehistoric cultures of various places can be explained. Gimbutas pointed out (2001, 227) “The main epiphany of Ragana in the function of death and regeneration is the toad (see below), but she often takes the shape of a fish, snake, hedgehog, sow, mare, dog, magpie, swallow, quail, moth, or butterfly. Early in the spring, Ragana appears in brooks or lakes as a beautiful nude woman, combing her golden hair”. The goddess Ragana, the god of death and regeneration, mainly takes the shape of a toad, though it can also turn into other animals. The enormous magic power she possesses can cause solar eclipses, which corresponds with the ancient Chinese myths about the frog that eats the suns. Whilst the two myths differ in their narratives, in comparing them it can be seen that they share a common symbolism. Once again, the third and fourth types of evidence are demonstrated to work in tandem, strengthening one another (Fig. 3.2). The second case study this section will explore concerns the jade rabbit. Chang’e flying to the moon and the jade rabbit grinding medicine are household myths in modern China. Gao Lifen (2011), taking Han stone reliefs as his primary evidence, discussed two images of the moon rabbit. In one, the rabbit is drawn running within a larger image of the moon, representing its relationship with the celestial body and with yin. In the other, the rabbit is seen grinding medicine, often in pictures of the Queen Mother of the West or Wonderland. These two depictions likely originated separately, each representing different symbolic functions and meanings. As the myths were disseminated over time, however, they became mixed as myths borrowed from one another, and soon a synthesised image of the rabbit grinding medicine on the moon became a popular and established myth in China. It became an accepted part of Chinese mythology about the moon.

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The successful excavation and analysis of a large number of archaeological relics across various parts of China have confirmed many of the speculations made across numerous disciplines in the past, and at the same time have been immensely helpful in the study of lost and scattered sayings. Many of the silk paintings, murals, stone reliefs and other materials discovered in the tombs of the Han Dynasty bear representations of Chinese classical mythology: the Queen Mother of the West, Fuxi, Nüwa, Hou Yi shooting the moon and Chang’e flying to the moon. These images are informative and sometimes they apparently refer to myths not described in classical literature. The stories depicted on Han stone reliefs were no doubt well-known at the time of their creation, and embodied popular ideas of the time. In recent years, many researchers have proposed a method of studying the history of thought using “image literature” and “archaeological relics” as supplementary data to written records (Ge 2002). In depicting information and events that are absent in the inherited literature, Han stone reliefs have a huge role to play in future studies of ancient Chinese mythology. Gao Lifen (2011) has pointed out that the moon rabbit should have been passed down as a running rabbit, rather than one that grinds medicines. At present, the earliest saying about “the moon rabbit” can be traced to Qu Yuan’s poem “Questions to Heaven”, written during the Warring States Period: What virtue has the Minor Light? Which makes it wax after its wane? What’s the use to have a rabbit, In th’belly for it to sustain? (Qu 2006, 61, slightly modified.)

Ji Xianlin once argued that the Chinese myth of the “rabbit on the moon” was influenced by the Indian tale of a similar moon rabbit. However, this speculation is disputed by the appearance of rabbits and toads in the upper left crescent on some artifacts unearthed in recent years, such as the silk paintings unearthed from the No.1 and No.3 Mawangdui Han tombs of the Western Han Dynasty, Hunan Province, and the No.9 Jinqueshan Tomb in Linyi, Shandong Province. Therefore, the rabbit has been symbolically linked with the moon from at least the Western Han Dynasty, perhaps earlier. That being said, it is noteworthy that the rabbits seen on the crescent moon of these silk paintings are only ordinary rabbits, and are not shown grinding medicine. Similarly, images of running rabbits are common to many tomb murals and stone reliefs of the early Han Dynasty. A toad and a running rabbit are depicted on a full moon in the hand of Nüwa on the roof ridge frescoes in the Qianjintou tomb dating back to the mid-Western Han Dynasty. Depictions of the rabbit grinding medicine begin to appear on stone reliefs from the mid-Eastern Han Dynasty. For example, a rabbit holding a pestle is depicted on Han Dynasty stones unearthed in Huaibei, Anhui Province. In addition to this, four other depictions of rabbits and toads grinding medicine on stones dating back to the Eastern Han have been found in Shicun Village, Huaibei City. The latter have been harder to date precisely, thus it is hard to determine exactly when the medicine grinding jade rabbit emerged as a common motif. There are, however, further clues contained on an Eastern Han cemetery capping stone from the Anqiu Han tomb in Shandong. In this relief, jade rabbits and toads are again depicted grinding medicine with a pestle. It can be deduced that by the late-Eastern Han, the medicine grinding

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jade rabbit had replaced the running rabbit as the symbol of the moon. Over the course of the Wei, Jin and Song dynasties, this new rabbit imagery would become an increasingly popular motif in funeral art. The above two case studies demonstrate how the considered application of multiple-evidence methods represent a ground-breaking development in the study of Chinese and foreign mythology. From the advent of the twentieth century, the study of mythology has risen to becoming a prominent academic discipline. It has opened the door to new materials and methodologies that can, and this author hopes will, play a vital role in the study of the origins of Chinese civilization.

Chapter 4

The Big Tradition of Chinese Culture: Reconstructing Cultural Concepts with the Quadruple-Evidence Method

4.1 Defining the “Big Tradition” and the “Small Tradition” Some 2500 years ago, Confucius divided society into two groups, stating the following: “Only the wise above and the foolish below do not change” (Liu 1990, 679). During a period of criticism of Confucius and Mencius in the 1970s, Confucius’ remark was interpreted as a defence of the legality of slavery. “The wise above” was understood to refer to slave owners, while “the foolish below” referred to slaves. In philosophy, this remark is taken as an example of idealist apriorism. Today, “the wise above” might be interpreted more specifically as intellectual members of the ruling class, while “the foolish below” as the ruled civilian population. In this context “do not change” means that Confucius recognized that the societal structures he witnessed were defined by binary opposition, and will never change. In 1956, Robert Redfield, an American anthropologist, proposed a pair of concepts that were similar to “the wise above and the foolish below”—the great tradition and the little tradition (1956, 70). Redfield hoped to use this pair of concepts to effectively distinguish the organizational structure of civilized society from primitive or tribal society. The so-called “great tradition” refers to the written cultural tradition that is unique to civilized societies or developed states and is controlled by an urban intellectual class. The little tradition, meanwhile, refers to the common people’s cultural tradition that is primarily maintained by villagers through oral transmission. Redfield believed that both great and little traditions can be found in all civilized societies. However, primitive or tribal societies generally have only little traditions and no great traditions. In essence, Redfield’s concept of civilization is based on whether or not there was a written culture. Let us begin with a recognition, long present in discussions of civilizations, of the difference between a great tradition and a little tradition. (This pair of phrases is here chosen from among others, including “high culture” and “low culture,” “folk and classic cultures,” or “popular and learned traditions.” I shall also use “hierarchic and lay culture.”) In a civilization there is a great tradition of the reflective few, and there is a little tradition of the largely unreflective © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_4

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4 The Big Tradition of Chinese Culture: Reconstructing … many. The great tradition is cultivated in schools or temples; the little tradition works itself out and keeps itself going in the lives of the unlettered in their village communities. (Redfield 1956, 70)

Although Redfield was not the first person to put forward the notion of the great and little tradition, his clear division of the two and the theoretical explanation he offered at the time had an academic influence that set him apart from previous scholars of the same view. Later anthropologists and sociologists have widely adopted his binary distinction and adapted the concepts into “elite culture and popular culture”, which became a popular tool of cultural analysis in the late twentieth century. For more than half a century, the elitist value orientation contained in this pair of concepts has been neither seriously reconsidered nor criticized. This chapter proposes to construct a division between big and small traditions in terms of historical time, discarding Redfield’s tendency towards cultural elitism and thus providing a pair of renewed conceptual tools for the re-understanding of Chinese culture in the context of new archaeological knowledge. How, then, can the perspective of the big tradition and the small tradition be applied effectively in analysing Chinese culture? Currently, Chinese scholars generally follow Redfield’s concepts, accepting the elite culture of “the wise above” as the great tradition and the popular culture of “the foolish below” as the little tradition. This kind of division is understandable, but it is not conducive to understanding the profound, multi-layered nature of traditional Chinese civilization. It is necessary to introduce a longer-term perspective and define what is meant by the big and small traditions. In the twentieth century the Annals School rose to prominence in Western historiography. The leader, Fernand Braudel, advocated giving priority to long-term historical structures over traditional medium-term and short-term ones, breaking the limitations of short-sightedness. Similarly, the Chinese-American scholar Huang Renyu has put forward the concept of macro-history (2007), advocating the need for a macroscopic understanding of the Chinese civilization by compressing and consolidating existing historical materials in order to establish a concise and coherent outline, employing inductive methods, that can then be compared with Western history. Both concepts, “long-term” analysis and “macro-history”, have the potential to widen researchers’ scopes. Compared with Redfield’s synchronic “great and little” division, both the “long-term” analysis and “macro-history” are diachronic concepts, they concern much greater periods of time, bridging the preliterate and literate ages. However, their “long” and “macro” horizons refer to the history of written records only. The need for a further breakthrough, in the anthropological sense, will link the literate age with the non-literate age. Given the long and complex history of Chinese culture, it is necessary to modify Redfield’s concepts and define the cultural tradition that emerged in the wake of the development of Chinese characters as the small tradition, and the cultural tradition of the preliterate age as the big tradition (Ye 2012a). In this way, the pair of concepts that were originally synchronic can become diachronic, thus broadening the scope of analysis significantly. Under this new definition, what separates the traditions is whether or not the Chinese writing system had developed at the time of their practice.

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Such a division will help academics break free of the intellectual restraints put in place by the old small tradition. They will come to fully realize that tradition is the unification of continuity and rupture. It was formed in the wake of the development of written culture, but contains echoes of the long and rich oral culture that preceded it. This author’s intention in building the concepts of the big and small traditions is to be rid of the common prejudices that writing created history, and that without writing there can be no history. This author recognizes that the history of writing is only a small tradition, and that to understand the history of the preliterate age one must explore the existence of the big tradition. It is a tradition that, by its very nature, must be reconstructed through non-literate symbols found in archaeological excavations. Since the start of the twenty-first century, numerous great books seeking to reconstruct the lost ancient history of China have been and continue to be published, though there is yet to be an agreement on the term “big tradition”. In the book Jade culture along the Yangtze River Yang Jianfang (2006) studies the history of China from 9000 years ago to the Ming and Qing Dynasties without interruption, basing his exploration on many unearthed jade objects. There are 12 chapters in the book, the first six of which form part of the “big tradition”, from the stone carvings of the Hunan Pengtoushan culture 7000 BC to southern jade in the Shang Dynasty, covering the Hemudu, Majiabang, Yangshao, Beiyinyangying, Songze, Xuejiagang, Daxi, Qujialing, Lingjiatan, Liangzhu and Shijiahe cultures, the Ancient Shu state in the western Sichuan Basin, the Gu Yue ethnic group in Jiangxi, and the indigenous peoples in Zhejiang and Jiangsu. The names of these cultures are absent from classic history books, but they have risen to prominence following a series of new archaeological discoveries in the twentieth century. Such a far-reaching and extensive big tradition, in contrast with the old concept of the “Yellow River Basin as the cradle of Chinese civilization”, is very enlightening. Another example is The Rise and Fall of the Liangzhu Culture, co-authored by Wu Ruyuan and Xu Jijun (2009), which describes the thousandyear history of the Liangzhu culture, a prehistoric regional culture in the Taihu Lake Basin. Although there is a section about Liangzhu carved symbols demonstrating the emergence of a system of writing, the main materials used to reconstruct the cultural history of Liangzhu are ruins and cultural relics. Wu and Xu drew some historical lessons from the rise and fall of the Liangzhu culture, such as “openness—absorbing all foreign cultural elements that are conducive to the development of oneself” (2009, 355–357). In the absence of written records, relying instead on the characteristics of cultural relics (such as the apparent relationship between white pottery and the ritual of prehistoric witchcraft), the interaction and mutual learning that occurred between the Liangzhu culture and other prehistoric cultures may start to be understood. Such a development would be almost inconceivable in a historical study that relies purely on historical documents. As far as current academic research is concerned, the earliest period of widespread early Chinese character use occurred in the Yin-Shang Dynasty, with their oracle bone inscriptions. The inscriptions engraved on cattle bones or tortoise shells are widely understood to be an early incarnation of Chinese characters (though several

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inscriptions are yet to be successfully interpreted). Inspired by Luo Zhenyu, Wang Guowei regarded these inscriptions as the second type of evidence in studying ancient history, a decision that would prove to be a methodological breakthrough. However, it should be noted that the application of oracle bone inscriptions is actually very limited. They are a set of symbols that were used exclusively by augurs, who in turn were members of the royal family of the Shang Dynasty, for divination rather than for a wide range of social activities. The bronze inscriptions that developed after those on oracle bones had similar functions. Only after the decline of royal power in the Western Zhou Dynasty and the breakup of their monopoly on writing did Chinese characters transform from being sacred to being profane. As a result, a hundred schools of thought and thousands of books expounding new and varied theories emerged in the Warring States Period, The volume The Absence of Books by Individual Writers before the Warring States Period (Luo 1982, 8–68) strengthens the case for dividing and separately understanding the big tradition and small tradition in Chinese culture. The absence of books by individual writers is not simply a matter of education levels, but also concerns the power and purpose of written symbols in a given era. From the Shang Dynasty to the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, whilst characters had been used to write for thousands of years, non-official writers were not in a position to write books or lengthy texts. Even the founder of Confucianism, the Spring and Autumn Period thinker known as Confucius, who gave lectures to as many as 3000 disciples, still did not leave behind any personal writings. The Analects, which are attributed to Confucius, are believed to have been collected and written down by his disciples after he died. Since the twentieth century books on Chinese literary history, written in accordance with the classification standards of western literary studies, mostly classify Laozi and Confucius as authors of “pre-Qin prose”, classifications that have been misleading for nearly a century and which have left today’s scholars with the very difficult task of clarifying and correcting them (cf. Ye 2010b). People who live in small traditions tend to find it hard to overcome the limitations placed on their thoughts by their overreliance on written symbols. As a result, they generally struggle to perceive and reflect upon the existence, nature and significance of the big tradition. In China, ancient academic traditions are all rooted in the study of Confucian classics. The so-called notion of “continue to study the classics into one’s old age” has been the guiding principle that has led to the formation of a customary style of writing that depends heavily on inherited written texts. The authority of written texts does not, however, extend to discussions of history and the world that exist outside of the rigid framework of written knowledge. The view that “in books are sumptuous houses and graceful ladies” or, put plainly, “be diligent in your studies, for success and glory will follow”, has cultivated generations of scholars who are incredibly pedantic. Among ancient scholars, however, there were a few wise men that broke from this superstitious belief and trust in texts, and even mused “worries begin when one becomes literate” (Su Shi), and “stupidity begins when one becomes literate” (Lu Xun). What is it that these scholars mean? How might literacy lead to lack of wisdom? When people today talk about the beginning of Chinese traditions, they tend to begin from the premise that Pangu separated heaven and earth, as is recorded in texts

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after the Three Kingdoms period. Pangu, who was unknown to the most famous of ancient scholars (from Confucius, Laozi and Zhuangzi to Sima Qian, Ban Gu, and Dong Zhongshu) is believed to be Huaxia’s first creator god. If one consults works about the origins of Chinese civilization reconstructed by contemporary scholars with the help of archaeological discoveries, such as Li Ji’s The Beginning of Chinese Civilization and Bai Shouyi’s second volume of the General History of China (edited by Su Bingqi) (which surveys 10,000 years of Chinese prehistory), one finds no mentions or traces of Pangu. Perhaps one should heed Mencius’ warning that “It is better to have no book at all than blindly believe everything you find in books”. It is clear that if one does not break the stereotypes and shackles of the small tradition, it will be difficult to see and understand the reality of the big tradition. When emphasizing the importance of the great tradition of writing, Redfield gave as examples China and India, arguing that the study of Chinese literature did not cover the thoughts of villagers but only the thoughts of the intellectual elite. Scholars who study the great tradition of India tend to start from how the Sanskrit classic Veda was interpreted and developed by a few key thinkers in ancient and modern times. The newly published English translation of the Bhagavad-gita provides complete annotations, which were written to highlight the understanding of ancient Indian philosophers, more so than villagers’ interpretations of the text (Redfield 1956, 80). In the absence of archaeological information about the prehistoric cultural heritage of India and China, people have long formed views on ancient classics based on the interpretations of elites. However, since the emergence of new archaeological knowledge, unprecedented changes of understanding have taken place. More than 1000 years earlier than the earliest copy of the Bhagavad-gita recorded in Sanskrit was created, a great civilization existed with writings, cities and metalwork production in the Indus Valley. Modern Indian scholars (Bhattacharyya 1953, 3) have been able to list three sources of the Indian civilization, the third earliest world civilization: firstly, the Indus Valley civilization, secondly, the Aryans that migrated from Europe, and thirdly, the Dravidians in the South. The rise and fall of these three cultures, as well as the conflict and integration that occurred between them, eventually produced what one would recognize as Indian civilization. The first and third were unknown in the past because the Aryans, who had mastered writing in Sanskrit, dominated the later development of this south Asian civilization. The historical reality of a time before the Aryans invaded south Asia was completely forgotten by later generations. With evidence found in modern archaeological excavations, the earlier Indus civilization finally was revealed to the world after lying dormant in the public memory for 4000 years, as Kenoyer described: This was the beginning of urbanism in the subcontinent. For the first time in the history of this region, there is evidence for many different communities living together with large cities. Lifted high above the flood plain on immense platforms of mud brick, the cities were equipped with numerous wells, bathing rooms and an intricate system of drains. The cities who lived in different parts of the cities did not construct elaborate centralized palaces or temples as was common in Mesopotamia and Egypt, but they did maintain well-planned cities with massive walls and gateways to protect the citizens and to control trade.

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4 The Big Tradition of Chinese Culture: Reconstructing … Through comparisons of artifacts and pottery, and eventually with the aid of radiocarbon dating techniques, archaeologists working in the Indus Valley have determined that the Indus cities were established around 2600 B.C. (Kenoyer 1998, 15)

One does not know what kind of judgment the anthropologist Redfield would make when confronted with this situation. The Indus civilization, whose writing system has not yet been deciphered, and the non-literate Dravidian culture are older than the Sanskrit-written history of civilization would lead us to believe. Should their prehistoric far-reaching tradition be called the great tradition or the little tradition? Perhaps the pair of terms put forward by Redfield were not intended to address the problem of long-term change, but instead only represents a view of the internal structure of literate societies. The recent accumulation of swathes of new archaeological knowledge thus urgently requires one to formulate a new set of terms. Instead of creating them out of thin air, it is better to adapt existing ones. The purpose of constructing the nature of the division between the big tradition and small tradition is to rid oneself of the constraints that an overly text-reliant approach places on one’s conceptions of history, and to effectively create a new understanding of the origins of Chinese culture utilising new materials and knowledge (Fig. 4.1). Fig. 4.1 A jade figurine of a human body with an animal face belonging to the Hongshan culture. Photographed at the Imperial Palace Museum in Beijing, 2012

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4.2 Relationship Between the Big Tradition and the Small Tradition Emerging disciplines like cultural anthropology and folklore advocate fieldwork, which opens up new avenues of knowledge that help break through the limitations of small tradition academia. Although Confucius advocated a distinction between the wise above and the foolish below, he also hoped not to follow books blindly and to use oral teaching methods to preserve traditional information and pass it down. In The Analects of Confucius, Zi Lu said “learning consists in other things besides reading books (Waley 1999a, 119)”, effectively expressing essence of the original Confucian view of knowledge—a view that valued big traditions more than small ones. As for Confucius’ own repeated calls for “transmitting but not creating” and his complaints of “inadequate documentation”, it is clear that he did not hold the medium of text in a particularly high regard. In The Analects of Confucius the educational model by which “Confucius says”, rather than “Confucius writes”, is on vivid display. Clear evidence that Confucianism is rooted in the big tradition, based on oral culture. This preference for ritual and poetic activities over the study of written texts, alongside his famous saying “If you do not study poetry, you will have no words” all reveal his attachment to the traditions and knowledge of the preliterate age. The fact that the Analects are a collection of Confucius’ sayings brought together by his disciples is evidence enough to overturn any notion that Confucius was the author of the six classics. Attention to and the collection of “big tradition” evidence has made it possible for the Annals of the Five Emperors (Wu Di Ben Ji, 五帝本纪), the first chapter of the Records of the Historian, to be considered at least partly accurate and not purely myth as was suggested by the “Doubting Antiquity” school. This part began with the history of the legendary era of the Yan and Yellow Emperors, which was not mentioned by Confucian sages such as Confucius himself and Mencius. There are two possible reasons for this. Either they deliberately avoided or concealed it, or they simply did not know about it. However, if scholars in the Spring and Autumn, and Warring States Periods did not know this history, how could historians in the Western Han Dynasty have known and written about it? In compiling his works, Sima Qian, an official historian of the Western Han Dynasty, went beyond the records of official books and collected ancient materials from the vast world of folklore. According to the autobiography of Sima Qian, he travelled west to Kongtong, north to Zhuolu, east to the sea and south to the region between the Yangtze and Huai rivers, where he often heard stories from the local elders about the Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun, and became convinced that they were neither imagination nor fiction. For example, in the legend of the battle of Banquan, fought between the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor, the former’s army was composed of six beasts, among which the first four were bears (bear熊, brown bear罴, the male white bear貔, and female white bear貅). This must have something to do with the clan name Youxiong (有熊), to which the Yellow Emperor himself belonged (see Chap. 11 for a detailed analysis). It is not a stretch to suggest that Sima Qian would advise those scholars that are proud

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of their mastery of written texts to make the effort of “walking thousands of miles”, to conduct fieldwork and in doing so enhance their research. From a methodological point of view, contemporary scholars refer to the living culture passed orally collected during field investigations as the third type of evidence. The third type of evidence helps to explain difficult problems that are either not solved or addressed in the inherited literature. Taking the puzzle of the clan name “Youxiong” as an example, the sacred nature of the bear and the ritual activity of offering sacrifices to bear deities can still be found among ethnic (predominantly hunter) groups in the north, such as the Oroqen, Ewenki, and Hezhe peoples. In the Nuo rituals recorded in The Rites of Zhou, the palm of Fang Xiangshi, a Chinese ritual exorcist, is covered with a bear’s skin. Does this obscure detail have its origins in the rites of the Yellow Emperor? Answering this question relies on looking to what is known about the big tradition. The Goddess Temple in Niuheliang, Jianping, Liaoning Province, discovered in the 1980s, is a religious building site of the Hongshan culture, who built it around than 5000 years ago (Fig. 4.2). Along with the statue of the goddess, skulls of real bears and clay sculptures of bears were also discovered. One may categorize these unearthed cultural relics and images as the fourth type of evidence. This evidence demonstrates that the ancient inhabitants of north China did worship the bear god 5000 years ago, perhaps even regarding the bear god as ancestrally tied to them, spiritually connected to their people (in other words, their “totem”) The legends of Fuxi named “Huangxiong” from 5000 years ago, the Yellow Emperor’s clan name being “Youxiong”, and the motif of “transforming into bear” in the myth of sage kings such as Gun and Yu from 4000 years ago are not literary creations based on the whims of later generations, but the surviving fragments of a vague memory of the big tradition passed down in myth and legend. Before the emergence of widespread agriculture, human beings had to survive through hunting and gathering. Hundreds of thousands of years of hunting will be bound to leave behind traces based on the close observation to animals. The Neanderthal caves discovered by anthropologists in Eurasia are about 100,000 years old. In them, there are circular altars made of stone with bear skulls positioned in the centre. In the Swiss Alps, there is a place called Drachenloch about 2440 m above sea level, the site of a Neanderthal bear hunting ground. The front Fig. 4.2 Plan view of the Goddess Temple of the Hongshan culture. Photographed at the exhibition room of the Niuheliang Ruins in Jianping, Liaoning Province in 2006

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part of Delachenlock’s main cave, which was discovered by archaeologists, bears clues that suggest it once was the setting for much of the local Neanderthal community’s daily activities. It is easy to identify the inner cave as some kind of ceremonial space. There is a cubic “stone sacrificial altar” in the centre of the room, apparently made by hand. Each side is about 1.03 m long, covered with a massive stone slab and containing the skulls of seven bears inside facing the mouth of the cave. In the back, there are six bear skulls placed along the cave wall, clearly purposefully placed there. There are numerous cave bear limbs from different bears, with some limbs deliberately inserted into the bear’s cheekbones. It is hard to guess the motives and aims behind these ritual displays. One theory is that this is a typical example of “hunting witchcraft”, practices aimed at bringing about success in hunting. There are also similar bear bone sites in Regourdou in France. These relics show that cave bears played an important role in the Neanderthal’s hinting lives. Prehistoric hunters were much more familiar with this kind of animal than later generations of farmers. Bear worship was undoubtedly one of the earliest religious beliefs of humankind (Fig. 4.3). Anthropologists have drawn up a history of the evolution of the myth of the bear god from prehistoric times to the era of early civilization based on the existing bear worship practices and rituals of existing hunting nations (Ye 2007a). This is a level of understanding of the big tradition that Confucius and Sima Qian could never have imagined possible. How should one regard the relationship between the big tradition and the small tradition? And indeed, how can such a binary perspective enlighten our understanding Fig. 4.3 A bear skull unearthed from the Paleolithic site of Jinniu Mountain, Liaoning Province. Photographed at the Sechler Museum of Archaeology and Art, Peking University, in 2006

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of Chinese civilization? These questions may be viewed from two aspects, in a more interactive way. In a nutshell, the small tradition derives from the big tradition. The cultural “genes” and patterns created by the big tradition inevitably have a great, farreaching influence on the small traditions that succeed them. On the other hand, the small tradition inherits, expands upon or replaces the big tradition. In other words, the later small tradition relies on written symbols, which inevitably causes a degree of breaking and shielding from, or forgetting of, elements of the big tradition. To be more specific, it is necessary to examine the subtle connections between the two that can be seen in the continuity and the ruptures of tradition that occur. The rupture of history is mainly the process of ending tens of thousands of years of oral cultural traditions and rebuilding elements of them in the emerging writing culture. The conscious understanding of this process provides a unique perspective from which to investigate the origin of ideological history. The big tradition of sacred object worship and mythological concepts has laid an important foundation for the occurrence of Chinese characters. The sacred object worship and cosmology of the big tradition were vital in laying the foundations for early Chinese writing—their influence and history are “coded” into numerous early characters. For example, people take it for granted that the original form of the Chinese character 熊 (xiong, bear) is 能 (neng, can). Few people have asked this question from ancient to modern times: why does the later character 熊 have four dots under 能? Knowing the profound tradition of bear deity worship and that ancient peoples regarded the hibernation of bears as symbolic of resurrection from the dead, it is understandable that the ancient peoples of China abstracted the concept of 能 from the image of the largest carnivorous bear on the East Asian continent. In addition to pictographic Chinese characters that preserve old concepts to this day, there is still a large amount of traditional information that exists in the form of living fossils. For example, in order to obtain the life-regenerating energy of the bear deity through imitation, bear exercise is practiced through the five animal exercises (wu qin xi, 五 禽戏), which teach people to learn the active posture of the bear (according to the principle of bionics) and thus to obtain an enhanced practical benefit. Without the perspective of the big tradition, the history of the character 能 would be inexplicable. Also, it is impossible to fully understand the essence of the bear exercise, the mystery of Fuxi, or the fact that the Yellow Emperor and nearly 30 kings of Chu named themselves 熊 (xiong, bear) without reference to the big tradition.

4.3 Exploring the Symbols of Big Traditions Before the Emergence of Chinese Characters To explore the big tradition of Chinese culture, one needs to take a broader look at global civilizations and find out the unique elements of Huaxia. When demarking the origins of civilization, there are three key indicators commonly used in the international academic community: writing, the emergence of the city and the use of

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bronze wares. In addition to these three elements, Huaxia has another very prominent cultural element: jade belief and jade production. That is to say, to discuss the emergence of Chinese civilization, one must consider an additional unique factor, the development of a prehistoric jade culture. Before writing came to exist or cities and bronzes appeared in East Asia, jade veneration began in the northern regions of China and then gradually spread through the vast areas of the Liao River Basin, the Yellow and Huai River Basins and the Yangtze River Basin, gradually forming several large jade cultural circles outside of the Central Plain region. Eventually, these circles converged into the rich tradition of jade ritual vessels. This fascinating material culture, along with the later bronzes, developed a great system of “golden sound and jade vibration” (jin sheng yu zhen, 金声玉振), the sounds of bronze bells and jade chime-stones, as a wonder in the history of Chinese civilization. One may thus agree with the opinions of our academic predecessors and add a “Jade Age” as a transitional stage between the Neolithic Age and the Bronze Age in Chinese history. It existed from about 6000 to 2000 BC. This is to say that the Jade Age, as a cultural era, lasted for 4000 years in East Asia, long before the birth of Chinese civilization. This era had an immeasurable cultural impact on the small tradition brought about by the emergence of Chinese characters. This author seeks to describe a prehistoric local culture, a vassal state in the Hexi corridor region, using the non-literate symbols of the “Jade Age”. The state in question is called the “Ancient State of Qijia in the Jade Age” (Ye 2008b, 138). Its name is a combination of the newly discovered and named “Qijia culture” identified from archaeological findings with the actual existence of the prehistoric regional vassal states. In this regard, One may take as an example Nüwa’s smelting of stones to fill the sky. This is a popular myth in the small tradition. From the official book Huainanzi (淮南子), organized by the King of Huainan in the Western Han Dynasty, to the opening of the novel The Story of the Stone written during the Qing Dynasty, the story of Nüwa mending the sky has long been known to every Chinese household. However, the mythological plot well-known by later generations actually obscures its ancient origins—belief in the idea of mending the sky with stones. Prehistoric peoples imagined the body of heaven as being made of jade, and as such believed that the cracks in the sky should be repaired with five-coloured stones. Jade not only represents the gods, but also a host of beautiful values and the eternity of life itself. The “jade heaven” in Daoism, and the “jade palace” in which the heavenly emperor lived, all indicate the mutual identification between heaven and jade. This figurative concept has lasted for thousands of years until now. The reason why Nüwa used the “five-coloured stone” to fill the sky is that this kind of beautiful stone is a metaphor for all kinds of auspicious jade. This common jade myth, with distinctive Chinese cultural characteristics, has a longer history than merely what is recorded in writing. New archaeological discoveries in recent years show that ancient Chinese people connected with heaven and deities by means of finely carved jade articles and ritual instruments, and through following a complete set of jade religious and ritual traditions, which existed and were passed down long before the first appearance of Chinese characters. The culture and history of the preliterate age may be examined

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from the materials, shapes and dissemination routes of unearthed jades. This nontextual evidence can be called “the fourth type of evidence”, which mainly includes physical objects and images. It may also be regarded as forms of “object narrative” and “image narrative”. For example, evidence of jade ritual systems have been found in the Hongshan cultural sites in the West Liao River Basin, the Liangzhu cultural sites in the Taihu Lake region, the Shijiahe cultural sites in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, the Qijia cultural sites in the Ganqing region, the Dawenkou cultural sites in Shandong and the Taosi cultural sites in southern Shanxi. In particular, circular jade bi (璧, jade disc) and jade cong (琮, a long hollow piece of jade with rectangular sides) were discovered in Liangzhu Taosi cultural sites. The Qijia culture dates back 4000 or 5000 years. At that time, early Chinese writing systems such as oracle bone inscriptions had not yet appeared. The big tradition that those ritual jades convey is hence very valuable. The earliest jades were excavated in Xinlongwa cultural sites 8000 thousand years ago in the eastern part of Inner Mongolia. Compared with the 3000-year history of oracle bone inscriptions, the earliest Chinese character system, the length of the big tradition is over double the size. In the book Hexi Corridor: Western Mythology and Chinese Origins, this author attempts to discuss the special relationship between the prehistoric jade culture and the emergence of the Huaxia civilization represented by the Qijia culture in the Ganqing area, because the Qijia culture in time and space is closer to the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties (Ye 2008b). A small quantity of the jade materials found in Qijia cultural sites are made from Xinjiang Hetian jade, which suggests that before the “silk road” (as it is known through small traditions) there was a “jade road” that existed even in preliterate times. According to the historical records, the silk road initiated by Zhang Qian through the western regions is over 2000 years old. However, study of the big tradition reveals that the jade road by which Hetian jade spread to the Central Plain is more than 4000 years old. The Forbidden City jade expert Yang Boda argued that it may indeed be six thousand years old, but this is yet to be verified (2005, 173). Tests show that a large number of Shang Dynasty royal jades unearthed from the Yin Ruins are apparently made of Hetian jade from the Kunlun Mountains. Such jade material, of the highest grade in the world, was discovered in a place far away from the mountains and was clearly transported to the Central Plain—a long and arduous journey that may have taken place over thousands of years. Why did King Mu of Zhou, the ruler of the Western Zhou Dynasty, insist on going westbound to the Kunlun Mountains? And why did the mythological imagination of the ancient people of the Central Plain create a goddess that resided in the remote West Pole and that held the secret to immortality, the Queen Mother of the West? Why do 140 mountains in The Classic of Mountains and Seas produce certain types of jade? Mysteries such as these are no longer so opaque, thanks to the rediscovery of the big tradition of jade culture. The Yao Pond as a place name and Yao Mother as the Queen Mother of the West’s alias both suggest that yao (瑶) is the proper noun for Hetian jade. In what way can this new knowledge of the big tradition help reinterpret the ancient books of the small tradition? Let one turn to Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters (Shuo Wen Jie Zi, 说文解字), the first dictionary of ancient Chinese

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characters. If one reads the characters with important radicals carefully in the opening paragraph of Volume I, it is clear that it is not a randomly arranged reference book. The arrangement sequence of 9353 characters begins with 一 and ends with亥, which clearly reflects the temporal and spatial order of mythological cosmology. The radicals 一 (yi, one; origin), 二 (上) (shang, above), 示 (shi, spiritual; ancestor), 三 (san, three; the way or dao of Heaven, Earth and Man), 王 (wang, king) and 玉 (yu, jade) are the first six, revealing the basis of Chinese traditional beliefs and mythological understanding. The former three demonstrate the Chinese conceptual systems in sacred beliefs and rituals. The latter three show the ways of heaven, earth and the people (cf. Duan 1988, 1–10).The book contains a total of 124 characters with the 玉 (yu, jade) radical. 玉 is among the six major radicals with the largest number of characters. Is this pure coincidence? Knowing that jade worship was popular in prehistoric China, one now sees that the book encodes a profound cultural memory of the big tradition. Today, scholars have good reason to infer that when ancient Chinese people tried to create characters, their daily vocabulary was already filled with many concepts based on the production of jade artifacts. The fact that one hundred and twenty-four Chinese characters use the玉 radical not only shows how important ancient peoples’ relationship with jade was in generating Chinese characters, but also the way in which small traditions altered and replaced the big tradition, noticeable in changes of meaning and usage. Since the words deriving from jade are almost entirely abandoned now, they have become obscure, unclear even to modern literate people who do not understand jade culture. According to the beliefs of the Annals school, led by Bloch and Braudel, material culture equals, or even exceeds, literature. Innovation in this field has come from numerous areas, from anthropology and folklore to archaeology and museum science. Burke stated (2003, 63): “Braudel was neither the first nor the only historian of his day to take material culture seriously, but the rise of studies of this topic by economists, anthropologists and sociologists (for example, Appadurai 1986), and even by specialists in literature, as well as by historians, owes not a little to Braudel’s example, as well as to that of theorists such as Thorsten Veblen”. The pioneering scholars who have made strides in developing our understanding of the big tradition of Chinese culture mostly have backgrounds in anthropology, not least Li Ji and Chang Kwang-chih. In his later years, Fei Xiaotong paid full attention to the significance of newly excavated material evidence when attempting to rediscover the origins of Chinese culture. In the early days of the twenty-first century, he presided over the symposium of “Ancient Chinese Jade Objects and Traditional Culture” (Shenyang, May 29–31, 2001). Fei not only made an introductory speech at both the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony, but also autographed the title of 玉魂国魄 (yu hun guo po, The Jade Soul and the National Spirit) for the conference proceedings, writing the characters out in calligraphy and printing them in the book. These four characters are the epitome of the accomplishments made by the renowned Chinese anthropologist who devoted himself to the painstaking research of the core values of Chinese civilization.

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Fig. 4.4 A bear-shaped jade zun 尊 wine vessel of the Qing Dynasty. Photographed at the Taipei Palace Museum

In order to effectively explain how the jade symbols of the preliterate age can help one reconstruct the historical reality of the big tradition, it is instructive to quote Fei Xiaotong’s speech at the closing ceremony of the meeting as a primer for discussion. So, what is the relationship between ancient Chinese jades and traditional culture? Generally speaking, the evolution of their relationship can be divided into three stages. The first stage is the early stage in which the jades mainly existed as ritual instruments for the shaman to communicate with heaven. In the second stage they were used as accessories, symbolizing hierarchies in a civilized society. The third stage is when people used jades as ornaments, associating them with people’s moral concepts and conduct. Therefore, Chinese people have loved jade for thousands of years. (Fei 2002, 12)

Among the ancient civilizations of the world, a striking feature of the Chinese civilization is that certain traditional cultural elements that been existed since the early and mid-Neolithic periods have remained basically unchanged for thousands of years (Fig. 4.4). The belief in, and inheritance of, jade culture played a pivotal role in laying the foundation for the core values that would come to define Chinese civilization. It is a culture which has long penetrated the language system. Jade veneration is an element of Chinese civilization that stands out when compared with the history of other civilizations.

4.4 Mythological Concepts: The Gene of the Big Tradition The second oldest civilization in the world is the Egyptian civilization that grew on the banks of the Nile River. To explore the ancient Egyptian civilization is to explore

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the mythological heritage of Egypt. One illustrative book on the achievements of Egyptology is entitled Egypt from Myth to Egyptology (Donadoni et al. 1990). This work suggests that ancient Egyptian history was intertwined with mythology, and that early mythology could contain history. Early Egyptian cultural texts are informed and influenced by some of the earliest incarnations of Egyptian myths. Whether reading The Book of the Dead, written in Egyptian hieroglyphs, or visiting the Great Pyramids and the pharaohs’ temples, the presence of mythical images seems to be ubiquitous. The Indus civilization, ranking third oldest in the world, was also rooted in prehistoric mythology. Some of its features and elements can be detected in later Indian civilization, such as Buddhism’s revered papal tree, and yoga practices in Hinduism and Buddhism. Those concepts did not originate in the great religions of the civilized age, but are actually mythological motifs inherited from the big tradition of the prehistoric age. After the Han Dynasty, Buddhism spread to China. Chinese people have long understood that some special religious motifs such as bodhi tree and lotus worship came from India. It is now clear that such symbolic imagery had already been popular in the south Asian subcontinent thousands of years before Buddhism was born. Without corresponding knowledge of prehistoric myths and beliefs, one cannot understand the spiritual world of the big tradition. Why do the gods in India favour holding a tree or the branches, leaves, flower and fruit of a tree as the mark of divinity and mana? The following is an explanation by Kenoyer drawing on new understandings of the big tradition to explore the motif of these divine trees. Rising from the center of a circle of bricks, the wide, spreading branches of the papal tree from a natural sanctuary, with a canopy of heart-shaped leaves that protect those who enter its shadows. In the absence of formal temples, sacred trees located in the heart of each neighborhood or along the roads leading to the city gates may have been the most important shrines of the Indus culture. (Kenoyer 1998, 105)

The Indus culture introduced here is the indigenous civilization before the Sanskrit-using Aryans invaded south Asia. Two major cities have been excavated, Mohenjodaro and Haraba. The remains of the two ancient cities both bear the image of papal trees, which has become a hugely symbolic image in local culture. The difference between the two is that in Mohenjodaro immortals always stand in the middle of the tree, while in Haraba immortals stand under the arch of its leaves. It is clearly not enough to simply interpret such complicated representations of the papal tree from their artistic style alone. Kenoyer suggested that in the absence of written materials, the special significance of this symbol of the Indus civilization can only be inferred by means of referring to its meaning in later cultures. The papal and banyan trees are quite common throughout Hindu mythology, where they serve as important symbols of fertility and protection of death. Phallic symbols dedicated to the god Shiva are often placed at the base of the papal or banyan tree, and rituals to the goddess Savitri are performed with the tree to ensure many children and avid widowhood. In contrast, the hanging roots which strangle the host tree are seen as the noose of Yama, the god of death, and water offerings are poured out at the base of the tree to appease Yaa and assure fertility and long life”. (Kenoyer 1998: 105)

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Although the symbolic interpretation of the papal tree in the myths of later generations may not exactly match the original beliefs of the Indus civilization, there is no doubt that the former inherited the tradition from the latter. This is an example whereby the myths of the small traditional might be re-examined through a new understanding of the big tradition. Similar examples include the origins of yoga posture and the motif of the four images of bull-tigers-man-plant. A unique posture found only on seals and molded tablets shows a male with horned headdress seated in a yogic position, with legs spread wide and heels pressed to the groin. We trace the origins of this seated position and the horned deity itself to painted motifs on earlier pottery that present a horned deity and anthropomorphic plant motifs looking very much like the seated yogi figures. (Ibid., 112)

Archaeologists believe the posture depicted on the Indus seals may be correlated with a different yoga position. This would not be obvious to contemporary yoga practitioners. In comparison to the ancient Egyptian and Indian civilizations, the mythical roots of the Chinese civilization are equally profound. Perhaps if one is not ready to start seriously looking at the mythological world, it may not be easy to study ancient Chinese history! Modern scholars of the Doubting Antiquity School regarded the beginning of Chinese ancient history as “pseudo-history”, which in Hu Shi’s words is characterized by “no history before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty”. Those scholars who were influenced by Western studies demanded that objective historical evidence be used to confirm the historical credibility of the historical records, which shortened the scope of Chinese history to just over 2000 years. This fundamental misunderstanding lies in the fact that older generations of scholars saw myth and history as completely opposite. Indeed, the history of all ancient civilizations begins with mythological narratives, whether it be the Hebrew history described in the Old Testament or the ancient Greek history found in Herodotus’ Histories. As far as the history books in China are concerned, not only is The Book of Documents inseparable from myth, but The Spring and Autumn Annals (Chun Qiu, 春秋) and The Records of the Historian are dominated by mythological language and references, which are far from “objective” history as understood by modern people. Without the modern archaeological discovery of the Chinese prehistoric jade culture, the radical phenomenon contained in Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters would not be entirely explicable. Similarly, without the series of excavation reports relating to the Chengdu plain that were produced in the late twentieth century, the brilliant achievements in the study of civilization that resulted from the evidence revealed by the Sanxingdui and Jinsha sites would never have been known. No account can be found of these sites in historical documents left behind by the small tradition, not even a single name. At the Sanxingdui and Jinsha sites, not only were huge bronzes and ritual jades with different styles excavated, but also exquisite gold objects such as gold masks and sceptres, the likes of which are absent in the archaeological remains of the Central Plain civilization. The diversity and richness of the wider Chinese culture would have been obscured by the small traditions, which focused on the Central Plain and the Chinese characters that stemmed from it.

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The rediscovery of the big tradition brought about by use of the quadruple evidence method, provides an effective conceptual tool to reflect on the entirety of Chinese culture. This is a sufficient impetus for contemporary scholars to re-enter Chinese history and evaluate important material and symbolic information that Confucius and Sima Qian wanted to see and understand, but failed to do. When one considers the physical evidence of prehistoric jade models, the truth obscured by “common sense” in the small tradition began to surface: for example, the imaginary dragon came to overpower and eventually replace the deity bear (the Yellow Emperor named “Youxiong”). Moreover, the phoenix replaced the owl before the Shang Dynasty, evident in the popularity of the myth of Phoenix singing on Mount Qi in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The process by which the owl was replaced by, or evolved into, the phoenix is also a vivid case that reveals how the emerging small tradition came to demonize the big tradition, condemning it through their writings. Today’s scholars can thus finally realize the connection between the rise of the dragon and phoenix myths in the small tradition, and the loss of bear and owl worship in the big tradition. The worship of the owl in the big tradition occurred much earlier than worship of the mythical phoenix, and was not limited to the Central Plain of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, as can be seen from a group of jade owl carvings unearthed in a Hongshan cultural site (Fig. 4.5), and owl-shaped masks belonging to the Yangshao culture unearthed in Huaxian County, Shaanxi (Fig. 4.6), as well as pottery jars with owl-face designs created by the Qijia culture in Qinghai, Gansu (Fig. 4.7) and ivory carvings of axe-yue (钺) handles with owl-face designs unearthed in Sanxing Village, Jintan County, Jiangsu Province. The marble owl carvings unearthed from Tomb 1001 of the Yin Ruins at Houjiazhuang, Anyang (housed in the Museum of Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei) and a pair of owl-shaped bronze zun (尊, wine vessels) (housed in the National Museum and the Henan Museum) unearthed from the Fu Hao’s Tomb are national treasures, cultural relics dating from the late Shang Dynasty. These objects silently witnessed how prehistoric owl worship and its mythology continued into the early stages of the history of civilization. A detailed analysis of owl worship will be conducted in Chaps. 17 and 18. Fig. 4.5 A jade owl of the Hongshan culture. Photographed at the “Time and Space: Hongshan Culture Jade Exhibition” at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

84 Fig. 4.6 An owl-shaped mask of the Yangshao culture, unearthed in Huaxian County, Shaanxi Province. Photographed at the Sackler Museum of Art and Archaeology at Peking University in 2006

Fig. 4.7 A coloured pottery jar of the Hongshan culture, unearthed from Niuheliang. Photographed at the Liaoning Provincial Museum in 2008

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There is no agreement as to whether Confucianism or Daoism forms the backbone of Chinese culture. This author believes the exploration of this cultural “backbone” should instead look back to the big tradition of the preliterate age. The ideological differences between Confucianism and Daoism are the twigs or branches of the small tradition. Their ideological elements common to them both stem from the big tradition, such as worship of jade and sages. Thus the true cultural “backbone” is to be found in the time before either of these two great philosophical traditions. In terms of the characteristics of local religions and myths in China, it is not “shen” (神, deity) but “sheng” (圣, sageness) that is of greater importance in ancient Chinese. Confucius’ favourite places were grand temples. He thinks sageness and benevolence (ren, 仁) have the highest value. Researchers studying Confucianism generally highlight “benevolence” and neglect “sageness”. The combination of the two words, however, is the object of much comparative religious and mythological research. Being a sage is the common ideal of Confucianism and Daoism. Confucius believed he was still far from perfect enough to be considered one. However, his disciples regarded their teacher as the greatest sage on the earth, and even as a great sage from heaven. Confucius’s goal to become a sage led to the sanctification of the teacher by his disciples. As a result, it is not the deities of heaven—not Zeus, Athena, nor the Judaic Lord that were worshiped in the ancestral temples in China. Instead, Yao, Shun, Yu, Tang, Wen and Wu from the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties were worshiped as sage kings, and as representatives of the Confucian political ideal in the Confucian era. Later, Confucius was known as the “uncrowned king”. Given this, the core ideal of leadership in Confucianism may be summed up as being “an internal sage and an external ruler”. Its basic tenet is that the prerequisite of a good ruler is to cultivate himself as a sage; the insurmountable boundaries between humans and deities in Western mythology are dismantled in the mythology of Chinese Confucianism. This is arguably the most prominent mythological concept in China. Confucius has, indeed, set a precedent for a person’s ability to transcend from an ordinary mortal to a sage who is worshiped in the temples for many generations. The worship of sages as directed by Confucianism is China’s largest and most profound mythological concept (Ye and Tang 2011). The lost tradition that preceded Confucianism can start to be restored if one seeks the origins of the Chinese mythological concept of the sage, and note the special clues and symbology embedded in the sages’ use of jade. Explaining Graphs and Analysing Character quotes Confucius’ words that 王 (king) is one vertical stroke connecting 三 (three). Here the “three” refers to haven, earth and man. The sacred jade functions as a proof of the king’s power. Jade once existed as a sacred object, understood to have been given to people by deities. The similarity of the characters 玉 (jade) and 王 (king) is clear at a glance (see Chap. 8 for a detailed analysis). This chapter has discussed a set of cultural concepts and a methodologies that integrate multi-disciplinary knowledge, namely the “big tradition” and the “quadrupleevidence method”. Without these new ways of thinking and approaching the ancient past, it is not easy for people to break free from the conceptual shackles imposed on their thinking by an over-reliance on written texts. Indeed, without the quadrupleevidence method, it is difficult to find an effective approach to studying ancient

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Fig. 4.8 A bird-shaped painted pottery pot of the Banshan phase of the Majiayao culture, dating back to 5000 years ago. Photographed at the Gansu Provincial Museum in January 2008

traditional culture. The conceptual framework of the big tradition will be a guiding tool for this book in its efforts to explore the origins of civilization. The quadrupleevidence method will, meanwhile, be the methodology that this research will utilize and try to expand upon. It is hoped that this research can inspire innovation within the humanities, and promote a more in-depth understanding of Chinese culture (Fig. 4.8).

Part II

The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization

Chapter 5

The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization from an International Perspective

The 2008 Beijing Olympic Games marked the first time in history that jade and metal were both used in the creation of Olympic medals. The reverse side of the Olympic medals were made of white jade for the gold medal, greyish jade for the silver medal and green jade for the bronze medal. In Chinese culture, gold and jade are considered to be a perfect pair, symbolizing harmony and balance and having a special kind of bond between them. This unique medal design reflected a coming together of the ancient Greek tradition of competition and the ancient Chinese tradition of venerating jade, and was well received worldwide. The passion for competition and sport fostered by the ancient Greeks was aimed at nurturing warriors to be good at combat, so that they may expand their territory and to gather wealth. The jade worship of the Chinese people, on the other hand, is tied to the virtue of being a respectable person and the spirit of reciprocity between peoples and nations to avoid war and violence. This is fully encapsulated in the Chinese idiom “replace weapons of war with gifts of jade and silk”, a call for people to turn hostility into friendship.

5.1 The “Jade Age” Theory Needs an International Perspective1 In the 1980s, Chinese scholars put forward a new view that during the emergence of civilization only the prehistoric peoples of China underwent a “Jade Age”, a period of jade worship between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age which constitutes a In Chinese, the character 玉 (yu), translated literally as ‘jade’ refers more broadly to a plethora of precious gems and stones, and not solely to ‘jade’ as it is understood in the English language. This book thus sometimes translates 玉 as either ‘gemstone’ or ‘precious stone’ rather than ‘jade’ to try and keep a semblance of the original Chinese meaning. See 4.2 for a further discussion of this important difference.

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major feature of the emergence of Chinese civilization. Discussion has continued for over twenty years between supporters and opponents of this view (cf. Zhu 2003). However, as a specific study on the scope of jade culture, the debate between the two sides was basically confined to China or East Asia. Some scholars have further proposed the notion of a “Jade Road” (Meng 2004), yet their discussion was still confined to China. In November 1998, at an international symposium on the theme of “East Asian Jade” held by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Rao Zongyi argued in his paper titled “Some Issues in the Study of Chinese ‘Jade’ Culture” that only Chinese people love jade. He pointed out that the English word “jade” cannot be found in IndoEuropean languages such as Greek. The word is derived (via the French “l’ejade” and the Latin “ilia”) from the Spanish term “piedra de ijada”. In order to stress the unique understanding that the Chinese ancestors had about jade; Rao traced the origin of the concept of the “Jade Age” back to ancient times. He believed that long before Western archaeological methods were introduced into China there were affirmations and evidence that China had experienced the “Jade Age” stage, such as the saying “the Yellow Emperor made weapons out of jade” that can be found in the inherited literature. The ancients had a good knowledge of the differences between jade and stone, which finds expression in the numerous names for jade. This suggests that research on “jade” has a very long history and has achieved great successes throughout history (Deng 1998a, 17). Rao held, through contrastive analysis of the Chinese and Western (IndoEuropean) language, that ancient Chinese people long been aware of the experience of the “Jade Age”, while in the Western culture jade held little importance or was even absent from the language, there being no word for “jade”. However, there are some misunderstandings here. A cognitive anthropological approach would suggest that the vocabulary of a certain culture reflects the cognitive characteristics of that culture. Due to the different geographical and ecological conditions of different regions, however, and the different mineral compositions that each creates, there is value in recognizing the different types of precious stone that each produces. Researchers should not measure and judge other cultures based on their understanding and classification of jade worship within China. It is better to adopt an “internal perspective” of anthropological research in order to recognize the unique conceptualization of precious stones in every culture. In other words, each culture has its own set of understandings and conceptualizations pertaining to jade or gemstones. According to the Oxford Latin Dictionary, the Latin word “ilia” does not mean jade; it refers to body parts, or the mother of Romulus and Remus, heroes in Roman mythology (Glare 1968, 825). Although there is no equivalent to the Chinese generic term “jade” (玉), in ancient Greek there are a number of words that refer to jade, such as “κυ£νoς” (kuanos), which refers to “dark blue glaze”, or “lapis lazuli” (Liddell and Scott 1996, 1004). On the shields and armour of the Greek heroes described in the Homerian epics, a dark blue glaze imitating lapis lazuli was often placed on the metal as something sacred. The Greeks borrowed the technique behind the craft from Egypt. The blue glaze (or “enamel”) was invented as an alternative to lapis lazuli. In order to understand why the ancient Egyptians invented it, one must first

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know the influence of Sumerian lapis lazuli myths on the Egyptian civilization. The Sumerians associated the blue colour of lapis lazuli to heaven and the deities. They were willing to travel to distant Central Asia and trade one of their most precious resources—food—in exchange for the lapis lazuli needed to build their temples. From this broader point of view, precious stone cosmologies were common in early civilizations rather than unique to one. Therefore, an international perspective is essential to prove the Chinese “Jade Age” theory. The first question to answer is whether any other ancient civilizations in the world underwent a Jade Age (or “Precious Stone Age” more broadly defined) before the Bronze Age. Without knowing about the history of gemstone worship and precious stone myths in the other major civilizations, any analysis of the emergence of Chinese civilization in a closed-door environment is most likely to lead to one-sided arguments, or indeed, ethnocentrism. For this reason, it is necessary to have a global understanding of the presence of precious stone mythological cosmologies in the world’s major civilizations. British archaeologists Ian Hodder and Scott Hutson, in their book Reading the Past, discussed the cultural meaning of the jade axe, found in various prehistoric tombs. Although not as common as the stone axe, the jade axe is still often found among the cultural relics of various regions: The axe would be an index of trade across the area between the site of the axe’s deposition and the source of the jade. The axe also indexes its particular spatio-temporal context and therefore references the body of the burial and other offerings. Indexicality therefore introduces a specific, historic, situated context for material objects. Owing to formal resemblance, the jade axe is also an icon of utilitarian axes of the same area. Lastly, the jade axe can be a symbol of a moiety, in which case the relation between the signifier (axe) and the signified (moiety) may be arbitrary. One sign may thus have many kinds of meaning. (Hodder and Huston 2003, 64)

In the list of the materials required by the archaeologist Vere Gordon Childe to define an “archaeological culture”, salt, amber and jade are listed under “other raw materials” of industrial use (Child 1956a). It may be seen that precious stones, as ancient processing materials, are common in prehistoric archaeological excavations. Sporadic discoveries were made even at the Paleolithic sites dating back tens of thousands of years (cf. Tian et al. 1998). Precious stone worship myths and their cultural role in the world’s earliest areas of civilization—West Asia and North Africa—indicate that precious stone worship is not unique to China but is in fact a more universal phenomenon. It is worth conducting in-depth comparative research on this matter. Of particular interest is the way in which human societies on the threshold of developing civilization came to understand the casting properties of metal ores through the process of knowing, worshipping and developing various types of beautiful stones, precious stones and ores—the key factor leading a transition from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. In other words, how the flourishing gemstone mythological concepts of the late Neolithic period were driving force for the emergence of the Bronze Age. More specifically, in studying the gradual transition from obsidian myths (c. 8000 BC) to lapis lazuli and turquoise myths in

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the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations (c. 3000 BC), it is revealed how precious stone worship and related mythological concepts were a permanent societal feature over five thousand years, from the birth of agriculture to the birth of civilization. They dominated the early civilized peoples’ beliefs, ideas and behaviours, promoted transnational and transregional trade, facilitated cultural exchanges, and drove the development of prehistoric settlements into civilized cities. Twentieth century archaeological discoveries revealed that lapis lazuli, the precious stone worshipped by the Sumerian civilization (the world’s earliest civilization), was not in fact the earliest type of precious stone with sacred significance— obsidian is, and it is associated with the origin of agriculture. Several thousand years before lapis lazuli became prominent, obsidian was highly sought after and an oftentraded object. The “Jade Age” notion proposed by Chinese scholars thus needs to be discussed in a global context. There must be ideological reasons behind the immense value of gemstones before the popularization of bronzes. This study must draw on archaeological and comparative mythological methods. Using the latter, one might trace these unearthed precious stones back to their original prehistoric purposes, found in the dialogues between men and deities. This book presents the concept of “jade worship” as a prehistoric Chinese national belief. According to Weber’s mode of argument (which states that the occurrence of capitalism as a uniquely Western European phenomenon can be attributed to the Protestant ethic), it would be necessary to explain why jade was perceived as a sacred object from heaven and why jade worship only occurred in ancient China. However, it is evident that precious stone worship and mythology also emerged in other ancient civilizations, but failed to be passed on to later generations due to the destruction or decline of those earlier civilizations. On the contrary, the Chinese people’s love and veneration of jade have been passed down without interruption throughout Chinese history until the present time. Archaeological excavations provide one with a clue that gemstone worship, and the accompanying myths, was a fetishism built around fantastical narratives which gradually took shape during the millions of years of human evolution from the Paleolithic Age to the Neolithic Age, accompanied by (and formed by) the emergence of class society, and concepts of sovereignty and wealth. These precious stones gradually occupied a central position in prehistoric religious ideology and had a far-reaching impact on the future development of culture. Gemstone mythologies, without exception, can be found in the earliest periods of the eight ancient civilizations (Sumer, Egypt, Akkad and Babylon, India, China, Minoan Crete, Mycenean Greece and early Israel, in that order) on the old continent (Afro-Eurasia). These mythologies’ relationship with early beliefs like sorcery and exorcism, totem worship and animism form the basis of common cultural archetypes, and shaped literary imaginations across the major civilizations. As a result of the geography they inhabited and the natural resources available to them, these major civilizations came to worship different gemstones, though they all shared one particular stone as the origin and foundation of such worship—obsidian. As a result of cultural exchanges and communication between civilizations, seven out of the eight civilizations listed above worshipped the same or similar gemstones,

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such as gold combined with jade, lapis lazuli, turquoise, agate and crystal. Jade worship in the Chinese civilization, however, was different in nature. It evolved from worship of local jade in the areas surrounding the non-Central Plain to the worship of high-quality nephrite jade from Xinjiang’s Kunlun Mountains in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Reviewing the “Jade Age” concept by means of international comparison requires one to attend to the following four points. Firstly, jade and gold worship did not coexist in the early Chinese tradition. Our East Asian ancestors knew gemstones first (10,000 years ago to 6000 years ago) and then metal (about 2500 to 2000 BC); jade myths occurred 4000 years earlier than metal myths. In other words, there have been four thousand years of history since the Bronze Age, while the history of Chinese jade culture has lasted 8000 years. West Asia, Central Asia and Europe experienced a Chalcolithic period: obsidian myths were followed by the sanctification of metal ores, lapis lazuli and turquoise at the same time. Secondly, copper was the earliest sacred object in Chinese metal worship, known as jin (金, metal). Later, gold and silver became sacred objects, known in The Classics of Mountains and Seas as “red gold” and “white gold”. Both may have been brought about by the spread of civilization in West Asia and Central Asia through which they gradually entered the Central Plain civilization. Its transmission route, flowing from west to east, coincided with the transport route of Hetian jade from Xinjiang’s Kunlun Mountains to the Central Plain in both time and space. This interaction between gold and jade led to the birth of East Asian civilization as it is known today. Thirdly, Chinese jade worship started in the form of local jade worship outside the Central Plain, and eventually became Hetian jade worship in the Central Plain civilization. In between these two was a long process of transition to different times of jade, a process which culminated with the advent of civilization. In other words, it took about a thousand years to establish Xinjiang’s Hetian jade as a sacred object of Central Plain kingship during the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. In regards to geographical space, the line between Xinjiang’s Kunlun Mountains, the only production site of Hetian jade, and Anyang, Henan, was likely a route for the most important cultural exchanges and a key channel of communication during the formation of Chinese civilization. Fourth, and finally, myths about lapis lazuli did not develop in the early history of Chinese culture because of the absence of lapis lazuli in local mineral resources. Why did quality lapis lazuli, a specialty of the Afghanistan mountains west of the Kunlun Mountains, spread quickly westward across Central Asia, West Asia, South Asia, ancient Egypt and the entire Mediterranean region, but not pass the “Jade Gate” and spread into East Asia and the Central Plain during the birth of civilization?2 This is a very intriguing question, and remains to be answered.

2

There was only a small amount of lapis lazuli in China until after the Han Dynasty.

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5.2 Obsidian Myths: The “Sacred Stone” on the Eve of Civilization Nowadays it is popularly held that only the Chinese worship jade. This argument cannot be said to be unreasonable, because gemstone worship failed to pass on beyond the bronze age in other ancient civilizations, and the related mythological concepts were thus lost to later generations due to the demise of the ancient countries that had venerated gemstones. This argument, however, has not been well received by international academia. A global perspective on the history of human civilization would suggest that human beings must experience a period of worshiping or loving some form of beautiful gemstone from the long Stone Age to the dawn of civilization. Obsidian is the first beautiful or sacred material that ancient humans knew of. It is a dark, translucent volcanic rock formed by the cooling of molten lava. Because it is hard enough to produce excellent raw materials for stone tools, obsidian was the first to stand out in the late Paleolithic and Neolithic period among thousands of stones and was endowed with mythological, often magic, characteristics. During the last century, the famous British archaeologist Gordon Childe, an advocate of the “Neolithic Revolution” theory, pointed out that during the emergence of civilization, different cultural communities began to trade frequently, with specific stones being the main objects of trade. This is particularly noteworthy, because it signals the beginning of metallurgy. Childe described the ancient Egyptian civilization: Red Sea and Mediterranean shells have already been recorded in Neolithic villages in Egypt. Rather later Egyptian graves contain in addition first malachite and resin, then also lapis lazuli and obsidian; later still amethysts and turquoise appear and appear in increasing quantities. Now malachite must have been brought from Sinai or the Eastern Desert of Nubia, resin from the forested mountains of Syria or Southern Arabia, obsidian from Melos in the Aegean, Arabia, Armenia, or possibly Abyssinia; lapis lazuli probably from the Iranian plateau. (Childe 1956b, 112)

Childe then talked about a similar situation in the Sumerian civilization: In Sumer obsidian is found in the oldest settlements, together with beads of amazonite that may have been brought from India or at least Armenia. In North Syria and Assyria obsidian was being imported as early as in Sumer, and lapis lazuli and turquoise soon appear. (Ibid., 112)

Childe noticed that these materials, commonly referred to in the West as precious stones or semi-precious stones, clearly became regarded as “treasure” and a form of wealth in the Jade or Chalcolithic Ages. In West Asia and North Africa, worship of lapis lazuli preceded the worship of metals by a considerable amount of time, whilst upon the advent of civilization East Asian people continued to worship local varieties of jade. Thus, the precious stone mythologies of the Afro-Eurasian continent were expressed in varied and diverse forms, ranging from a more special form of malachite and Hetian jade (their uniqueness owing to their origin) to common obsidian, lapis lazuli, turquoise, agate, crystal, ruby, sapphire, chalcedony (carnelian), and amber. The concept of “jade” (yu, 玉) should include all of these stones, a definition which

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has been generally accepted by scholars from Zhang Hongzhao (1921/2010), the founder of modern Chinese geology to today’s gemology and jade studies experts (cf. Zhang 1997, 4; Luan 2008, 27–86). Archaeological materials show that obsidian became the first important object of prehistoric trade in the regions where agriculture first appeared in the world, thereby opening up trade and exchange between different social groups and laying the multi-cultural foundation for the birth of civilization. The Natufian culture in the Jordanian region of West Asia flourished as early as 10,000 years BC and existed until 8000 BC. The culture formed a settlement with Jericho as its centre, built a large city-wide defence structure and developed a large network of trade with obsidian as the main object of exchange. This is, to current knowledge, the earliest settled community and the earliest example of long-distance trade in world history. It can be seen that whilst obsidian and lapis lazuli came to co-exist as precious stones venerated by numerous Eurasian cultures, obsidian had at one time been the original and only precious stone endowed with special supernatural properties. The international academic community has generally reached a consensus on this. The American anthropologist John Pfeiffer wrote in the book The Emergence of Man (1969) that wheat and obsidian became the first group of cross-regional trade objects, expanding from the Near East to the west and north, and finally ended hunting as the main way of life in Europe. Steven Mithen, a professor of Early Prehistory at the University of Reading in England, pointed out: The seed-grain is likely to have featured in the Neolithic trade network that had extended from Turkey to the southern reaches of the Jordan valley. We know such trade occurred because obsidian, a very fine, jet-black and shiny volcanic glass originating from a single source in the hills of southern Turkey, is found on all the Early Neolithic sites. For those who relied upon relatively dull flint in the Jordan valley, obsidian must have been a highly valued material. Many modern hunter-gatherers, such as the Australian Aborigines, have invested shiny stones with supernatural powers and the same must surely have been true of obsidian in the Neolithic period: its thin flakes are effectively transparent; thick flakes can be used as mirrors; it has the sharpest edge of any stone, and can be knapped into intricate forms. It is a truly magical material. (Mithen 2006, 67)

The question here is why an ore that is produced in a single place appeared in all early Neolithic sites. The only answer seems to be prehistoric trade activities. At that time, obsidian trade was motivated by not only the need to produce practical tools, but also ideological factors. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain why everyone at that time was suddenly infatuated with this dark and beautiful stone. In 1966, a report on the limited production areas and cross-border trajectory of prehistoric obsidian entitled Early Cultural Contact of Obsidian and Near East attracted attention in related fields (Renfrew et al. 1966). But even if this confirms aspects of the production and dissemination of obsidian, a new research question arises: how did obsidian become the object of prehistoric magical and witchcraft practices? In other words, what are the reasons for the “stone craze” in the first agricultural communities? Just as metals became imbued with magical qualities later on, it was possible to find an explanation from the mythological manifestations of the “hierophany”. Thinking of an extraordinary substance as a godsend, primitive peoples not only associated

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it with having a sacred quality, but added all good values to it. The concept of “treasure” was therefore created and attached to a particular stone. The stone then gained extraordinary value, given that in mythology it was thought to be a gift from heaven. This belief gave birth to several myths and myth complexes manifest in the inherited literature and religious classics of ancient civilizations. In the Judaic scripture the Old Testament of the Bible, Genesis 2: 9-12 describes the immortal Eden created by God, which was marked with precious stones. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers. The name of the first is the Pishon. It is the one that flowed around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good; bdellium and onyx stone are there. (2008, 3)

Regarding the trees in the Garden of Eden, such as the tree of knowledge and the tree of life, archaeologists have found that similar symbology, often utilizing similar (or the same) motif was found elsewhere in Mediterranean civilizations. Nanno Marinatos held (2010, 147) that “on a coffin from Vassilika Anogeous, East Crete, the palm tree grows in the centre. Analogous to the biblical passage about Eden, this can be described as the “tree of life” growing in the midst of the garden (Gen. 2: 9). Its crest is surrounded by birds, and its lower leaves are surrounded by fish. The palm is thus an axis of the world with its root in the depths of the sea and its top in heaven”. The image of the cosmic tree in comparative mythology is usually divided into three parts connecting the underworld, the terrestrial world and heaven. The same motif of the cosmic mountain can be found in the description of Mount Kunlun in The Classic of Mountains and Seas: Mount Kunlun lies northwest of the capital of the mortal world under the rule of the God of the Heaven. It covers an area of 800 square li3 and rises to a height of 80,000 feet. On its top there are rice shoots which are forty feet high and five spans wide. On each side of the mountain there are nine wells and their railings are made of jade. Each side of the mountain has nine gates and at each of these gates there is a kaiming animal acting as the guard. This is the place where a hundred gods live… South of Mount Kunlun is a pool which is 2,400 feet deep. The Kaiming animal has a body as big as that of a tiger. It has nine heads, each of which has a human face. It stands on Mount Kunlun, facing eastwards. West of where Kaiming lives there are phoenixes and wonder birds. They hang snakes on their heads and tread snakes underfoot. They also hand a red snake on their breasts. North of where Kaiming lives there are shirou, the pearl tree, the patterned jade tree, the red jade tree and the never-die tree.(Wang and Zhao 2010, 250–253)

This Chinese mythological motif of the sacred mountain clearly connects “heaven” and “hell”, a point that has been discussed by both Chinese and nonChinese scholars. Here, however, one must introduce an element of nuance to the 3

The li is a traditional Chinese unit of distance, which has varied considerably over time but now has a standardized length of 500 m.

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discussion by emphasizing the inevitable link between the Chinese cosmic mountains and the jade belief motif. In addition to the fact that the railings of nine wells “are made of jade”, the so-called “pearl tree, patterned jade tree, red jade tree and never-die tree” are evidently not common plants, and can be regarded as the Chinese version of the tree of life in Eden. The names of “the red patterned jade tree” and “the red jade tree” indicate the sacredness of jade in the Chinese imagination. Sacredness and immortality in the Garden of Eden are symbolised by gold and precious stones that are the heritage of the Chalcolithic Age. Pearl is produced from seashells, and agate, a kind of gemstone in a broad sense, comes from underground mineral deposits. These are worldly mythological materials. The Chinese characters 玛瑙 (agate) share the same radical 玉 (jade), indicating that the ore in the Chinese classification system belongs to the classification “jadestone”. As a kind of chalcedony, agate is hard and colourful and, like jade, was venerated by people since ancient times. Agate utensils and decorations have emerged frequently. The ringlike pendant worn at the waist made of red agate in the Warring States Period was best known as the “Warring States Rainbow” among collectors. From prehistoric to modern times, agate has always been a precious luxury material in all states. In the first act of Lao She’s Teahouse about a wealthy family, there is a line: “Even the vinegar bottles are made of agate!”. In East Asian mythology, the deities bestowed on the earth not only jadestone and other precious stones, but also jade objects. This narrative finds expression in the myths of ancient rulers like the Yellow Emperor losing his yellow jewel, Emperor Yao encountering ten auspicious signs, Emperor Shun acquiring a jade calendar, and Emperor Yu being bestowed a black jade tablet (xuangui, 玄圭). From an archaeological point of view, the origins of gold and gemstones value in the Hebrew culture may be traced back to prehistoric obsidian mythology. Fernand Braudel (1998) listed three early towns of important prehistoric cultures in the West Asia: Gyermo, Jericho and Sattar Huayuke, all of which used obsidian resources as trade objects and created farm tools made of obsidian. Grain seeds and obsidian became the first key material cultural elements in world trade before the mining and circulation of metals. Around 9000 BC, the “embryonic period” of the Neolithic Age, nephrite and turquoise, accompanied by obsidian, appeared at the same time among the world’s first urban settlements. This gives counterevidence to the notion that only the Chinese love jade. At the time, nephrite and turquoise played a less important cultural function than obsidian. Later in Turkey, there was another city settlement of astonishing scale, known for worshipping the goddess named Çatalhöyük. Various metal ores were detected, suggesting the development and trade of obsidian, nephrite, and turquoise in the region. The British anthropologist Richard Rudgley pointed out: Covering an area of more than 20 hectares, this large Neolithic town — some, including its excavator, Jame Mellaart, have described it as a city—has been estimated to have supported a population of 7,000 people. Founded more than 8,000 years ago Catal Hiyik seems to have been a thriving-community for a thousand years or more… Among the numerous remarkable discoveries at the site is a Stone Age ‘map’ of the town, painted on the walls of one of the shrines. In the foreground of this map the characteristic

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5 The Jade Age and the Origins of Civilization … terraced housing of the town is depicted. Behind the town is an image of an erupting twinpeaked volcano spewing lava, smoke and ash. This represents an actual volcano visible from Catal Huyuk which although now extinct, is known to have been active during the Neolithic period. This volcanic mountain was the main local source of obsidian (black volcanic glass), which was highly sought after for making tools on account of its extremely sharp cutting edges. Mellaart has suggested that in Neolithic times the volcano was surrounded with a magical aura, for not only was obsidian a gift from mother earth but it was also intimately associated with fire and the underworld. Thus this painting of a prehistoric eruption is the recording not merely of a spectacular natural event but also of an event seen to have supernatural overtones. (Rudgley 1999, 19–20)

The town map of Çatalhöyük, or Catal Huyuk, 8000 years ago not only reveals the source of their obsidian, but also shows the means by which a natural phenomenon like a volcanic eruption might have acquired supernatural sacredness in mythological thinking. This effectively illustrates a source of the magical value of obsidian, serving as a classic case for understanding a precious stone mythological cosmology. Volcanic eruption, as well as the falling of meteorites, were imagined and understood as the deeds of great gods, opportunities to receive sacred things from heaven. These events would lay the foundation for the adding of sacred value to gemstones, understanding them as a hierophany. The early agricultural town society was characterized by the use and trade of certain gemstones. This gives rise to theoretical considerations about the persistence and longevity of the settlement cultures of West Asia on the eve of civilization. Subsequent excavations at the end of the twentieth century show that the architecture of Çatalhöyük has undergone at least twelve distinct reconstructions. Its culture was sustained for one thousand to two thousand years and, like the Yangshao culture in prehistoric East Asian, lasted much longer than any dynasty or kingdom in the history of civilization. Rudgley claimed: Obsidian was of great economic importance in Neolithic times, and trading in this raw material seems to have been a major factor in the size and prominence of Catal Huyuk. The mainstays of the agricultural economy of the town were the cultivation of wheat and barley and the domestication of cattle. The hunting of wild animals also played an important role in providing meat for the townspeople and had by no means been entirely supplanted by the practice of farming. The quality of the pottery, tools personal adornments, fabrics and various other types of artefacts (including the world’s earliest mirrors. made from polished obsidian) from the site shows the high levels of craftsmanship which are indicative of craft specialisation. One especially striking example of the industrial activities at Catal Hyuk is a wall painting which is clearly an imitation of a textile pattern. (Rudgley 1999, 20)

In West Asia, gemstone myths and the mining, processing and trade of precious stones directly led to the emergence of many “high cultural” elements, making the Çatalhöyük society different from other Neolithic agricultural cultural groups— instead, it was a pioneer, the first settlement in the world to make strides towards civilization. The great ancient civilizations which truly progressed from prehistoric times to the age of civilization, such as Sumer, Akkad and Babylon and Egypt, all repeated, continued and reproduced in some altered form the concept of gemstone veneration and a mythological cosmology built around it since the Neolithic Age.

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5.3 Jade Myths: The “Crazy Stone” Accompanying the Formation of Civilizations Xia Nai, a Chinese archaeologist, delivered a speech entitled “The Origin of Chinese Civilization” in Japan in 1983 in response to the debate over the key theoretical issue of whether Chinese civilization emerged in isolation or had foreign origins (1984, 100). Xia’s answer? The former. Contrary to the perspectives of the Chinese academic community, the belief that Chinese culture originated from the West has been popular for a long time in Western sinology. The former Soviet Union scholar, L. Vasilyev, published a series of works on the topic from the 1960s. He proposed that the origin of Chinese civilization is not entirely western, nor is it entirely local, but rather, that foreign influences plays a key role, none more so than the Sumerian civilization in western Asia. Through immigration and long-distance trade, elements of Sumerian culture spread to the surrounding cultures, giving birth to other ancient civilizations. As a result of this rippling effect, Chinese civilization was the last to emerge, because the spread of civilization elements took the longest time to reach remote East Asia. This process was a manifestation of gradual cultural transmission. Vasilyev’s view is largely rejected by the Chinese academic community which adheres to the view that Chinese civilization emerged independently. Xia broadly maintained this “independence” view but did not completely exclude the impact of other civilizations. His point of view can be summarized as “independent emergence though with foreign influences” (1984, 101). Xia’s study of the origin of Chinese civilization was conducted from an international perspective. He used the benchmark of the “three major indicators” of civilization generally adopted by international academics. These signs are cities, bronzes and a system of writing. In the 1980s, he probed the origin of Chinese civilization by using the Yin Ruins as the main object of his investigation, because it was the only and earliest known cultural site in China to have all three indicators evidenced. Today in the field of history, the term “civilization” is used to refer to the stage when a society undergoes the disintegration of the clan system and enters into a class-based society with state organizations. In these societies, in addition to the formation of states with their political institutions, there also emerge cities that are the centre of political (government institutions), economic (handicraft and commerce) and cultural (including religious) activities. In general, societies that achieve civilization invented writing and could use it to keep records (Peru seems to be an exception with knot rope recording), and could also smelt metal. Among these indicators, writing is of the utmost importance. The Aegean-Mino culture was the only ancient culture of Europe because it had writing. All other prehistoric cultures in Europe, although some had entered the Bronze Age, and even the Iron Age, cannot be called “civilizations”. (Xia 1984, 81)

According to this international standard, the City of Yin, the late Shang Dynasty capital, has become the only choice in the study of Chinese civilization. Summarizing the Anyang Yin Ruins’ unique cultural characteristics, Xia also pointed out: In addition to having the general characteristics of early civilizations, the Yin Ruins displays some of its own unique features. But, these cannot be used as indicators of civilization

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in general. Jadestone carving, especially finely made jade objects, is one such characteristic. There was apparently no jade present in other ancient civilizations (other than Central American civilization), yet they still deserve to be called civilizations. (Ibid., 90)

The notion that only the Chinese love jade because there was apparently no jade in other ancient civilizations is questionable. First, what exactly one means by saying “jadestone carving” and “jade objects” need to be strictly defined, because these terms are so broad that they might be said to refer to vastly different things. If one only take the jade varieties (i.e., nephrite, tremolite and serpentine jade) which the descendants of the Chinese people are familiar with as “jade” and exclude other gemstones, one will be blind to the common occurrence of a mythological cosmology based around gemstones and the role of gemstones in forming prehistoric beliefs in all civilizations. Recent archaeological discoveries reveal that obsidian is not only found in the prehistoric cultures of the western, northern, southern and central regions of the Eurasian landmass, but also in the East Asian region. It was even selected as raw material for tools and decorations as early as the late Paleolithic Age. In Chongshan Town, Helong City, Jilin Province, Chinese archaeologists discovered Paleolithic sites with a collective size of more than one million square meters in recent years and unearthed many stone tools, 90% of which are made of obsidian. In view of this site being less than 100 km from Tianchi Lake in Changbai mountain, it is speculated that the obsidian reserve here is in fact the result of the eruption of Changbai mountain (Chen et al. 2008, 2). Obsidian and lapis lazuli are not familiar to the Chinese of today, and research on the origins of civilization has neglected this aspect. From today’s international academic perspective, the difference between major civilizations in ancient times is not so much whether there were precious myths or the available technology to be able to process gemstone objects as much as it is whether the myths have been passed down, and differences of materials used in the production of precious stone objects. After all, some form of precious stone belief at the beginning of civilization is universal across various cultures and regions. Because of geographical differences, the particular gemstones that were sanctified and mythologized varies greatly, each civilization presenting a diversified development in the production of gemstone objects. In the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Cretan-Minoan, Greek-Mycenaean, and Indus River Basin civilizations, obsidian, lapis lazuli and turquoise continued to hold value into the civilized period and were highly respected by the upper class. This led to the sanctification of other beautiful coloured ores—copper, tin, lead, gold, silver—and finally resulted in mankind’s emergence into the Metal Age. In the literary traditions of all early civilizations except China, gems as valuable as gold were very rare, like lapis lazuli and turquoise. Lapis lazuli was undoubtedly the most valuable type of gemstone for many societies (Fig. 5.1). In the world’s oldest epic poem, The Epic of Gilgamesh, there are three gifts from god: “obsidian he shall [give you], lapis lazuli and gold!” (George 1999, 59). Such literary inclusions are evidence of the mythological dimension of precious stones in early civilizations, and help one to understand the process of sanctification of stones from obsidian to lapis lazuli, and then of rare metals. With the development

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Fig. 5.1 A poster from an exhibition on ancient Mexican civilizations at the Swiss Museum in 2010: a mask inlaid with turquoise, red agate, and obsidian eyes. Photographed at the University of Zurich in 2010

of civilization, the concepts of wealth and treasure also changed accordingly. The earliest sacred gemstone, obsidian, gradually gave way to the rarer lapis lazuli, which became the only stone to be as valuable as gold and is often found in the high-grade cultural relics—particularly religious works of art in the archaeological sites of the Sumerian civilization. The sculpture “Ram in a thicket”, which is exhibited in the British Museum, is representative of this. The tree is made of gold leaf. The goat has a face and legs made of gold leaf but horns, eyes and a shoulder fleece made of lapis lazuli. With the influence of Sumerian civilization on Egypt, the Egyptians also sanctified and mythologized lapis lazuli and turquoise. From the day that the treasures of world-famous Egyptian pharaoh Tutankhamun’s tomb were excavated, the gold statue inlaid with lapis lazuli and turquoise has become a symbol of ancient Egyptian civilization. A “finishing touch” for such a rare treasure is that the Pharaoh’s eyes are made of polished quality obsidian, such that the eyes are still shining after thousands of years.

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The Maya and Aztec civilizations in Central America are also known for having mythological beliefs about precious stones. The main types of local gemstone in Central America are turquoise and jadeite. Reserved in their use for the upper class, they both had a sacred and economic value. In The Ancient Maya, Sylvanus Griswold Morley maintained that the turquoise inlaid artifacts discovered in Mayan archaeological sites serves as evidence of long-distance transmission between different cultures. There are suggestions of jade mosaics in Classic-stage reliefs, and a find mask has been reconstructed from the jade pieces found in the Ruz tomb at Palenque. Examples of turquoise mosaic from the Postclassic are four discs found buried in ceremonial caches at Chichen Itza. These were not made in Yucatan, which lacks deposits of turquoise, but were brought from central Mexico, where the technique was common during the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. The first was found by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in a covered limestone jar beneath the floor of the Temple of the Chac Mool, which was later incorporated into the pyramid of the Temple of the Warriors. The backing of this disc had been made of wood which was almost rotted away. The restored disc is in the National Museum of Anthropology and History, Mexico City. There similar discs were found by the Mexican government in the buried temple under the Castillo at Chichen Itza—two in the same box with the carved jades, and the third on the seat of the Red Jaguar Throne. (Morley 1959, 414–415)

Judging from these circumstances, it is clear that jade was prized by the Mayan ruling class. The centres of their civilization were cities surrounded by the temples. This is similar to the emergence of the Sumerian cities. Take the largest city of Tikal and the use of mosaic art in the Maya civilization as an example: The outstanding architectural characteristic of Tikal is its six great pyramid-temples, the highest constructions in the Maya area. From the ground level to the tops of their roof combs, the temple measures as follows: Temple I, 155 feet; Temple II, 143 feet; Temple III, 178 feet; Temple IV, 299 feet, and Temple V, 188 feet. (Ibid., 271)

In the Chacmool temple, inside the warriors’ temple, was unearthed a famous jadeite mosaic disc. The outer rim of the disc takes the shape of fourteen petals. The inner ring is divided into eight parts. The disc was found in a stone box. It is obvious that the disc is a scared object rather than a common item. That it was found in a temple demonstrates that special jade products like this were sacred objects in religious places and were not used in daily life. What, then, could serve as the key strategic resource of a particular society, spanning a period from the late Stone Age to the early stages of civilization? The answer here is obsidian and gemstones. The former is the raw material of tool production, while the latter is the sacred material of religious worship. These sanctified substances took on a supreme spiritual manifestation, thus stimulating a great desire for them. During the emergence of the Mesopotamian civilization, long-distance trade was defined to the exchange of specific items for obsidian and gemstones. In the northern parts of Iraq, the residents assimilated the pottery culture that had developed in the southwestern part of Turkey and set up high-level pottery production. According to Fagan (1986, 498):“ The origins and evolution of complex societies have long been linked to technological innovation and to growing trade in raw materials like

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obsidian (volcanic glass used for stone tools, mirrors, and ornaments) and copper and in luxuries of all kinds”. The fact that obsidian was used to make tools is likely to cause little debate. Yet there is limited evidence that obsidian was used as a non-practical (i.e., not used as a tool) luxury in more than one ancient civilization. For example, the Aztec culture in Central America produced decorative items like masks with inlaid obsidian eyes, not unlike the obsidian masks of the ancient Egyptian civilization. Turquoise and jadeite are attractive for their dark green colour. The name of the jade snake god contains “quetzal”, a bird of the same feather colour. Feathers of the rare bird were also an important object of the luxury trade. Upon first reading of the Biography of King Mu, readers most probably will be unable to understand the purpose behind the king’s actions. Besides travelling so far to the Western Regions for the sake of jade, why would he show such an interest in bird feathers? Referring to jade myths in ancient Central American civilizations can help to shed light on this question: green of turquoise = green of jadeite = green of quetzal’s feather.

The analogy of mythological thinking allows one to establish an equivalent and mutually identifiable relationship between completely different substances, such as abstracting the appearance of the two minerals and a creature as symbols of sacred ritual activities. Through the universality of mythological beliefs about precious stones, one may find that religious needs drove the production and trade of luxuries in this period. In Chinese ancient classics there are many descriptions of the bird’s feather and similar objects, but studies are limited. “The Classic of Areas Overseas: West” in The Classic of Mountains and Seas begins with: The following is our record of the areas from the southwest corner to northwest corner overseas. Miemengniao is in the east of the kingdom of Jiexiong. This bird is green all over except that its tail is red. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 223)

The book then talks about a ritual dance of the first ruler Qi of the Xia Dynasty, describing the sacred objects on his body and in his hands, one of which is made of the bird’s feather. Mount Dayun is 2,400 feet high and lies north of the kingdom of Miemengniao. The wild land of Dale is a place where King Qi of the Xia Dynasty danced a dance called Jiudai. The king drove two dragons forward. Above him were three layers of clouds hanging above like a huge canopy. In his left hand, he grasped a feather screen; in his right hand he held a round jade ring. And a jade half-disc was hung around his waist. This land is located north of Mount Dayun. Some people say that the king danced in the wild land of Dayi. (Ibid., 223)

In ancient times, people regarded certain birds as deities. Birds’ feathers had a ritual and symbolic meaning through their connection with the supernatural. Judging from Qi’s image of holding a feather screen and jade rings, he may be seen as the main performer of ritual behavior, the wu-shaman who can communicate with heaven. As the ancient feather screen cannot be preserved to this day, the colour of the ceremonial

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bird feather is unknown. However, judging from numerous references to bluebirds in The Classics of Mountains and Seas, one might draw another connection with the colour of sapphire, building on the similar worship of quetzal’s green feathers in Central American civilizations. The book Aztec and Maya Myth (Taube 1993) discusses sacred bundles, a common feature of Central American religions and some indigenous beliefs of North American peoples. They all venerate the sacred bundles, which contain the sacred objects of particular gods. The Aztec bundles sometimes include a ‘cloak of gods’, which is said to be the token brought to the world when the gods sacrificed their life. In addition, jadeite, jewellery, snakeskin and tiger skin are among other sacred things found. These objects are collected by priests called “the spokesperson of gods”. It was believed that they can gain special power through these objects and reveal prophecies. Thus, for the Aztec people, sacred objects such as jadeite are what connected the gods and the mortal plain. They functioned not only to convey the power of the gods, but to impart the gift of prophecy upon oracles. These descriptions, in essence, conform to the universal characteristics of precious stone beliefs in the world’s major civilizations. Maya civilization is like Chinese civilization insofar as it used jade not only in sacrificial offerings but also funerals. Archaeological excavations show that jade beads or pieces were often put into the mouth of the deceased buried in the tomb. This ritual continued until the sixteenth century. Ethnographic materials also provide relevant evidence. For example, the North Pokom Maya often put a piece of jade in the mouth of the deceased. They believe that jade can absorb the human soul. When a person died, they gently rubbed his or her face with jade. “According to these records, some archaeologists believe that jade is a kind of ‘special food’ after death for the Maya, and that it can absorb the soul of the dead, and ensure that his soul is immortal” (Jiao 1998, 412). A special form of jade burial in the Western Zhou Dynasty was the jade death mask, which also appeared in the Maya civilization. Among the ruins of Tikal, buried jades were unearthed from the king’s tombs. The jade death mask is arguably the most fascinating of these. According to most archaeologists, the concept governing this behavior is the myth of the afterlife: the Maya kings are believed to be descendants of the gods, and they need to take a journey through the underworld back to heaven. Jade death masks were important tools to ensure their safe passage and regeneration. To explore the origin of this mythological view, it is necessary to trace it back to one of the most prominent of the Maya gods—Quetzalcoatl. According to Maya mythology, Quetzalcoatl is the god of the sun, the wind and the dawn, and emerges as Venus, the Morning Star, repeating the process of spiritual death and rebirth. The mask, made of green jade or turquoise, presents a humanized form of the plumed serpent god. This iconic jade mask of the sun god offers clues for interpreting the jade death mask at the king of Maya’s funeral, as well as raising new questions. Why did the dead king look like the sun god? Where did the sun god lead the dead soul?

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The name Quetzalcoatl is made up of two words: “Quetzal” refers a rare bird known for its brilliant green plumage and (green being the colour of life, which is also the symbology behind the green of the jade mask); “coatl” means snakes, or twins. The combination of “snake”, “bird” and “green” creates a name with rich mythological associations. A fifteenth century painting depicts the plumed serpent’s journey into the underworld and his celestial ascent through transformation: At the top, Quetzalcoatl passes through a curtain formed by the body of the Earth Goddess and enters the subterranean kingdom of fire. Below, he ignites a fire in the belly of the Goddess. In the centre, he undergoes rejuvenation and solarization by fire. At the bottom, he can be seen rising in the sky in his solar aspect. (Grof 1994, 22)

Scholars of comparative mythology have found a similarity between the rebirth of the plumed serpent in the Maya civilization and the journey of the pharaoh through the underworld in his sun boat in the ancient Egyptian civilization. For the dead Maya king, the jade death mask ensured that they had a smooth journey through the underworld like the plumed serpent. One may draw on these international myths to interpret funeral customs, from prehistoric jade burials to jade death masks, in the Zhou Dynasty, and then the much later jade burial suit of the Han Dynasty (Fig. 5.2). Do gemstone death masks and burial suits symbolise some kind of sun god and their travel in the underworld? It is difficult to answer this question in view of the scant narratives in ancient Chinese literature regarding this topic. But one thing is certain: certain precious stones represented eternal life, defying the boundaries of Fig. 5.2 Western Zhou Jade ornaments on funerary face covering. Photographed at the Shanghai Museum in 2009

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life and death. The purpose of the burying the dead with gemstones was to preserve the corpse. Professor Nanno Marinatos successfully interpreted the myths of journeys to the netherworld in the Mycenaean and Minoan civilization by referring to similar myths in Sumerian and ancient Egypt civilizations. Death in Ancient Egypt and the Near East entailed a difficult journey for the soul through the beyond, with a kind of paradise as its final destination. Yet, paradise has misleading connotations to the modern reader. In the second millennium BCE, the netherworld was not a single place, but rather a whole universe with diverse lands and a complex geography: mountains, rivers, and lakes. The journey of the dead was difficult and dangerous because these barriers had to be crossed. For this reason the dead might be aided by instructions in visual or textual form, so they could navigate safely through “the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveler ever return.” It will be argued here that the scenes on the Minoan coffins are topographical maps designed to guide the dead to the netherworld and show them their final destination. (Marinatos 2010, 141)

After a comparative analysis, Marinatos found that the Greek epic Odyssey also tells of a cosmic journey of life and death. Like Gilgamesh, Odysseus arrives at some kind of paradise at the edges of the world when he reaches the island of Circe “where the sun rises” (Odyssey, 12.4). Circe is related to the sun by kinship, and she is the one who directs Odysseus to the island of the sun, where the sacred cattle graze…the journey of Odysseus takes place around the cosmos and it is modeled on the Egyptian journey of the soul’s passage to the beyond. (Ibid., 143).

Marinatos has grasped the common narrative patterns present in the mythology each individual civilization by means of approaching them from a comparative crosscultural perspective. She pointed out that the images in the Minoan coffins are guides to the journey through the afterlife: gardens or groves, a sacred tree and the sun. Some scenes depict palm groves, lilies and other curling plants. One can also see the motif of the sun on a larnax from Palaikastro, next to a griffin, which is a companion of the solar goddess. These scenes depict the landscape in paradise (ibid., 144). This is different from the gloomy underworld in later Greek myths. Marinatos listed another passage in the Odyssey in which Penelope expresses the wish to die and reach the river Ocean. “Oh let the storm wind snatch me up and vanish with me down the ways of darkness to drop me where the sea runs into the circling stream of Ocean”(Odyssey, 20.63-65). The topography of the netherworld is summed up succinctly in the final book of the same epic. When the suitors of Penelope are killed, their souls have to go past the river Ocean, past the white rock, past the gate of the sun, and past the region of dreams (Odyssey, 24.1-14). …This digression into Greek myth shows us that we may be certain about the existence of a koine between the Aegean and the Near East. (Ibid., 144)

Minoan images indicate that the sun rises from the horizon between two mountains, which separate the two worlds. A unique feature of the Minoan netherworld is that many of its landscapes were imagined to be located deep in the sea. The sea surface thus acted as a border between this world and the netherworld, but the sea is unfathomable to those of this world. This netherworld lies in the depth of the sea with abundant plants, fish, and mollusks. Of the latter, the octopus is the most striking.

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A scene on the coffin from Kavrochori depicts such a world in the deep ocean. To the left, it is possible to see a palm and a bird perching on it. Below the palm is a mollusk; below the mollusk is a chariot, the vehicle that transported the dead to the netherworld (ibid., 150). It is coincidental though interesting that the words “tomb” and “womb” rhyme and have a strong connection to the cycle of birth and death (Gimbutas 2001, 55). Likewise, the ancient Chinese characters 墓 (mu, tomb) and 母 (mu, mother) are also homophones. In comparing the custom of burying the dead with jades in the Maya civilization to similar practices in ancient Chinese culture, similar mythological motives that is, to ensure the eternal life of the dead by virtue of the sanctity and magical properties of jade, are revealed. The Mayan, ancient Egyptian, Sumerian-Babylonian, Minoan and Chinese civilizations all share similarities in their mythologies, each conceptualizing a journey following a kind of sun god in their travels to the afterlife. Marinatos pointed out: “For the Minoans, the ultimate goal of the travel of the dead was the arrival at the land of the sun, which was embodied in the double axe” (2010, 148). The Chinese hero Hou Yi (后羿) and the hero in Gilgamesh race the sun to seek eternal life. If Marinatos’s interpretation is accurate and reliable, the image of the double axe is a metaphor for the rising sun, then it can be inferred that the sun motif on the Minoan larnax is conceptually similar to that of the Mayan jade mask. The person buried with jades was, with no exceptions, a member of the upper class in the Chinese and Mayan civilizations. The Minoan larnax burial was more popular, however, and not limited to the ruling group of society. In this sense the practice is more similar to the stone reliefs found in Han Dynasty tombs, a considerable number of which belonged to the middle class. Many people buried in Minoan sarcophagi appear to have been middle class. This means that painted larnax images were available to the general public as a guide to the other world. This burial tradition lasted for a long time, as is evidenced by the appearance of the same images on the pottery in later palaces. Even after the decline of the palace era, these images were still widely accepted. These images reflect a knowledge of the netherworld. If there was no codified myth, this kind of knowledge would have been difficult to spread, yet it seems widely understood. Certainly, this myth has been broadly synthesized and accepted by the palace era. Related narratives and visual imagery became standard throughout Crete, even after the collapse of the theocracy of the palace era. Another similarity between the Mayan and Chinese civilizations is their use of broken or burnt jades as sacrificial offerings at religious rituals. Jade beads and earrings were discovered in the Cerros ruins and more than 5000 pieces of jades were excavated from the Chichen Itza ruins in the Yucatan Peninsula, many of which were burnt or broken intentionally. The well of sacrifice was the centre of this Maya pilgrimage. The offerings Thompson excavated from the well are rich and varied, including jade and gold objects as well as human bones. The latter clearly suggests human sacrifice. Tozzer argued that the Mayans worshipped at the well for two main purposes: praying for rain by offering sacrifices to the rain god and using divination to foresee when the agricultural harvest would come (Jiao 1998, 416–417). There are at least two important sites in ancient Chinese civilization worthy of comparison regarding the use of sacrificial jade. One is the “ten sacrificial pits”,

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Fig. 5.3 Turquoise workshop of the Erlitou site. Photographed at the Capital Museum’s Early China Exhibition in 2009

seven of which are in the Sanxingdui ruins of Guanghan City, Sichuan, the other three in Yanting County and Wenchuan County. Most of the pits only contain buried ritual jades, but excavation of the first and second pits of Sanxingdui also revealed many bronzes and a small amount of gold, according to Sanxingdui Sacrificial Pit (Sicuan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 1999, 440–441). As for their uses, opinions vary. Some have suggested they were used for offering sacrifice to ancestral gods or the Minshan mountain gods, or that they were for the grand ceremony of worshipping heaven and earth, or even that they were cremation tombs and cellars. The other important site is the Jin State Oath site of Houma Qin village, Shanxi, excavated in 1965. One third of the oath sheets found there are made of jade, including jade gui (圭, jade tablets) and jade huang (璜, arc-shaped jade pendant). In the niche, there are numerous sacrificial jades in various forms, the materials of which include jade and white jade (Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, 2004, 428). By referring to jade use recorded in The Classic of Mountains and Seas and The Biography of King Mu (Mu Tian Zi Zhuan, 穆天子传), one can develop a new comparative approach and solve some puzzles behind these sites. One thing is clear—jade as a medium between the deities and people was a common belief among both Chinese and non-Chinese cultures. Jade use in ceremonies and burials needs to be compared worldwide. According to the above cross-cultural evidence, one might conclude that the popular concept that jade production is unique to Chinese civilization needs to be amended and supplemented. An international perspective on precious stone production and the mythological cosmologies that surround it is important to the study of the Jade Age and the origins of civilization in China, since it enables one to unveil unique jade rituals in the Chinese civilization (Fig. 5.3).

5.4 Jade Myths Driving the Birth of Civilization Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, one of today’s most popular novels, tells the story of a precious stone known as the “magic stone” or “philosopher’s stone”. Since the prehistoric era, this typical Western precious stone mythological cosmology has

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given birth to endless literary endeavours and new imaginings of these ancient ideas. According to myths and legends, the magic stone as a rare gem is hidden in the dragon’s head. American scholar David Colbert attempted to answer the following question: “What’s inside the dragon’s head?” He suggested that the stone must be taken when the dragon is alive. Otherwise it loses its hardness and will be no longer a gem. Thus, this magic stone, known as the dragon stone, becomes a means to test courage in Western literature. It is said that the kings of the East wore these magical white gems (Colbert 2002, 51). Here, Western folk imagination cleverly links Hetian jade myths to the dragon myths of the Chinese emperor. Stories of magic stones in the brains of fire-breathing dragons constitute the demonization of Chinese dragon worship and the precious stone worship in Western culture. Different precious stone myths in the East and West play an irreplaceable role in the formation of ancient ideology. A common element in the emergence of ancient civilizations is a form of precious stone belief, and concepts in which some gemstones are given sacred value (Fig. 5.4). All narratives regarding precious mystical gemstones in literature are rooted in the sacred stone worship of the prehistoric era. From the Neolithic “crazy stone” obsidian to lapis lazuli, turquoise and Hetian jade that appear during the emergence period of civilization, mythologized precious stones not only represent and embody the deities themselves, but also symbolises of immortality. Whilst they would remain as soughtafter treasures in later literature, jade mythologies played a pivotal role in shaping the culture and religions of the earliest civilizations. Its influence extended beyond the spiritual realm, impacting politics and the economy too. Sumer’s epic Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta and China’s The Biography of King Mu both describe a powerful king travelling thousands of miles away to a distant foreign country to seek a kind of gemstone absent in their homeland. Four thousand years ago, the Sumerian king sought lapis lazuli produced in Afghanistan, while three thousand years ago, the Western Zhou Dynasty King Mu sought Hetian jade from the Kunlun Mountains in Xinjiang. Whilst there are of course differences between the two, the motivations of their characters and the real life cross-regional trade, driven by precious stone myths, that underpinned these stories are strikingly similar. This indeed gave a fundamental impetus to the emergence of civilizations in West Asia and East Asia. These ancient works, which are regarded as literary objects, need to be restored to their true original

Fig. 5.4 A jade dragon pendant unearthed from a Warring States Period sacrificial pit. Photographed at the Houma Jin State Museum, Shanxi Province in 2006

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context of “mythistory”, reinterpreted with empathetic understanding and examined with multiple evidence. In this way, the historical truth hidden behind the literary representation will be gradually revealed.

Chapter 6

Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Myths and the Origins of Civilizations

6.1 The Jade Road from an International Perspective The previous chapter discussed the Jade Age from an international perspective. This chapter will focus on research into the Jade Road at a worldwide level. It shall discuss the precious stone worship practiced by the Sumerian civilization and the impact this had on other civilizations, in turn revealing that precious stone worship was a universal phenomenon in early civilizations. The key issue which needs to be addressed further is how people on the threshold of civilization, whose society was built around knowing, worshipping and utilizing various precious stones, gradually learned that metal ores can be smelted and thus progressed from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. This section will attempt to elucidate the concept of precious stone worship and the myths that arose around it, taking Sumerian lapis lazuli myths as a case study, and further explores how these mythological concepts helped shape the ancients’ belief, philosophy and behaviour, and promoted international trade and cultural dissemination, thus providing a strong impetus for the birth of all civilizations. Archaeological excavations show that in the Eurasian landmass, lapis lazuli was mainly found in Afghanistan, the Sumerian basin, ancient Egypt, Crete and the Greek peninsula. Therefore, it is obvious that precious stones played a very important role in cultural transmission from an early stage of civilization. However, because the main originators of the lapis lazuli myths, the Sumer civilization, had long been lost to history until recently, the question of how precious stones travelled the world remains largely a mystery. It was not until the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries that archaeological discoveries in the Near East revealed the early Sumerian civilization to the world. Had this not been the case, the origins of the civilizations along the Mediterranean Sea would be unknown, and our understanding of their evolution severely limited. In a similar vein, if one considers the unearthed Neolithic jade jue (玦, penannular jade ring) discovered along the Japanese islands and those jue of the same period discovered in China, one might conclude that they are evidence of an East Asian “jade © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_6

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Fig. 6.1 A jade carving of a bixie (辟邪, a mythical animal warding off evil spirits) of the Western Han Dynasty housed in the Taipei Palace Museum

road”. There is still a heated debate over whether jade jue occurred independently and whether there was any cultural transmission of jade jue (Chen 1998; Lim 2012). With more and more archaeological discoveries being uncovered, a breakthrough will no doubt soon be made. Some form of “jade/precious stone road” has been discovered at both ends of the Eurasian landmass, but they differ in the types of precious stone being transported (Fig. 6.1).

6.2 Precious Stone Myths: The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden and the Auspicious Tree in India As mentioned before, there is a prevalent belief that China is the only nation that treasures and worships jade. Yet this belief belies the truth. If one expands their understanding of “jade” to incorporate similar precious gemstone, one can see that precious stones were also valued, and even worshiped, in all of the early civilizations. However, this tradition tended not to be passed down, and the related mythological cosmologies disappeared with the loss of ancient civilizations. In viewing this situation globally, one may state that when human history emerged from the lengthy Stone Age and braved the new era of civilization, most civilizations had gone through a phase of worshipping and venerating at least some forms of gemstones. The myths surrounding, and worship of, precious stones can be found in the earliest literature and religious canons of the early civilizations. In the Old Testament of the Bible, Genesis 2: 9–12, describes the creation by the Lord of the immortal wonderland that is the Garden of Eden. It is specifically described as being marked with gems and precious stones, as quoted in Chap. 4.2. Since the account of Genesis is brief, only two holy items are recorded as being in the Garden of Eden: divine trees and treasures. The latter are subdivided into three categories: gold, resin and onyx, which are found in the land of Havilah. Though the

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scripture does not state what other precious stones are from the other three headwaters, it is mentioned in following chapters in the Old Testament. After describing the landscape of the Garden of Eden, Genesis describes the motif of the forbidden fruit: the Lord told Adam not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, or else death would follow. What, then, might be the relationship between the two special trees in the Garden of Eden? And what is the possible relationship between the two trees and the precious stones in the Garden of Eden? From the scripture itself, taken in isolation, one is given very few clues. However, if one uses motifs and comparative mythology, or applies anthropological methods, new light is shed on these questions. Chapter 28, Verse 13 in “Ezekiel” says: You were in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, and diamond, beryl, onyx, and jasper, sapphire, emerald, and carbuncle; and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings. On the day that you were created they were prepared. (2008, 1375)

The above quotation reveals much of the Hebrews’ conceptualization of gems and precious stones, of which two points are especially worth mentioning. First, jade, gems and gold were put in the same category, indicating that in prehistoric times, gold, which is now classified as metal was once classified as a type of precious stone. The ancient people’s knowledge of gold ore, of course, was based on their understanding of beautiful stones. Hence, broadly speaking, in exploring myths about gemstones one should also include myths about gold as well. Second, if one includes gold ore, the Garden of Eden has over ten types of gemstone according to the description provided in “Ezekiel”—three times as many as are mentioned in “Genesis”. The listing of these precious stones in Eden was not a show of wealth by the Hebrews, but instead served to contrast the abundance of the divine realm of Eden with the relative scarcity of the mortal world. This difference is emphasized in the statement “You have been in God’s Garden of Eden”. In short, the precious stone mythologies presented in the Old Testament are generally in line with other ancient mythological conceptualizations of such gemstones: they are symbols of sanctity and immortality. The ten identified gems in the Garden of Eden correspond with the tree of life, and this their symbolic religious meaning has a certain cross-cultural universality to it. The eighth gem listed in the Garden of Eden is turquoise, which was also worshipped in prehistoric China, South Asia, West Asia, North Africa, and Europe. An exquisite turquoise owl was also discovered in a Hongshan cultural site in Liaoning, dating back around five or six thousand years ago (Guo and Zhang 1984). It is evidence that the stone was sanctified and mythologized before the birth of civilization. Various valuable stones, including turquoise, were endowed with the power of immortality by ancient peoples. The ancient Egyptian goddess Isis was called “the goddess of turquoise” (Bayley 1990, 171); Tibetan Buddhists had the tradition of having their sacred instruments inlaid with turquoise. These examples all go to show that turquoise, being of near-universal cultural significance, was commonly used to set the boundaries between the sacred and the profane.

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Fraser (1923, 19–20), in discussing myths concerning the origin of the death, made a comparative study of the two trees planted in the middle of the Garden of Eden in light of advances in comparative mythology and hence proposed an adaptation of the original form of Genesis. He pointed out that if the serpent had not tampered with the good message given by God and had not deceived Eve, the first mother, one could have lived forever—perhaps even shedding our skin once a year like snakes, thus permanently restoring our youth. The best way to prove that the precious stones of the Garden of Eden share a similar symbological connection with immortality to the tree of life is to explore the archetype of “paradise” in Hebrew literature. A comparative analysis of the Babylonian epic Gilgamesh and the Chinese mythological narrative of Hou Yi, carried out by this author almost two decades ago, shows that both heroes attempted to seek immortal grass. This author attempted to interpret the “stone forest” imagery ascribed to the heavenly realm in the Kunlun Mountains. After comparing over ten interpretations of the myth of the stone forest proposed by other scholars, this author found that Wen Yiduo was very cautious and unwilling to engage in speculation without adequate evidence. Yet proofs could be found in the excavated tablets of foreign countries. Gilgamesh narrates that the hero enters a beautiful garden after having trodden through lengthy and dark tunnels: he went straight, as soon as he saw them, to … the trees of the gods. A carnelian tree was in fruit, hung with bunches of grapes, lovely to look on. A lapis lazuli tree bore foliage, in full fruit and gorgeous to gaze on. (George 1999, 75)

Western scholars have found an archetype of the Garden of Eden in Genesis in the Babylon epic. Yet in Gilgamesh one might also find the “real”, or original, archetype of the abode of the immortals residing in Kunlun Mountain. In this “Chinese Garden of Eden”, the forbidden fruit is now the gem, the foliage is instead the jade, and the garden is the immortal stone forest. In The Classic of Mountains and Seas, the Kunlun Mountain is portrayed as a mystical place with a pear tree, patterned jade tree, red jade tree and a “never-die” tree, among many other splendid features. These images clearly link to the idea of a “jade” or “stone” forest. Jade and other precious stones were held in incredibly high regard by the peoples of the preliterate age because, from at least the Stone Age, they had become symbols of eternal life. In putting precious stones in the mouths of the deceased before burial, these peoples hoped that their dead might live forever. Thus it would make sense that the mystical realm in which the immortal gods reside would contain vast quantities of such precious stones. The imagery of these jewel-filled forests of Gilgamesh and Eden (with its tree of life) must be understood as having evolved in the context of precious stone worship— they derive from a common mythological archetype. Any attempt to dismiss many of these described features as being solely of the heavenly realm are lacking, for other real gems are also referenced repeatedly. Taking lapis lazuli in Gilgamesh as an example: (1)

Line 160 Tablet 6 of the epic narrates what happened after the protagonist has killed the “Bull of Heaven”.

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Gilgamesh summoned all the smiths and the craftsmen, the size of the horns the craftsmen admired. Thirty minas of lapis lazuli in a solid block, two minas each their rims, six kor of oil, the capacity of both. He gave them to his god Lugalbanda, to hold oil for anointment, he took them in to hang in his chamber. (Ibid., 53)

In Sumerian mythology, this bull is called the “Bull of Heaven”; hence it is clearly a part of the heavenly world. Its uniqueness determines the immense value of its horns. The horns hold two sacred objects: lapis lazuli and gold. (2)

Line 157 of Tablet 7 of the epic tells that the Sun God says to the hero: “obsidian he shall [give you], lapis lazuli and gold!” (Ibid., 59)

Anthropological research has shown that obsidian, lapis lazuli and gold are special ores in that ancient people found and worshipped them in the Neolithic Age. The ores have three colors: black, blue (green), and yellow. The former was mostly used for making tools; the latter two gained mythical significance and evolved into “precious stones” that over time would drive the Sumerian king Enmerkar, the Chinese King Mu of Zhou and the Spanish navigator Columbus to explore for them in distant lands. With the fall of the ancient civilizations only gold has retained its great value and has entered global financial markets as still the most sought-after currency in the world. Most ancient lapis lazuli and obsidian, on the other hand, is now found in museums. Anthropological studies have demonstrated that this reverence of gold is not a universal cultural feature—many African hunting peoples have shown little to no interest in the gold in their lands. How, then, did the gold worship and accompanying myths that began in the lost civilizations of Sumer, Babylon and ancient Egypt spread to the whole world like an epidemic, and what was its route? These questions deserve further exploration. Marx’s criticism of humanity’s money worship in the past would have perhaps been quite different had he conducted a historical study of the major mythologized ores. Chinese mainland scholars have paid attention to how the aboriginal islanders describe Dutch colonists as desperately trying to prospect for gold in every river on the island. Babylon and Sumer may have been lost to history but, in their obsession with gold, Western colonists since Columbus may be regarded as loyal followers of the Sumerian civilization’s veneration of this form of material wealth. (3)

On the 8th Tablet at “the funeral of Ereshkigal” the epic mentions more than once that Gilgamesh offered precious stones as treasures, (mainly alabaster and ruby), to request that the god accept Ereshkigal, who was already dead. The holy item dedicated to this god was lapis lazuli, including “a chair of lapis lazuli… a staff of lapis lazuli…” (Ibid., 68). The ensuing issue is as follows: why were early civilizations like Mesopotamia so fond of one type of gem? Existing literary analysis does not show much interest in this point, rarely even

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(4)

touching upon it. However, important historical truths are buried beneath this particular interest and must be uncovered. Lines 216 to 218 of Tablet VIII depict a sacrificial scene: how Gilgamesh opened his gate and brought out a great table of elammaku-wood to the Sun God in the morning glow. he filled with honey a dish of carnelian. He filled with ghee a dish of lapis lazuli, he decorated … and displayed it to the Sun God. … [he displayed to the Sun] God. (Ibid., 69)

Lapis lazuli is placed on a par with red chalcedony just as it was once regarded as equivalent to gold. Both are used to make ritual vessels, which once again reveal its inherent divinity. (5)

In the line of 165 on the 11th tablet depicts the coming of Goddess Belet-ili. Then at once Belet-ili arrived, she lifted the flies of lapis lazuli that Anu had made for their courtship” O gods, let these great beads in this necklace of mine make me remember these days, and never forget them! (Ibid., 94)

It is a common motif in the myths and stories of many cultures that both gods and men swear an oath by virtue of a sacred object. In this case, the goddess swears by the jewelled beads on the necklace. A potential echo of this motif is found in the Latin idiom “jewel of Jupiter”, which refers to Jupiter holding a precious stone and making an oath in Roman mythology. These five examples sufficiently demonstrate that lapis lazuli was, to the Sumerian and Babylonian peoples, no ordinary jewel, but was instead a sacred item with divine connotations. Lapis lazuli is often juxtaposed with ruby, gold, etc., in literary works. It was even given as an offering to deities—the God Anu made his necklace of lapis lazuli. In their essence, the lapis lazuli and ruby trees in the ancient epic poems of western Asia are related to the broader mythological concept of the “jewelled tree of paradise”. To this end, Theodor Gaster, author of The Old Testament Myths, Legends, and Customs (1969, 335), provided a wealth of supplementary annotations to Fraser’s Old Testament Folklore, citing five different cultural examples from the works of Stith Thompson. Due to limitations of space, the discussion here will be restricted to the Indian epic which has a close relationship with ancient Chinese literature. The references used are taken from the Chinese translation of the book Ramayana by Ji Xianlin (1982, 306) with some keywords quoted their original Sanskrit. Verse 39, Section 42 in “The monkey kingdom or Kishkinda kanda” of the Ramayana mentions the so-called mythological plant that is the gold lotus and vaid¯urya leaves, an image of which is strikingly similar to that of the holy lotus in Chinese culture. The primary meaning of vaid¯urya in Sanskrit is “lapis lazuli”. Based on the Sanskrit and English dictionary compiled by Monier-Williams, there are altogether ten Sanskrit terms for lapis lazuli, with the first three being vaid¯urya, vid¯urajam and n¯ılopala. The first two are synonyms. The third one, n¯ılopala, means

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sapphire. Its variant is n¯ılotpala, which means lotus. From the semantic system of morphemes, the color of lapis lazuli, without doubt, is dark blue. Verses 41 to 45 of Section 42 of the Ramayana mention different types of precious stone, which fall into four categories: pearl, gold, mani and vaid¯urya. The first two are white and yellow respectively, but what about the colors of the latter two? According to the Sanskrit, vaid¯urya is lapis lazuli, hence its colour should be identified as dark blue. Later, when people manufactured artificial glazed glass, they stained it with different colors. The colour of the mani gem, according to the mani uncovered in the Dunhuang fresco, created during the Tang Dynasty, is also dark blue. The combination of gold and dark blue colors is also evident in much religious architecture and Buddhist images. Once the material and colour of the glazed glass and mani gems used can be confirmed, one can start to identify potential cross-references in literature, particularly descriptions of dark blue colours used in Buddhist statues, architecture and paintings. Volume 9 of Clever and Foolish Sutra—“Prince Edward in the Dragon Palace” (The Taish¯o Tripit.aka—the Chinese Buddhist canon: 410) narrates the story of Ruhai seeking a treasure. It describes vividly and accurately that the mani gem and glazed glass mountain are of the same colour—dark blue. It is quite evident that the sacred lapis lazuli has a history of over four or five thousand years in west Asia and south Asia, but its history in China is only about two thousand years (cf. Luan 2008, 65; Xu 1989, 330). Although it is not as well-known as Hetian jade in China, it distinguishes itself through the uniqueness of its sky blue or sea blue coloration. It has acquired mythological epithets in Chinese language as jinjing (金精, gold essence) or jingao (金膏, gold grease) because of its gold sparkle dots. It has been incorporated into the myth of the “Chinese elixir”, and has become a noble colour because it is said to be the same as Buddha Sakyamuni’s hair. Its importance and mythological status had spread widely in literature by the Middle Ages. In the annotations of The Biography of King Mu, Guo Pu wrote that jingao, like yugao (玉膏, jade grease) is the natural flow of essence. It is obvious that Guo Pu’s explanation intends to draw on known knowledge (or received wisdom one might say) to explain new knowledge. He compared this to the well-known myth of yugao in The Classic of Mountains and Seas. As elixirs in myths, exotic jingao (or jinjing) and local yugao were often used by the literati in their works to create literary parallels. Similar to imagery portrayed in Sumerian and Babylonian literature, the jewelled trees of the Indian paradise portrayed in Ramayana are also a metaphor for the tree of life. Their eternal flowering reveals the fundamental differences between jewelled trees and natural plants: the former’s flowers never fade, symbolizing immortality; the latter’s grow and die each year. Lapis lazuli leaves are the counterpart of the lotus flower, both symbolizing immortal life—its colour a dark blue. The 49th and 50th chapters in the fourth book of Ramayana mention two mythic trees respectively—a gold tree in lapis lazuli (mosaic) made of bonsai basin, and a gold palace with a silver house, its golden window made of mani. Such a colour combination is itself a religious message expressed through the language of colour. The mani, or mani gem, developed from lapis lazuli as blue Buddha beads, is a religious association that

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draws on (and in some senses reconstructs) far more ancient practices of venerating precious stones that were universal across India. According to Ding Fubao’s Great Dictionary of Buddhism (1991, 2562), mani, also called moni, is a general term for gems; it is a wish-granting gem; it is a gem that is free from dirt; if mani beads are cast into muddy water, the water will instantly be turned clear. The mythologized mani has been imbued with the supernatural powers of religious cleansing and wish granting. Those functions may be regarded as the manifestations of the basic symbolic association of precious stone myths—immortality. Meanwhile, the power of wish granting is absent in Mesopotamian literature. A variety of dazzling jade trees in China’s Kunlun mythical realm do not show any prominent association in this regard either. This shows that it is unique of the vivid reconstruction of gemstone myths in the Indian imagination. A closer reading of The Classic of Mountains and Seas reveals that the motif of immortality is represented many times. There are two kinds of immortality: one is of natural immortality; the other is willed or man-made immortality. In “The Classic of Areas Overseas: South”, there are people with eternal life. In “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: South” there is a nation which never dies. In “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: West”, “there are people who have three faces. They are the descendants of King Zhuanxu. They have three faces and one arm, and never die” (Wang and Zhao 2010, 299). All of these are examples of natural immortality. Man-made eternal life is represented by the application of special elixirs. These can extend a person’s life forever, and can also bring dead people to life. According to “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: West”, a kind of mysterious plant grows on an immortal mountain which can make people live forever. Tao Yuanming, a poet of the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317–420) in his poem of “Reading the Classic of Mountains and Seas” wrote: There is another mountain called the Mount of Cloud and Rain where there is a tree called pomelo. When King Dayu cut down trees there, he found on red stones there are pomelos. They have yellow trunks, red branches and green leaves. The host of gods and goddess come here to make celestial medicine. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 285)

The three-color herbal medicine, made up of yellow trunks, red branches and green leaves, is another archetypal elixir, like the evergreen jade tree, an immortal tree found in the mythic Kunlun realm. Efforts to seek immortality have been increasingly intense from the time of King Wei of Qi, King Xuan of Qi to Qin Shi Huang, and have subsequently been ridiculed by later generations. However, this did not affect people’s longing for it. The object that they sought earnestly transformed from natural plants to artificial elixirs over many years (Ye 1991). In Indian epics the Sanskrit word for lapis lazuli is vaid¯urya. It was rendered as 琉璃, 瑠璃, 吠琉璃 or 璧流离, through the Buddhist scriptures, in traditional Chinese (Liu 1984, 212). The radical 玉of the two Chinese Characters琉 璃 (liuli) demonstrates the way in which these exotic materials imported from the western regions were understood, adopted and incorporated by the Chinese jade mythological-cosmology tradition.

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The Chinese term琉璃 (liuli) has three meanings. The first is a coloured gemstone from Central Asia. The second is coloured glaze. The third is glass. The first one points to the natural object lapis lazuli, and the latter two man-made chemical objects. Researchers need to distinguish between the subtle differences so as not to get lost in the accounts about them in ancient classics. The official history books record lapis lazuli myths. According to The Book of Song (Song Shu, 宋书), liuli, as an auspicious sign, occur when the emperor does not cover his mistake. Myths surrounding lapis lazuli from the west were combined with the Confucian myths about auspicious jade, building a connection between the sage king and sacred objects. What is the relationship among the three substances that liuli refers to? As a type of precious stone, its main area of production is Afghanistan, but its mythical cultural roots lie in the Sumerian civilization. As glaze and glass, it was invented by the Mesopotamians and Egyptians as a substitute for lapis lazuli. The British archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes commented on the invention of glaze and glass, noting that while Marxist history held that economic structures determine cultural consciousness, the emergence of glass production is a contrary example of a purely aesthetic impetus that led to important economic progress (Hawkes 1973, 365). Hawkes, however, overlooked Marx’s discussions of the reaction of consciousness to matter, of the superstructure to the economic base. A “purely aesthetic impetus” explanation for ancient peoples’ fascination with precious stones is questionable. The Sumerians, for instance, favoured lapis lazuli because of its deep mythological significance, not solely for its aesthetic beauty. The following section will explore this relationship through an analysis of Sumerian literature.

6.3 Historical Information in Literature: Sumerian Epics and the Archetype of the Garden of Eden Historical sociologists have proposed the need to distinguish between explicit and implicit information in historical data and emphasize the importance of identifying implicit information. Recent historical anthropological research is particularly concerned with the implicit information embedded in literary works. Though literary studies, under the modern system of discipline division, is considered a field in its own right, cross-disciplinary approaches that integrate it into historical and cultural research have proven very successful. Likewise, the unique perspective offered by comparative mythology, as skilfully utilised by academics such as Max Müller and Dumezil, has the potential to strengthen historical analyses. Were Hegel, Marx and the scholars of the Doubting Antiquity school correct in their view that myth is merely literary fantasy? Or is it the case, as has more recently been suggested by scholars such as Eliade and Dumezil, that they represent an assemblage of ancient historical records and legends? The former view was prevalent among nineteenth century scholars. By the late twentieth century, however, understandings of “mythology” had altered radically in light of advances in new disciplines such

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as anthropology, archaeology and the study of folklore. Today it is understood that although myths cannot not be regarded as historical facts, they often give clues about real historical events. Heinrich Schliemann, a German-American adventurer inspired by Homer’s epics, famously excavated the ruins of Troy and, whilst his methods were often destructive, he did succeed in helping bridge the gap between literary narrative and archaeological evidence. George Smith, meanwhile, deciphered the myth of the great flood in Babylon from a cuneiform tablet and in doing so discovered the mythological archetype that preceded Noah’s Ark of the Old Testament. The success of these efforts not only greatly inspired scholars of myths and legends to seek “real” follow-up work, but generated brand-new research areas such as the “archaeology of myths and legends” and “biblical archaeology”, in turn opening exciting excavation opportunities. Since the twentieth century, scholars have given a more positive explanation as to whether the Garden of Eden, described in the myths of the Old Testament and Genesis, has a realistic geographical basis. Earlier research tended to search for an earlier archetype of the Garden of Eden in the southern Persian Gulf of Sumer (Cornfeld 1976, 5–7). However, research in recent years has identified it as originating east of Sumer, in the area to the east of the Zagros Mountains. Line 215 on the eighth tablet of Gilgamesh speaks of large altars made of wood from the elammakuwood tree (George 1999, 69), which clearly shows that there were close cultural and commercial ties between Sumer and Elam in Central Asia. Cultural anthropologists view the Elamcivilization as a transit post for trade links between Egypt, Sumer and the Indian civilization. Vere Gordon Childe, in his work The Most Ancient East: The Oriental Prelude to European Prehistory, mentioned the archaeological diggings in the ancient capital of the Elam kingdom show a close similarity between those excavated in the Susa culture and those in the ancient Egyptian culture (1928). Yet in the region of Asia’s prehistoric culture, they were local goods, since the impact of this region has long been projected to Syria. Hence it is justifiable to regard the Susa culture as the second phase of Egyptian culture. However, one may wonder, in such cultural encounters between Egypt and Susa, what role did the Sumerian civilization play. A recently discovered literary work entitled Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta, composed over four thousand years ago, presents a positive answer to this question. The epic tale tells the story of the Enmerkar kingdom. In it, the king of Enmerkar decides to go to the Aratta kingdom, which lies in the east of Uruk, to seek luxury goods—gold and lapis lazuli. His initial intention was to establish bilateral trade ties and to secure a supply of Aratta’s special stone—lapis lazuli—in exchange for farm produce like wheat. However, his request was refused. Then King Enmerkar sent a powerful magician to attack Aratta and eventually forced the king to surrender and hand over the precious lapis lazuli to him. Based on the account given in the epic, Aratta is to the east of Uruk. There was a vast distance between the two states. In order to get there, Enmerkaians had to climb over seven mountains. From the description given in the epic, it is plausible that the kingdom of Aratta was not an imagined nation. In the Sumerian civilization, lapis lazuli was a highly sought-after substance because it was not locally produced. Its origin was in the Afghan area.

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Hence scholars assume that Aratta either was, or is representative of, an ancient state of Afghanistan. David Rohl (1998), an English archaeologist, claimed that the geographical location of Aratta is related to the location of the Garden of Eden in the Bible. He agreed with the Assyrian scholar Henry Sagessi’s proposal that Aratta was in fact the Sumerians’ ancestral land. Rohl remains convinced that the Aratta depicted in Sumerian literature not only existed as a real kingdom, but also acts as a literary archetype from which the Garden of Eden developed in later Hebrew literature. Seeking further evidence, he organized an expedition team and led them to the Kurdish and the Iranian plateau. Following the route of the Uruk envoys to Aratta, they journeyed on the mountainous road via the so-called “Seven High Mountains” and finally reached the Miyandoab plain, which they identified as the location of the ancient Aratta. Beyond the expedition itself, he also even hypothesized that the Sumerian people, based on the pre-historic pottery trade routes, originated from the Zagros Mountains, in modern Armenia. According to this understanding, the first chapters of the Old Testament reflect the great exodus of the ancient peoples, living in 5000 BC, from the eastern mountainous regions to the Mesopotamian plain. This may sound rather odd or far-fetched, but this interpretation is well grounded. The Hebrew people thought their ancestors were Sumerians. From the extant Sumerian human sculptures in the Baghdad Museum, it seems obvious that there are at least two Sumerian archetypal human forms: one is a longand curly-haired man with a long beard; the other is beardless, round-faced and bald. Hence, one can posit that in the Sumerian civilization there was not just one single ethic group, but that the civilization was instead built upon migration and ethnic integration. Little wonder, then, that the Emesh and Enten tale in Sumerian literature and the story of Cain and Abel in Old Testament show remarkable similarities in their depiction of the disputes between farmers and headsmen. Rohl also cited Professor Samuel Noah Kramer, one of the world’s leading Assyriologists and a world-renowned expert in Sumerian history and language, to give phonological evidence that Sumer is in fact the word “Shumer” in the cuneiform text, which is similar to the name of the eldest son of Noah, Shem. “Shumer” is the name of a place that was later designated as the ancestor of the people who had been resettled after the destruction of the ancient city by the great flood of Mesopotamia. To some extent, the origin of the Sumerians and that of the Israelites are intertwined. In terms of the physical evidence for this great migration, the advanced ceramics of the Ubaidian culture were regarded as the creation of the Sumerians, who then brought them into Mesopotamia. After the creation of civilized city-states, this pottery style continued to be popular for a thousand years. These are the general views of David Rohl based on his research on Sumerian literature. However, given the scope and complexity of the historical issues he is tackling, his argumentation is far from being perfect. One of the main problems is that the work Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta is about the desperate struggle for precious stones like lapis lazuli, gold and silver, and other strategic resources between the Sumerian city-states and Aratta. David Rohl’s analysis ignores the theme of the work. Instead, he focused on the geographical trade routes between the two states. To make his statement that the Sumerians

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originated from Aratta more convincing, he would do well to confirm whether this area had lapis lazuli. If not, then he should reveal the cultural and trade ties between these two areas in greater detail Otherwise, the Sumerian work Enmerkar and the lord of Aratta is just a piece of literary work and does not include much in the way of historical evidence. In addition, in order to prove that Sumerians and Hebrews shared the same cultural heritage one must provide more than a few phonological similarities. Ideally, archaeological evidence is needed to back this claim. The myths present in Old Testament and the conception of the tree of life are indeed influenced by Sumerian literature, but the Old Testament does not seem to express a veneration for lapis lazuli in the way that the Sumerians texts do. Homer’s epic and the Bible are arguably the most influential works of literature in Western history. Reinterpreting them with reference to new archaeological discoveries seems to be an enduring ambition in academic research. In recent years similar works have been published such as Jesus: the last Pharaoh and Jesus in India, which led to intense controversy about what can be deemed “scientific archaeology” and “pseudo-archaeology” (cf. Fagan 2006). However, one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater and ignore the potential of all innovative research because some of it has proven bad. If one has more channels to verify and test new evidence and hold specialized seminars and discussions, the truth hidden behind the myth narrative may gradually become clearer and a new understanding might be achieved. One of the most noteworthy aspects is the systematic understanding and reinterpretation of new physical material brought about by archaeological discoveries. Some successful works in this regard are American archaeologist Paul MacKendrick’s The Greek Stones Speak: The Story of Archaeology in Greek Lands (1983), Babylon Myth and Reality by I. L. Finkel and M. J. Seymour (2008), and Homeric Seafaring by Samuel Mark (2005). Based on the archaeological discoveries dating back to the Aegean prehistoric maritime culture, Samuel Mark analysed the description of the ships and seafaring in Homer’s epic. Using both textual and physical evidence, the author posits that Homer’s epic was probably written between 750 and 713 BC. In the third chapter he even estimated the profitability of Greek maritime trade. This brings a new interdisciplinary dimension to the old paradigm of pure literary and rhetorical study of the epic.

6.4 Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Myths and Their Creation This section will discuss the lapis lazuli motif in Samuel Noah Kramer’s Sumerian Mythology: Study of Spiritual and Literary Achievement in the Third Millennium B.C. (1944), which reveals how the earliest civilized city-states were made sacred through lapis lazuli myths. (1)

The composition of the universe: Lapis Lazuli Sky

The Sumerian expression for “universe” is an-ki, literally meaning “heaven-earth”, and in this way the Sumerian people divided the cosmos. Heaven consists of the

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sky and the space above the sky, which is called the “great above”; here dwell the sky-gods. Earth consists of the surface of the earth and the space below, which is called the “great below”; here dwell the underworld or chthonic deities. In terms of the organization of heaven, the relatively little mythological material available to date may be sketched as follows: Nanna, the moon-god, the major astral deity of the Sumerians, is born of Enlil, the air-god, and his wife Ninlil, the air-goddess. Nanna, the moon-god, is conceived as travelling in a gufa across the heavens, “thus bringing light to the pitch-dark lapis lazuli sky” (Kramer 1961, 41). In terms of the metaphorical use of lapis lazuli in this mythical narrative, the dark blue colour of the precious stone was originally considered by the ancient Sumerians as the colour of the night sky, and extended as the true colour of the whole celestial body. Heaven is the divine world, and the true nature of the sky thereby gains divine value. Hu Zhonggong (?- c. 1266), a Chinese poet of the Song Dynasty, in his poem about the mid-autumn moon also adopted the metaphor of coloured glaze, that is, a lapis lazuli colour to depict the clear night sky. This analogy echoes a much older mythological way of thinking. For the poet this was merely a poetic flourish. Yet in ancient civilizations, this was a true belief. (2)

Nanna’s journey to Nibru: the lapis lazuli quay—the quay of Enlil

Nibru became the spiritual centre of Sumer in the third millennium BC. Its patron saint was Enlil, the main god of the Sumerian pantheon; his temple, Ekur, was the most important in the region. The blessing of Enlil guaranteed the prosperity of other cities in Sumer, such as Eridu and Ur. In order to be blessed, the patron saints of these cities need to come with a gift to Nibru and to pay religious homage to the gods and the temple. The following tale describes how the moon god Nanna, also called Sin and Ashgirbabbar, the patron saint of Ur, travels from Ur to Nibru. It begins with the account of the glory of Nibru and is followed by a description of Nanna’s determination to make pilgrimage to his father’s city, so he places all kinds of plants and animals into his round boat. Nanna and his ship called at five ports before finally reaching Nibru. At the lapis lazuli quay, the quay of Enlil, Nanna-Sin drew up his boat, At the white quay, the quay of Enlil, Ashgirbabbar drew up his boat, On the . . . of the father, his begetter, he stationed himself, To the gatekeeper of Enlil he says: “Open the house, gatekeeper, open the house, Open the house, O protecting genie, open the house, Open the house, thou who makest the trees come forth, open the house, O . . ., who makest the trees come forth, open the house, Gatekeeper, open the house, O protecting genie, open the house”. (Ibid., 48)

After father and son met and feasted together, Nanna pleaded to his father Enlil for blessings. Enlil accepted his son’s request, gave him all kinds of blessings and

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immortality, and let him return to Ur. The lapis lazuli quay is likely an invented location and cannot be expected to have any realistic basis. Enlil was the highest authority of the Sumerian faith. The other gods who would like to see him also needed to land at the lapis lazuli quay. The lapis lazuli in myths such as this is broadly representative of the gods, as well as the divine blessings. Borrowing a term from comparative religious studies, it can be called a typical hierophany. (3)

Emesh and Enten—Enlil’s Selection of a Farmer God: the Son of the God’s Choice

This myth is the closest to the biblical story of Cain and Abel, which is worthy of comparison, although this Sumerian narration ends with a reconciliation rather than a murder. It consists of over 300 lines. Only about half of them are complete. The contents of the poem are reconstructed as follows: Enlil, the air-god, has set his mind to bring forth trees and grain and to establish abundance and prosperity in the land. For this purpose, two cultural beings, the brothers Emesh and Enten, are created, and Enlil assigns to each specific duties. Enten caused the ewe to give birth to the lamb, the goat to give birth to the kid, Cow and calf he caused to multiply, much fat and milk he caused to be produced, In the plain, the heart of the wild goat, the sheep, and the donkey he made to rejoice, The birds of the heaven, in the wide earth he had them set up their nests. The fish of the sea, in the swampland he had them lay their eggs, In the palm-grove and vineyard he made to abound honey and wine, The trees, wherever planted, he caused to bear fruit, The furrows . . ., Grain and crops he caused to multiply, Like Ashnan (the grain goddess), the kindly maid, he caused strength to appear. Emesh brought into existence the trees and the fields, he made wide the stables and sheepfolds, In the farms he multiplied the produce, The . . . he caused to cover the earth, The abundant harvest he caused to be brought into the houses, he caused the granaries to be heaped high. … Emesh bent the knees before Enten, Into his house he brought . . ., the wine of the grape and the date, Emesh presents Enten with gold, silver, and lapis lazuli, In brotherhood and friendship, happily, they pour out libations, Together to act wisely and well they determined. In the struggle between Emesh and Enten, Enten, the steadfast farmer of the gods, having proved greater than Emesh, . . . O father Enlil, praise! (Ibid., 50–51)

The implied historical and cultural information embedded in the narrative suggests that the Sumerian city-state was established on the basis of irrigation agriculture, and

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needed the support of trade brought by the mobility of the external nomadic cultures in order to obtain necessary luxuries and the supplies of raw materials to carry out their religious purposes. The context in which these Sumerian myths were codified is quite different to that in which the Hebrew canon formed—the latter in a society based on animal husbandry. It is obvious that the raw materials for luxuries which bear religious meaning like gold, silver, bronze, lapis lazuli, etc. were all dependent on imports. Thus, it was a good choice to have the nomads outside the city-state act as direct or indirect suppliers or transport intermediaries of foreign trade goods. This may be the cultural implication in the above epic. (4)

Creation of Pickax: Holy Instruments of Gold and Precious Stones Created by the Gods

This poem consists of 108 lines and is practically complete, although some passages still remain obscure. It begins with a long introduction. The poem is of great significance for understanding Sumerian ideas about the creation and organization of the universe. The lord, that which is appropriate verily he caused to appear, The lord whose decisions are unalterable, Enlil, who brings up the seed of the land from the earth, Took care to move away heaven from earth, Took care to move away earth from heaven. In order to make grow the creature which came forth, In the “bond of heaven and earth” (Nippur) he stretched out the . . . He brought the pickax into existence, the “day” came forth, He introduced labor, decreed the fate, Upon the pickax and basket he directs the “power.” Enlil made his pickax exalted, His pickax of gold, whose head is of lapis lazuli, The pickax of his house, of . . . silver and gold, His pickax whose . . . is of lapis lazuli, Whose tooth is a one-horned ox ascending a large wall. … The pickax and the basket build cities, The steadfast house the pickax builds, the steadfast house the pickax establishes, The steadfast house it causes to prosper. (Ibid., 52–53)

The pickaxe made of gold and lapis lazuli created by the gods is not a secular tool, but a sacred item which stands for his will towards freedom and his glory. (5)

The journey of water-god to Nippur: the sea-house of silver and lapis lazuli

Eridu was one of the oldest and most venerated cities in Sumer. It now lies buried under the mound of Abu-Shahrain. Kramer speculates a thorough excavation of this important site would greatly enrich our knowledge of Sumerian civilization,

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especially from a spiritual point of view. According to a Sumerian legend, it was the oldest city in Sumer, the first of the five cities founded before the flood. The water-god Enki, also named Nudimmud, builds his “sea-house” using two luxuries: silver and lapis lazuli. After the water of creation had been decreed, After the name hegal (abundance), born in heaven, Like plant and herb had clothed the land, The lord of the abyss, the king Enki, Enki, the lord who decrees the fates, Built his house of silver and lapis lazuli; Its silver and lapis lazuli, like sparkling light, The father fashioned fittingly in the abyss. … Enlil says to the Anunnaki: “Ye great gods who are standing about, My son has built a house, the king Enki; Eridu, like a mountain, he has raised up from the earth, In a good place he has built it. Eridu, the clean place, where none may enter, The house built of silver, adorned with lapis lazuli, The house directed by the seven “lyre-songs,” given over to incantation, With pure songs . . . , The abyss, the shrine of the goodness of Enki, befitting the divine decrees, Eridu, the pure house having been built, O Enki, praise!” (Ibid., 62–63)

From the wording of the God Enlil, to give blessing, the house built of silver and lapis lazuli is not an ordinary one, but a place for divine decrees, and a symbolic place for believers. Why does lapis lazuli have such a lofty association with gold and silver? In Enlil’s line about divine decrees, he gives his authoritative and most complete explanation. (6)

Creation of Man: Enlil, the air-god

Based on the Sumerian myth of creation, Kramer summed up five core concepts of Sumerian cosmogony. The fourth one is about Enlil, the air god. Enlil, the air-god, now found himself living in utter darkness, with the sky, which may have been conceived by the Sumerians as made of pitch-dark lapis lazuli, forming the ceiling and walls of his house, and the surface of the earth, its floor. He therefore begot the moon-god Nanna to brighten the darkness of his house. The moon-god Nanna in turn begot the sun-god Utu, who became brighter than his father. (Ibid., 74)

The lapis lazuli sky of Sumerian mythology is comparable to the jade palace in Chinese myths. Due to the dark colour of lapis lazuli, the Sumerians need a luminous body to shine, while in Chinese myths the sun has been compared to a golden crow and the moon to a rabbit of jade. The lapis lazuli celestial body in Sumerian civilization

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is personified in Enlil, as the jade celestial body personified in Chinese civilization is the jade emperor. The netherworld of Ianna: lapis lazuli accessories of the goddess

(7)

Ianna is the Sumerian goddess of light, love and life, whose status is equal to Hera in Greek mythology, the most revered goddess. Myths describe her experience of descending to the netherworld. She has seven divine decrees when passing through seven gates of the netherworld. As she passes through each of the gates, these decrees are removed. The seven divine decrees she fastened at the side, She sought out the divine decrees, placed them at her hand, All the decrees she set up at (her) waiting foot, The shugurra, the crown of the plain, she put upon her bead, Radiance she placed upon her countenance, The... rod of lapis lazuli she gripped in (her) hand, Small lapis lazuli stones she tied about her neck, Sparkling... stones she fastened to her breast, A gold ring she gripped in her band, A... breastplate she bound about her breast, All the garments of ladyship she arranged about her body, ... ointment she put on her face. … Upon her entering the third gate, The small lapis lazuli stones of her neck were removed. “What, pray, is this?”. “Extraordinarily, O Inanna, have the decrees of the nether world been perfected, O Inanna, do not question the rites of the nether world.” … Upon his entering the Ekur, the house of Enlil, Before Enlil he weeps: “O father Enlil, let not thy daughter be put to death in the nether world, Let not thy good metal be ground up into the dust of the nether world, Let not thy good lapis lazuli be broken up into the stone of the stone-worker, Let not thy boxwood be cut up into the wood of the wood-worker, Let not the maid Inanna be put to death in the nether world”. (Ibid., 88–89)

As described in the above myths, lapis lazuli and precious metals are symbols of Enlil. To the goddess, they represent the divine will. To pass through the seven gates of the netherworld, all articles must be stripped off, because all the things that hold value in the human world are not worth a thing in the netherworld. The above seven cases of Sumerian mythology demonstrate that the divine value of the precious stone evolved from the core concept of the lapis lazuli sky. It was then used for various religious occasions: pantheon building, as residence for gods, the

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accessories of gods, the gift of gods’ blessings, as a symbol of divine will, etc. There is a close similarity between Sumerian mythology and Chinese mythology in this respect, whereas in the case of Chinese myths jade has been sanctified (Ye 2010c). Due to geographical restrictions, the impact of Chinese jade culture and its myths have only been felt in neighbouring East Asian countries like Japan and Korea. Its influence was not projected to the Middle East, whereas Sumerian lapis lazuli myths influenced beliefs as far as Egypt, Akkadia, Babylon, Persia, Hittite, Phoenicia, Crete and Greece, then beyond the Mediterranean to (later) Islam and India. Sumerian mythology is key to understanding cultural links between the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa. With respect to the origin of lapis lazuli worship in Sumerian myths, modern archaeology has provided abundant chronological evidence as to when it began (Scarre 2009; Bourke 2009). Looking at the evidence, an outline of the history of precious stone myth belief in the Near East can be roughly divided into five phases. (1) (2) (3)

(4) (5)

About 7000 BC at the site of Çayönü Tepesi (in today’s Turkey) the earliest use of metals, i.e. forged natural copper ornaments were found. About 6000 BC at the site of Kuran Mound (in today’s Iran) obsidian and marble wares were found. About 4000 BC at the site of Tell al-‘Ubaid (in today’s Iraq), 80 tombs of nobles were found. Gold and gem ornaments were first discovered, such as gold-leaf ornaments, lapis lazuli beads, etc. The number and raw materials of the beads were extraordinary. In each tomb there were about 25,000 beads. This shows that there existed large-scale production of luxuries. About 3250–3000 BC on the 4th and 5th layers of the Uruk site the earliest cylindrical seal of lapis lazuli appeared. About 3000 to 2400 BC in the early phase of the Sumerian civilization (in today’s Iraq) a large amount of lapis lazuli relics was unearthed in temples, palace ruins and high-ranking tombs. The gold and lapis lazuli ornaments were regarded as top grade Sumerian religious art.

In the above five phases, it seems evident that the recognition and use of metal ores preceded those of precious gems, which marks the beginning of the process of sanctification. The third stage is the crucial phase for the genesis of precious stone myths. Archaeological discoveries revealed that unearthed precious articles, mostly beads, fall into 10 categories, including gold and ivory. The production of luxury goods is accompanied by the spread of the worship of sacred objects. According to Ancient Inventions (James and Thrope 1995), the highly valued materials of Sumer are gold and precious stones as evidenced by sacred objects excavated by Leonard Wooley from a queen’s mausoleum in the Ur city-state site. Peter James believed that the cultural exchange among the earliest civilizations via the gem road which linked Europe and Asia goes beyond our knowledge of the Silk Road. As James argued, the earliest artisans in Liaoning had to travel westwards at least 1000 miles to reach the nearest jade mine. This implies that the raw materials used in making Hongshan jades were from the western region of China. This judgment is inaccurate. So far, one thing is certain, namely that Hongshan jades are not made

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of Hetian jade. Even Xiuyan (岫岩) jade is not necessarily the source material of the Hongshan jades. On April 19, 2012, a symposium titled “Time and Space— Hongshan Culture Jade Exhibition” was held in Beijing, at which Guo Dashun, the former director of the Liaoning Provincial Archaeological Research Institute presented his research, articulating that the source material of the Hongshan jades comes from the local river beds, instead of Mount Xiuyan. This author thinks that the Jade Road in East Asia was not fully developed until Hetian jade of the Qijia and Longshan cultures entered the Central Plain.

6.5 The Dissemination and Influence of Sumerian Lapis Lazuli Mythology The earliest city-states appeared in the region near the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. This was not as a result of divine will, nor a coincidence. The location is a transport artery and intersection between the three continents of Europe, Africa, and Asia. This trade network allowed goods from various parts of the world to be carried to Sumer, Akkadia, and Babylon, and meanwhile enabled the material and spiritual products of the Mesopotamian civilization to be transmitted to other places. Research shows that the long-distance trade to Sumer could not have been carried out by independent merchants. Instead, it was carried out by quasi-institutions and organizations, likely some form of professional merchants associations. “The merchants in each city-state belonged to one or more merchant’s associations (damgar). In most city-states the decentralized nature of political power encouraged the development of intercity trade as an independent enterprise. In territorial states, government control of long-distance trade and of exotic goods generally was important source of power for rulers” (Triger 2003, 342).. Though the Sumerian government did not dispatch clergymen to preach in foreign countries, lapis lazuli worship accompanied by ancient religious beliefs and myths spread to the adjacent and eventually far-away foreign states. Based on known historical facts and archaeological discoveries one now knows that “Mesopotamian merchants established trading posts near foreign towns in what is now Turkey and perhaps also in Iran and around the Persian Gulf” (Ibid., 343). For the first time, lapis lazuli artwork appeared in the adjoining regions (Fig. 6.2). The following is an outline of the transmission route of lapis lazuli myths based on the literary representations of such myths by the ancient civilizations and on archaeological discoveries. (1)

The Akkadian and Babylonian Civilizations

The Akkadians and Babylonians dominated Mesopotamia following the Sumerians. The great historian Herodotus wrote about the Babylonian civilization. What is known about the Akkadian civilization, on the other hand, is the result of reconstruction and interpretation by modern archaeologists, much like the Sumerian civilization. The Akkadians and Babylonians not only adopted the cruciform script invented by the Sumerians, but also inherited, transformed and carried forward various aspects of the Sumerian cultural heritage. The Babylonian epic Gilgamesh, analysed in the

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Fig. 6.2 A “King and dragons” ornament made of gold and turquoise from first century AD. Photographed at the Special Exhibition of National Treasures from Afghanistan at the Dunhuang Museum in August 2017

above sections, was based on Sumerian mythological archetypes and was rewritten and retold by the Akkadians and Babylonians. These myths show how the older 5000-year lapis lazuli myths were carried down and transmitted by the Akkadians and Babylonians 4000 years ago (cf. Ye, 1991). (2)

Ancient Egyptian Civilization

Ever since the days of ancient Greece, the Egyptian civilization was known to many throughout the world as the most ancient one to have existed. Hence, when the archaeologists discovered the Sumerian civilization in the twentieth century, there was a heated debate as to which came first, the Egyptian civilization or the Sumerian civilization. The current mainstream view of the academic community is that Sumer originated much earlier. As for lapis lazuli, it was not found naturally in both places. However, if one considers the geological location of Sumer, which lies between Afghanistan and Egypt and has rich lapis lazuli resources, one may easily find an answer to this issue. Archaeological discoveries have proven that Egyptian society was strongly influenced by Sumerian lapis lazuli myths. Hart described the major ancient Egyptian deity Amun as follows: Amun is depicted anthropomorphically, often enthroned like a pharaoh. His flesh is coloured blue suggesting lapis lazuli, an imported, highly prized stone considered worthy of a god. His crown symbolises a sky-god, consisting of a modius surmounted by two high plumes. (Hart 2005, 13)

The best-known Egyptian deity is the sun god Ra, who was described as having gold flesh with lapis lazuli hair. “In literature the sun-god is occasionally described as an ageing king whose flesh is gold, whose bones are silver and whose hair is lapis lazuli” (Ibid., 133). Here, one can see that the hair of the Egyptian god and that of

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´ akyamuni are made of the same sacred material and of the same colour—blue lapis S¯ lazuli. The canonical appearance of the Egyptian gods would come to influence how the Greeks depicted their own deities. A triple-bodied limestone monster made in 570 BC was found south of the Acropolis (now housed in the Acropolis Museum in Athens). The limestone had been painted brilliantly. The head on the right had a blue moustache and beard, and hence, was nicknamed “bluebeard” (MacKendrick 1983, 201). However, due to the passage of time, myths about these blue gods died out in Greece. Why did the Egyptians use blue hair to depict their gods? The resonance can be found in the chants of Isis, which runs as follows: Thy hair is like turquoise over his body. Lo! the lapis lazuli is above thy hair: thy skin and thy flesh are like iron of the south; thy bones are formed of silver. Thy teeth are to thee as fine lapis lazuli. (Bayley 1990, 171)

Isis is sometimes called the goddess of turquoise. She refers Osiris as “the god of turquoise and lapis lazuli” (Ibid., 212). The Egyptian mythical narrator made it abundantly clear that blue is the colour of lapis lazuli, the sign of divinity and immortality. Among the Egyptian sacred archaeological discoveries, a royal shrine to Osiris was found with wood-inlaid gold, silver, copper and lapis lazuli. Lapis lazuli was clearly an object of worship. At religious performances, the shrine was put into a symbolic ship together with a depiction of Osiris and carried by the high priest on their shoulder (Hart 2005, 139). Sin, the Assyrian god of light and wisdom, is characterized by a long blue beard, again a colour reminiscent of lapis lazuli, which symbolises the revealing of truth. Scottish symbolist Harold Bayley speculated that the blue-beard fairy tale in European literature may be a demonized variant of ancient Near East mythology (Bayley 1990, 272). The Assyrian and Egyptian cultural relics expert, Budge, who works at the British Museum, maintained that the ancient Egyptian Tuat is the equivalent of “another world” or “the netherworld”. But the Tuat is not supposed to be underground, but on the ground or in the sky, indicating sunrise and sunset. In myths the Tuat has the body of Osiris bent round in a circle (Budge 1895, 89). This clue has prompted one to find the mystery of the Egyptian script that directed the journey of the souls. Among the British Museum collection of scripts, No. 10471 of the “Dead Book” appendix “The Prayer Book of Sun God Ra”, finally gave a justifiable mythological interpretation. The regions of the South and the North come to thee with homage and send forth acclamations at thy rising on the horizon of heaven, and thou illuminest the Two Lands with rays of turquoise-[coloured] light. (Budge 1895, 6)

Originally the light brought by the sun was imagined as lapis lazuli blue. The beam of the sun was compared to the beard of the god, thus offering an insight into the significance of the blue hair and beard. The Hymn to Osiris Un-Nefer is as follows: Homage to thee, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, and Prince of Princes. Thou hast ruled the Two Lands from the womb of the goddess Nut. Thou hast governed the Lands of Akert.

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Thy members are of silver-gold, thy head is of lapis-lazuli, and the crown of thy head is of turquoise. (Ibid., 254)

The above description indicates that the ornaments of the head and body of Osiris are made up of four different types of material. Hence, it can be inferred that the Egyptians ranked different types of precious material according to their value. Egyptians had an abundance gold, not silver. The value of the imported silver ore was inevitably higher than that of gold. Hence the body of the god is of silver-gold, the head is of lapis-lazuli, and the crown is of turquoise. Lapis lazuli, silver, gold, and turquoise were selected as sacred symbols, which correlate to the value assigned to these objects in Sumerian myths. The only noticeable difference is that the Sumerians put gold and lapis lazuli at the top, followed by silver and turquoise. Whilst the canonized history of jade is much longer than that of all other metals, jade did not lose its magic power and associations simply because society had entered the Bronze Age. A common way in which it maintained its power was through the combination of precious metals and gems to create unique treasures. During the formation of the world’s major civilizations, the combination of metal and precious stones represents an area of overlap, that is to say that they near-universally developed mosaic technology. The old sacred gems were cut into small pieces and then inlaid on the surface of the new sacred metals. The gold statue of Tutankhamun inlaid with lapis lazuli, and the gold scarab amulets inlaid with lapis lazuli and turquoise representing the sun god Ra unearthed from Tutankhamun’s tomb are representative of this evolution. Ancient Egypt was one of the earliest places in the world in which sacred gold objects were regularly and skilfully crafted. In addition to the vast amounts of gold smelted in Egypt, rare stones like turquoise and lapis lazuli were collected for use in items like sacred masks. The latter stone is considered to have been imported from the East. The best lapis lazuli was transported to Egypt from Afghanistan via Sumer, which started an “industrial revolution” of sorts. J. R. Harris remarked that the use of lapis lazuli and silver completely changed the material culture of the Nile Valley (1971). Though the famous gold mask pf the Pharaoh had been buried for 3000 years, when it was first dug up by the British archaeologist Howard Carter, its golden surface was still shining, and the inlaid blue lapis lazuli and light blue turquoise were still brilliant. The crook (heka) and flail (nekhakha) in the Pharaoh’s hands were also made of one segment of gold and one segment of lapis lazuli. The Pharaoh was regarded as a god on earth, and these sacred objects, long given divine value in myths, became the insignia of pharaonic authority. The Egyptians did not simply copy the Sumerian myths; on the contrary, they added elements of witchcraft and sorcery to sacred objects such as the talisman. This change had a profound impact on the mythologies of Mediterranean civilizations. Rollo Ahmed, in his book The Black Art, claimed that gems were generally used as talismans; the ancient Egyptians favoured the gem. Mongolians also believed that gems could dispel evils. Ancient Egyptians were particularly fond of lapis lazuli talismans. Certain metals also carried auspicious connotations (Ahmed 1971, 286– 287). George Frederick Kunze, in his book The Magic of Jewels and Charms, listed

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the most frequently used precious stones of the ancient Egyptians; their number interestingly matches those found in the Garden of Eden, as described in Isaiah. The Egyptians believed that the different kinds of precious stones were endowed with certain special talismanic properties, and these stones were combined in their necklaces in a way supposed to afford protection from all manner of malign influences. The beads were of various forms, sometimes round or oval, and at others, rectangular or oblong; besides the stones in general use, such as the emerald, carnelian, agate, lapis lazuli, amethyst, toekcrystal, beryl, jasper and garnet, beads of gold, silver, glass, faience, and even of clay and straw, were employed. To complete the efficacy of the necklace, small images of the gods and of the sacred animals were added as pendants. Even on the mummies and mummy cases such ornaments are painted in imitation of necklaces or collars of precious stones, with flowers, etc., as pendants. (Kunz 1915, 316–317)

The Egyptians’ proficiency in sorcery is reflected in today’s popular literature, even extending an influence over works such as Harry Potter. As Bruce G. Triger remarked, “Egyptians had no word for ‘religion’. Religion was inseparable from daily life” (Triger 2003, 409). Lapis lazuli and gold were endowed with special talismanic properties, enabling them to leave the sacred temples and palaces to become godgiven jewels of great power for use among the public. The following sections will discuss the excavated treasures of the Minoan and Mycenaean civilizations, many of which are lapis lazuli talismans from Egypt. (3)

Minoan Civilization

Lapis lazuli was also found in Crete near the Aegean Sea. It was not from Sumer but instead mostly from Egypt, indicating trade contacts between the ancient Egyptian and Minoan civilizations. As Sinclari Hood wrote in his monograph The Minoans: Crete in the Bronze Age, metal cups produced in Crete were found in copper boxes at Tod in upper Egypt, buried in the foundations of a temple, during the reign of Amenemhet II (1938–1904 BC). In the boxes, there were 150 silver cups, one gold cup, a Mesopotamian cylinder seal made of precious lapis lazuli, and unworked lumps of lapis from distant Afghanistan (Hood 1971, 41). In the fresco on the Ayia Triadha sarcophagus the blue paint appears to have been made by grinding expensive lapis lazuli from Afghanistan (Ibid., 81). Lapis lazuli beads were also excavated from the Isopata Royal Tomb (Ibid., 101). In the late Minoan civilization, the raw material used for seals was orange chalcedony, with only a small amount of lapis lazuli used. Among the luxurious raw materials imported to Crete, gold and silver came from the Aegean Islands or western Anatolia and veined white alabaster came from Egypt. Some rare stones that were made into seals, beads and pendants were also brought from outside the region, such as amethyst from Egypt and lapis lazuli from distant Afghanistan (Ibid., 123–124). One may wonder, in this regard, how trade ties between the Aegean Islands and Afghanistan were established. Study of the probable transit area, Ugarit, located on the eastern Mediterranean coast, provides a reasonable explanation. Nicolas Wyatt in his paper “Religion in ancient Ugarit” stated, “Ugarit was at the centre of a wide trading network. Some precious substances, such as amber and lapis lazuli, witness trading connections reaching, if only indirectly, as far as the Baltic and

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Afghanistan” (2007, 110). Its advantageous geographical location provides an ideal trade link between Afghanistan, Crete and Greece. The demand for lapis lazuli that started from the Middle East in the late Neolithic period, which occurred following the craze for Hetian jade rising in east Asian civilizations, led to another Eurasian route being formed. (4)

The Mycenaean and Greek Civilizations

Lines 24 to 26 in the 11th volume of the Iliad speak of the precious breastplate that King Agamemnon received from Cinyras, the king of Cyprus. Thereon verily were ten bands of dark cyanus, and twelve of gold, and twenty of tin; and serpents of cyanus writhed up toward the neck? (Homer 1971, 483) (τoà δ’ ½τoι δšκα oĨμoι šσαν μšλανoς κυ£νoιo, δèδεκα δš χρυσo‹o κα`ι ε‡κoσι κασσιτšρoιo: κυ£νεoι δš δρ£κoντες Ñρωρšχατo πρoτ`ι δειρην.) `

He then described Agamemnon’s shield: “a fair shield, and round about it were ten circles of bronze, and upon it twenty bosses of tin, gleaming white, and in the midst of them was one of dark cyanus” (™ν δš oƒ Ñμϕαλo`ι Ãσαν ™ε…κoσι κασσιτšρoιo λευκo…, ™ν δš μšσoισιν šην μšλανoς κυ£νoιo)” (Ibid., 483). Homer depicted the king’s breastplate and sword with κυ£νoιo. But what was the dark blue thing? A.T. Murry notated in his English translation that it was blue enamel or glass paste, imitating the color of lapis lazuli (Homer 1973: 482). In the above sections, this author discusses how the Sumerians manufactured blue enamel and blue glass paste in compensation for their lack of the precious stone lapis lazuli. Around 2000 BC, the technique was picked up by Egyptians and they started to mass produce the substitute of lapis lazuli. The blue glass, imitating the color of lapis lazuli, was called coloured glaze (liuli) in south and east Asia. In the west it was called “man-made stone” or enamel. A few translated versions of the Iliad rendered it as enamel, which merits further examination. The original cultural connotations and meanings of lapis lazuli (or blue enamel) appears to get lost in translation and transmission. The skills of glazing and enameling, imitating the color of lapis lazuli, were quite clearly transmitted from Egypt to the Aegean region. Line 87, Volume 7 of the Odyssey depicts the palace of Orchinoos: along the wall extended from the gate of the palace decorated (™ς μυχ`oν ™ξ oÙδoà, περ`ι δš θριγκ`oςκυ£νoιo). Murray added in his translation annotation that κυ£νoιo means blue enamel or glass paste, imitating lapis lazuli, once used in Tiryns as a decoration (Homer 1974, 238). Based on A Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, κυ£νoιo refers to lapis lazuli and its imitations(1996, 1004). Also, in the annotation of the Odyssey edited by A. F. Garvie, professor of Classical Studies at the University of Glasgow, the view of Theophr’s De lapid was expressed which states that people mistook it (κυ£νoιo) as lapis lazuli, yet in most cases, it refers to the imitations of lapis lazuli (1994, 180–181). Given the complexity of its explanations, this author assumes that the reason modern researchers take κυ£νoιo in Homer’s works to refer to imitations of lapis lazuli is mainly due to the findings of the nineteenth century

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German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann in Tiryns, in which he found walls decorated with blue glaze. Perhaps more noteworthy still, modern archaeologists in Crete, Mycenae, Troy and other places have found lapis lazuli products dating back to the period in question. With reference to the newly discovered physical evidence listed, this author shares the views of experts such as Theophr, translating the term κυ£νoιo in Homer’s epic as lapis lazuli. Rich historical information is hidden in the epic, the first great work of western literature. Since the linear B script of the Minoan civilization was deciphered, more truths have been discovered than are evident in the literary imagination alone. Among the newly deciphered Mycenae royal treasures, the most prominent are the few precious materials selected and used by people over 5000 years ago—gold, silver, and lapis lazuli. From 1930 to 1933, a British archaeological team unearthed a palace and a goldsmith’s workshop of the thirteenth century BC in the Mycenaean ruins of Thebes, where lapis lazuli, rock crystals, amber and gold granules were found (MacKendrick 1983). In 1951, Greek archaeologists in Mycenae excavated 24 high-rank graves dated back to around 1580 BC. The finds included gold and silver artifacts, an electrum mask, gold diadems, bags of obsidian arrowheads, and an Egyptian scarab made of lapis lazuli (MacKendrick 1983). Using this evidence one can divide the evolutionary history of gems in the Near East into five stages. Obsidian with marble in 6000 BC forms the first stage; lapis lazuli and gold appeared about the same time around 4000 BC. The order of the three gems as they are mentioned in the Babylonian epic of 2000 BC seems to echo the chronological order of the times in which they were valued during the emergence of civilization. Black, blue and yellow ores, each assigned sacred and mythological value, were regarded as treasures from the Near East, first to the Egyptians and then to the Greek peninsula around 1600 BC. The rough journey of this cultural transmission has been richly narrated by the movement of the Egyptian lapis lazuli scarab amulets. The question remains though, did the mythological understandings underpinning the value of these items transmit in the same manner? In 1953, when the British linguist Michael Ventris deciphered the Minoan Linear B script, the Pylos relics unearthed in Mycenae were finally interpreted after being buried for more than three thousand years. However, they were not literary works like those found on the Sumerian tablets, but lists of names of people and places, and royal treasures such as inlaid furniture, ivory, gold, silver, and lapis lazuli (Ibid., 81). Hence, evidence of the use of lapis lazuli is found in both the early relics and texts of the Mycenaean and Greek civilizations. Today, one can catch a glimpse of the precious treasures which even Homer himself did not get an opportunity to see because they were long buried by his time. These treasures disappeared along with the demise of the Mycenaean civilization around seven or eight hundred years before Homer was born. (5)

Indus Valley Civilization

Indus civilization, also known as the Indus Valley civilization, preceded the Sanskrit Indian civilization that famously produced the epic Ramayana. This is another example of a lost civilization discovered in the twentieth century that existed

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around 2500 to 2000 BC. Given that the writing system of the Indus civilization has not yet been successfully deciphered, its study must rely on unearthed archaeological relics. Firstly, one may observe that close trade ties between the Indus Civilization and the civilizations of the Central Asia and West Asia were established. The peoples of the Indus Civilization were wide-ranging traders, within their territories of Pakistan and north-western India and with more distant places including Afghanistan, central Asia, the Iranian Plateau and Mesopotamia. Seafaring merchants of the Indus Civilization reached the Arabian Gulf and Mesopotamia, and probably the mouth of the Red Sea. The internal trade and commerce were involved with subsistence materials, such as fish, extending to raw materials such as copper, gold, silver, chert, soft grey stone, chalcedony and other semiprecious stones, lapis lazuli and shells. (Possehl 2007, 430)

It is still impossible to conclude, of the vast quantities of lapis lazuli used in the Sumerian city-states, how much of the precious stone was from the land (originating from the Afghan region), and how much was from the sea via the Indus Valley civilization. Yet one thing is certain, the value of various gems in the Indus Valley civilization were no less than that in the Egyptian and Sumerian civilizations. Their influence on each other was mutual and reciprocal. Products originating from the Indus civilization, such as seals, chalcedony beads and ceramics, have been found in sizeable quantities in the Mesopotamian civilization. However, few Mesopotamian artifacts have been found in excavations in the Indus valley. Regarding the precious stone objects of the Indus Valley civilization, American archaeologist Jonathan Mark Kenoyer described in his Ancient Cities of the Indus Valley Civilization: Precious stones of all varieties were highly valued in the Indus cities, and special designs and colors were sought after for making ornaments and utensils. Hard stones like agate and jasper that would hold a high luster polish appear to have been more popular than the softer varieties, such as lapis lazuli and turquoise, that would quickly wear away to a dull luster. Banded agate, variegated jasper and red-orange carnelian were among the most commonly used materials, obtained from distant sources in Kutch and Gujarat, as well as widely distributed sources throughout Baluchistan. Lapis lazuli was available from two sources, one in the Chagai hills of southern Baluchistan and the other in Badakhshan, northern Afghanistan. Turquoise also may have been obtained from southern Baluchistan or from the more distant regions of northern Iran, but neither of these stones was very popular with Indus city consumers. When worn as beads, these relatively soft stones become dull or change color. This may have stimulated the production of glazed faience beads that could be coloured to look like turquoise or lapis lazuli. (Kenoyer 1998, 96)

It is worth noting that Kenoyer stated that the invention and production of glazed beads were for substituting lapis lazuli and turquoise. But whether this should be regarded as an Indian invention or foreign technology is still questionable. Furthermore, when lapis lazuli veneration arose in two regions adjacent to India, why was it so uncommon in India itself? Kenoyer, meanwhile, in another section, expressed a different view. Jewelry of the Indus cities reflects artistic values of the urban elite and the technical achievements of artisans working precious metals and precious stones such as agate, serpentine,

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turquoise and lapis lazuli. In traditional communities, ornaments are not just fashion statements, but are essential to the proper functioning of the social group. Valuable metals and stones are generally fashioned into ornaments that depict important ritual or symbolic motifs. These ornaments serve to protect the wearer, to identify the social and economic status of the wearer and as a means of storing wealth. Ornaments made from less valuable materials generally function in the same ways except that they do not necessarily represent actual wealth. Similar attitudes towards ornaments are documented from excavations and texts of the early civilizations in Mesopotamia and Egypt, and we can assume that ornaments produced by artisans of the Indus cities were used in much the same manner. (Ibid., 139)

The scholar’s view may be confusing. In the first quote he stated lapis lazuli was uncommon in the Indus cities, whereas in the second one he implied it was quite common. However, the crux of the matter is whether there is any historical relationship between the lapis lazuli ornaments and glazed beads of Indus Valley Civilization from around 2400 BC, and the blue glazed tree leaves of the jewelled tree in paradise depicted in the Sanskrit epic of Mahabharata and Ramayana written around 400 BC? If so, what is the nature of their connection?

6.6 Summary: Jade Road and the Origins of Civilizations In the introduction to his monograph History Begins at Sumer: Thirty-Nine Firsts in Recorded History, Samuel Noah Kramer stated that compared with scholars and experts in other fields of research, Sumerologists are in a position to satisfy mankind’s universal quest for its origins—for “firsts” in the history of civilization (1981, xix). How could a stone originating from the mountains of Afghanistan in Central Asia be transformed into a sacred item in the world’s old civilizations along with gold, and become the symbol of supreme power and wealth in early city-states? The Sumerian civilization certainly exerted a huge influence on other civilizations, and was key in the spread of lapis lazuli myths to across Eurasia. This author maintains that only by tracing the archetypes of precious stone myths to their own original historical and cultural contexts could the significance of the craze for stones like lapis lazuli be revealed and the motives behind its transmission be discovered. In order to shed light on this most difficult of questions, this chapter has attempted to reveal who was the earliest inventor of these myths, and who were the myth recipients, successors and transmitters. It has done so by viewing the world’s five great civilizations in chronological order. The main purpose of this chapter has been to identify when, where and how lapis lazuli myths entered the Sumerian mythological narrative. Its theoretical implications will be further unravelled by considering two related questions: (1) (2)

What significant role do myths play in the emergence of civilization? Why has the role of myths been neglected or disparaged in previous studies?

For the above questions, this author only proposes a few considerations. A more detailed analysis will be elaborated later.

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First, the prerequisites of a civilization are the movement, communication and integration between different ethnic groups and cultures. It is difficult for one to imagine that a small nomadic society or pastoral village could develop into a great civilization. Thus it is necessary to find out what drove the Sumerians to break through the state of cultural isolation and expand their international trade and communication activities. Henceforth, the mythological significance of lapis lazuli must be considered one of the factors. Second, though the lapis lazuli worship of the Sumerians is mainly understood through the literary works they left behind, a great number of archaeological excavations also confirm this, which shows that the historical information hidden in the literature is worthy of further exploration. To literary researchers, these discoveries should be an impetus to more seriously consider cross-disciplinary approaches to their work. They require one to rethink what literature is, what it is for, and how mythology as a branch of literature can be effectively conceptualized and used for comprehensive study of mythistories. Third, by comparing different views of precious stone mythologies, one can see that the Sumerian, Egyptian, Cretan and other ancient civilizations demonstrate relative cultural unity in their veneration of lapis lazuli and their belief in related myths. Among all the early civilizations, only China held a unique view of lapis lazuli. This cultural phenomenon is very intriguing. Lapis lazuli myths and the transmission of the gem related to the myths are found only in West Asia, South Asia, North Africa and the Mediterranean area. They did not reach other parts of the world. From the perspective of the “Gemstone Road”, one may sub-divide the history of early Eurasian civilizations into three major cultural circles: A. The southern cultural circle including West Asia, South Asia, and Mediterranean area (lapis lazuli, gold, silver, and copper); B. The northern cultural circle including western Europe, northern Europe, eastern Europe and Russia among civilizations (gold, silver, copper); C. The eastern cultural circle including East Asia and Southeast Asia (jade and copper). Among the three cultural circles, the southern cultural circle, with its lapis lazuli and gold myths, stimulated the world’s first civilizations. Then followed the eastern cultural circle, with jade as its cultural link, hence its great prominence in Chinese civilization. The northern cultural circle, however, due to a lack of lapis lazuli and jade worship (and the resultant myths that accompany it), developed relatively late and was obviously influenced by the other two. The Central Asian prairie area, surrounded by the three cultural circles, played a positive role in linking nomadic cultures with the three cultural circles (cf. Mackinder 1904). The southern and eastern cultural circles were the first regions in the world to produce civilizations. A jade/precious stone road played a decisive role in facilitating cultural transmission and interaction among the different states and areas within each circle. In short, study of the world’s five most ancient civilizations demonstrates that there can be no jade/precious stone road without the sacred veneration of these materials first being established. In other words, the religious need for these materials created the trade routes. Without the cultural transmission and economic and trade activities created by these routes, the formation of civilized countries would have been inevitably delayed.

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Sumerian myths reveal how early humans perceived the world. The gods’ world was compared to the night sky, with its dark blue color. The Egyptians, meanwhile, imagined the hair of the sun god as being a blend of turquoise and lapis lazuli. Although the associations are different, both are related to precious stone myths. In Rigveda, the Indian people envisioned the sun god as a “gem in the sky”. In the southern cultural circle, from Sumer to the Mediterranean civilizations, people widely understood the blessing and magical potential of precious stones, and this drive the production and consumption of luxury goods such as local jewels. Hence, one can see that it was the Sumerians who started this tradition of wearing lapis lazuli, gold or silver ornaments in order to obtain the blessing of the gods because the color of lapis lazuli and the celestial colors were similar. This symbolic identification or association is a condition for the sanctification of these materials. In this regard, a full understanding of the early myths and their concepts is a prerequisite of any mythrelated research. Just as Bruce G. Trigger warned, “Like band and tribal societies, early civilizations do not appear to have distinguished between what we perceive as the natural, supernatural, and social realms (Triger 2003, 411). In the introduction to Order, Legitimacy and Wealth in Ancient States, Janet Richards and Mary Van Buren (2000) first noted the civilizing effect of these mythological concepts. Understanding ancient civilization’s concepts of wealth through analysis of their mythological and cosmological worldview represents an area that warrants further study and attention (Figs. 6.3 and 6.4). In his book Thucydides Mythistoricus (1907), Francis Macdonald Cornford stated that there was no clear-cut distinction between myth and history and that this is merely a man-made division created by today’s academia. A century later, Professor Joseph Mali of Israel did not hesitate to borrow Cornford’s Thucydides “myth historian”, entitling his own book Mythistory (2003). It is a classic read for students majoring in history. Revisiting the preface of Cornford’s book, which proclaimed himself as a myth historian, is extremely enlightening: The Greek historians can be interpreted only by reference to the poets; and to understand the poets, we must know something of the mythological stage of thought, the fund of glowing chaos out of which every part of that beautiful, articulate world was slowly fashioned by the Hellenic intellect. There is, on the literary side, no branch of classical study which is not still suffering from the neglect of mythology. The poets are still treated as if, like an eighteenth-century essayist, they had a tiresome trick of making ‘allusions’ which have to

Fig. 6.3 An ancient Egyptian relief inlaid with turquoise depicting two priests worshipping a scarab. Photographed at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in 2010

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Fig. 6.4 Tibetan Buddhist myth: a mask of the guardian god of Changzhu Monastery, the colors of its divine eyes imitating those of gold and lapis lazuli. Photographed at the National Museum of China in 2005

be looked up in a dictionary. The history of philosophy is written as if Thales had suddenly dropped from the sky, and, as he bumped the earth, ejaculated, “Everything must be made of water!’ The historians are examined on the point of ‘trustworthiness’ a question which it is the inveterate tendency of Englishmen to treat as a moral question; and, the certificate of honesty once awarded, their evidence is accepted as if they had written yesterday. The fallacy which I have designated ‘The Modernist Fallacy’ was never, perhaps, so rife as it is now; and, but that I have no wish to be contentious, this essay might be taken as a polemic against it, in so far as I have argued that the thought of a most prosaic and rational writer of antiquity moved in an atmosphere which we should recognize to be poetic and mythical. (Cornford 1907, x–xi)

Chapter 7

The East Asian Jade Age: Mythological Foundations

7.1 East Asian Jade Culture and Its Origins It is worth clarifying two pairs of terms, and the relationship between them, before commencing further. The first pair of terms are “Chinese jade culture” and “East Asian jade culture”. The second pair are “jade-ware culture” and “jade culture”. The Chinese love and veneration of jade is well-known. But why, in addition to “Chinese jade culture” or “Huaxia jade culture”, is there also an “East Asian jade culture”? The tradition of worshipping jade exists only in the Pacific Rim, such as the jade-ware production traditions of the Maya of South America and the Maori of New Zealand. In other parts of the world, one can only find prehistoric jade axe production, or the worship of both gold and precious stones in early civilizations. However, this primitive precious stone worship and its accompanying myths were not passed on. East Asia is an exception to this general trend: jade worship in prehistoric East Asia cultivated a deep-rooted tradition, giving birth to the Chinese civilization. Gold also spread into the Central Plain three thousand years ago but could not overshadow thousands of years of jade worship. With the advent of the Bronze Age, the rise of gold worship gradually swept the Eurasian continent and finally replaced precious stone worship entirely. The “golden age” became the mythological archetype on which the Sumerian and Greek civilizations developed (Kramer 1961). The values underpinning jade worship, deeply rooted as they are in East Asian civilization, are best examined from a cross-cultural perspective. The world’s first three ancient civilizations—Sumer, Egypt and India—all worshiped gemstones like lapis lazuli and turquoise, but they also worshiped gold, silver and other precious metals at the same time. They would exert a significant influence on later Western, West Asian and South Asian civilizations. Gold worship greatly restricted the development of local precious stone mythologies. At the beginning of the Sumerian civilization more than five thousand years ago, gold and lapis lazuli (imported) were sacred materials primarily used for religious rituals. The objects used in the rituals are made of precious metals and have beautiful decorations. The gold products represent the © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_7

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peak of the manufacturing process. People were familiar with all the processes, such as embossing, carving, engraving, grain formation, gold decoration, and forging. Relics such as wigs and gold helmets in the tomb of Meskalamdug reflect the superb techniques of the time (Lloyd 1990, 114). British archaeologist Jacquetta Hawkes in her book The First Great Civilizations pointed out (1973, 112) that the Sumerian workshops that made bronzes also produced gold and silver objects. The advanced techniques of the Sumerian goldsmiths and silversmiths are brilliantly exemplified in the treasures of the royal cemetery of Ur. Gold production, like precious stone production, requires adequate resources and supply chains of the raw material. Mesopotamia did not have gold deposits, and mainly depended on the importation of gold from Egypt, the Caucasus region and present-day Iran. The situation in ancient Egypt was different. It was rich in gold deposits; the pharaohs’ mausoleums are known for their golden glamour. The tomb of Tutankhamun, excavated in the twentieth century, attracted worldwide attention because of its tons of unearthed gold products. One piece of his coffin used more than 3000 pounds of gold. In this regard, the West Asian and East Asian civilizations were no match. The Indian River Basin civilization in South Asia produced less gold-ware than Egypt, but still boasted an impressive number of metalsmiths. Silver was used for ritual objects, such as silver cans with covers and ornaments. Gold was used for beads (ibid., 268). Compared with the world’s first three major civilizations, East Asian civilization is the only one that did not produce gold and silver products during the years that it emerged. Gold objects from West and Central Asia gradually entered the Central Plain via the nomadic peoples of the surrounding grasslands during the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The late arrival and scarcity of gold served to strengthen, rather than diminish, the already well-established tradition of jade veneration. In order to better delineate the geographical area in which prehistoric jade culture was prevalent, one must avoid using country names that appeared in much later periods. A preferable approach is to seek an international angle that goes beyond the boundaries of modern nations. If the prehistoric jade culture were a global phenomenon, researchers would not be confined to East Asia. However, when facts clearly indicate that the inheritance and continuation of the East Asian jade culture is a local phenomenon (the Central American Mayans and Maori of New Zealand also had jade cultures, but both were limited in the space and time they occupied, as well as in their cultural impact), it seems logical to suppose that there is such a thing as an “East Asian jade culture”. In November 1998 the third international symposium “Ancient Culture Studies in South China and Adjacent Areas”, an unprecedented conference focusing on “East Asian jade” was hosted by the Chinese Archaeological Art Research Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, drawing 93 well-known scholars from Asia, Europe and the United States. A collection of 77 papers in three volumes of a special edition journal were published. The editor-in-chief, Deng Cong, talked in the preface entitled “The Mongolian Race and Jade Culture” about the importance of discussing jade culture from a global perspective:

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Is the Mongolian race the earliest creator of jade culture? At present, the origins of prehistoric jade culture have not yet been identified. I believe that jade culture is derived from the processing of beautiful stones into ornaments. Jade ornaments are the successor to bone ornaments. In the history of mankind, the earliest ornaments were made by Neanderthal man 38,000 years ago. In the French ruins, there is evidence that Neanderthals made pendants with animal teeth and bones. (Deng1998a, xxiv)

The view that jade processing originated from a natural desire to decorate the human body has been popular for a long time and seems to be self-evident. But this perspective it is not as simple as it may seem, and will be discussed at length later. First, the geographical area of jade culture will be considered. Deng’s preface states, “The jade ornaments found between the European and Asian continents at the same time of late Paleolithic Age undoubtedly represent the first chapter of human jade culture. The possibility of cultural exchange between east and west cannot be ruled out. The Neolithic Age was a period of great prosperity for the Mongol peoples, and the Mongolian race in East Asia has a very close relationship with the development of jade-ware culture”. What kind of relationship was this? In the Neolithic period, evidence suggests East Asian jade veneration took similar forms across its many regions in terms of the use of jade ornaments as ceremonial artifacts. Jades represented a common cultural value or, more likely, social status and power. Take jade jue ornaments for example. A jue is a penannular jade ring, usually made into earrings. According to current archaeological evidence, jue ornaments were widely distributed through Mongolia from the prehistoric through to the early historic period, showing that the Mongols had an obsession with the human ear, much the same as numerous African tribal peoples have with lips. Jue ornaments have been unearthed in different parts of Asia—the south of Siberia, the three provinces of northeast China, the Korean peninsula, northern and southern China, the south and east of the Indian peninsula, the islands from Hokkaido to Kyushu, Taiwan and the Philippines, and as far south as Java and New Guinea, i.e. from latitude 60 degrees northeast Asia to the Java islands south of the equator. There is not enough evidence to prove that jue ornaments originated from either one or more sources. However, according to archaeological evidence, the ornaments are likely to have originated in the northern part of East Asia and then spread from north to south on the continent, and from west to east and then to the coastal islands. The earliest jade jue unearthed in East Asia are soft jade earrings from Inner Mongolia’s Xinglongwa ruins dating back about 8000 years and jue ornaments from the ruins of Chahai village, Fuxin, Liaoning about 7600 years ago. The production technology behind, and shape of, Xinglongwa jade ornaments were quite mature, which means that jade fashioning can be traced to a much earlier time still. In the later stage of the Xinglongwa culture, two jade jue were unearthed at Kyoei Site 2, Hokkaido, Japan, belonging to the “leafshaped stone arrowhead” phase. Also, jue ornaments were discovered in the Chertovy Vorota cave sites along the Siberian coast and in Neolithic sites in Xiaonanshan, Heilongjiang. This suggests that there may have been well-developed culture dating back 7000 years or earlier, ranging from the northeast of the continent to Hokkaido, Japan. On the other hand, ornaments unearthed south of the Yangtze River Basin are quite ancient. Ornaments unearthed from the fourth layer of the Zhejiang Hemudu site have about 7000 years of history, as tested by carbon 14. Later, a number of jue ornaments were unearthed from Daxi, Beiyinyangying, Songze, Majiabang and other cultural sites along the Yangtze River Basin. Along the Pearl River of South China, the earliest known jue ornaments were unearthed at the sites of Shixia in Guangdong, Yonglang in Hong Kong and Baojing Bay in Zhuhai dating back to 4000-4500 years ago. The ornaments found there are estimated to have originated from the Yangtze River Basin. In the Indo-China peninsula, jade ornaments were also unearthed in northern

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Vietnam in sites such as Ha Giang, Mai Pha, Ha Long, which are likely to have been created around 4000 ago. (Ibid., xxv)

Six years later, in 2004, Inner Mongolia Chifeng College held the “Hongshan Culture International Symposium”, during which Deng Cong submitted the paper “Controversy over the origin of East Asia jue ornaments”. The newly discovered prehistoric jue ornaments in Japan, South Korea and China further supported the view that the East Asian jade culture originated in the north and spread to the south gradually over time. As he pointed out: “The view that Homo sapiens originated from Africa is prevalent in the modern scientific community. To understand human history in its global entirety is the current trend in archaeology. If the analysis of archaeological data is still confined to a narrow range of countries or provinces, it will inevitably encounter difficulty” (Deng 2006, 498). The explanation here reinforces the motivation for using the name “East Asian jade-ware culture”, which is intended to highlight the need for an international perspective. This author suggests a slight change from “jade-ware culture” into “jade culture”, because “jade culture” and “jade studies” have been more popular and accepted for nearly half a century in Chinese academia. What is more, jade-ware culture only seems to be related to material objects, while jade culture connotes both how an item was produced and the material used in doing so. In the context of modern Chinese academic history, jade culture research sprung from Luo Zhenyu’s collecting of ancient jades in the Central Plain, and underwent several ups and downs before finally coming to thrive in the late twentieth century. The excavation of a great number of ancient jades also provided an impetus for the field’s growth. There has been conducted specialized jade research from the prehistoric period to the Qing Dynasty. The book Jade Use System in the Zhou Dynasty (2008) made a breakthrough in supplementing the history of West Zhou and East Zhou Dynasties by nuanced analysis of object culture. Relatively speaking though, there has been little discussion about the origins of jade culture. There are two main reasons for this “bottleneck”, that is, the limitations of data and a lack of theoretical vision. Data about Xinglongwa jades is a prerequisite for the study and an interdisciplinary vision is necessary for success in tackling this question. In explaining the causes behind the formation of jade culture, some scholars have realized that differences in religious beliefs can have an impact on the culture of a region. The Japanese scholar Chihara Kazuya (1998, 365) classified two jadeite cultural circles (Japan and South Korea, and Central America) and one soft jade cultural circle (East Asia-New Zealand) in world history, basing this division and classification on the history of the beliefs surrounding, use of, and processing technology behind jadeite and soft jade. He claimed these cultures developed independently in different regions. Chihara’s relatively brief mention of belief systems as a factor in the formation of jade culture is undoubtedly worthy of attention. The myths behind the beliefs have, he believed, been ignored by general research. Zhang Dushui and Li Lina pointed out that compared with the unearthed jades from the surrounding areas, Henan prehistoric jades appear to be insignificant. They believe that “regional differences lead to

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differences in cultural inheritance, which is manifested in the differences in cultural pedigree that result from the different geographical environment of each prehistoric culture. A different cultural pedigree manifests as differences in primitive religious beliefs, and different religious beliefs determine the different values and customs of different cultural groups” (Zhang and Li 2007, 168). It is beneficial to consider whether one can explain the differences between the occurrence and development of jade culture in different regions of East Asia from the perspective of prehistoric religious beliefs. This book focuses how prehistoric religious beliefs came to be embodied through mythology. In doing so, academics will be in a better position to determine the driving force behind the popularization of jade-ware production, particular two of the earliest popular jade forms in East Asia— jade jue and jade huang. Peoples’ views tend to determine their behavior. Jade jue and jade huang, in China also known as玉弯条形器 (curved jade object), in Japan and South Korea known as 曲玉 or 勾玉 (Japanese magatama or Korean kogok, which means comma-shaped jade ornament) were not intended for purely casual use or decoration. It is important to explore their original meaning and function from the point at which they began to emerge.

7.2 Development and Historical Stages of the East Asia Jade Age The Jade Age refers to a transitional period between the Stone Age and the Bronze Age. The production of jade artifacts was born out of the production of stone tools, and the Jade Age out of the Paleolithic and the Neolithic Ages. It can also refer to the middle and late period of the Neolithic Age, or the beginning of the Bronze Age. The Jade Age did not end suddenly, but instead merged into the Bronze Age. One thing that needs to be clarified is that the end of the Jade Age did not signify the end of jade production. Instead, there was an era in which metal and jade were equally valued. In this regard, the end of the Jade Age overlaps with the earlier stages of the metal age, which is entirely logical to suppose. The concept of valuing both gold and jade ran through the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties to the Ming and Qing Dynasties, a practice that spans the whole history of Chinese civilization. This creates a false picture, as if gold and jade were seen as being equally sacred. In fact, this is not the case. It is necessary, rather, to reconstruct a genealogy in which jade is the only one valued, so as to effectively examine the relationship between the big tradition of jade and the small tradition of metal. According to the unearthed cultural relics and the distribution of archaeological materials, the overall history of the East Asian Jade Age can be divided into three periods: (1)

The formative period: 10,000–6000 years ago. This period is characterized by so-called small decorative pieces of jade and practical tools. In terms of shapes, it is the stage of jade jue, jade huang, jade daggers, jade tube beads and jade chisels. In terms of region, traces of production and uses of a small amount

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of jade and stone ornaments are found in Russia, China and Japan in the late Paleolithic Age. The current data is not enough to prove which came first, pottery or stone tools. In terms of the origins of pottery, however, the earliest pot in East Asia, found in Japan, was dated to 14,500 BC by archaeologists (Mithen 2006, 373). Thus, the Jade Age as a cultural phenomenon may be seen as having emerged after the arrival of the Neolithic revolution. During this period jade ornaments (or ritual jades) were mainly possessed by women in some areas, which roughly conforms to the notion that there existed matriarchal societies. Some Chinese scholars propose that jade huang were talismans. The corresponding evidence is that buried in a number of southern prehistoric tombs the jade huang is often found as a decoration for women. The Japanese scholar Ito Minako pointed out (2005, 717) that in the Japanese Jomon culture a jade jue owner was typically a female adult. Thus, the special relationship between the emergence of jade culture and women is worth exploring further. The early practitioners of magic were often sorceresses, which suggest that jade production was not only for decoration, but was also a reflection of ancient customs. It is not coincidental that the myths of the three goddesses in ancient Chinese mythology all contain traces of the big tradition of jade culture (Ye 2011a). The prehistoric sites corresponding to the first period of the Jade Age in East Asia are Paleolithic sites in Hokkaido, Japan, the Neolithic cultural sites in China (the Xinglongwa, Zhaobaogou, Peiligang, Hemudu, Majabang, and Yangshao cultural sites), early Jomon culture in Japan, and prehistoric sites in southern coastal areas of Russia. It is worthy of note that jades were found across these vast areas. It is probable that a common mythological view that held jade as being sacred was shared across the region. Although jades older than those found at the Xinglongwa cultural site, dating back to as early as 8000 years ago, have not yet been unearthed in East Asia, the maturity of design and the sophistication of production technique demonstrated by the Xinglongwa jades make it implausible that these were among the very first jades produced. There must have been an earlier embryonic form of jade yet to be reflected in the archaeological records. The earliest possible time in which jade culture could have emerged is about 10,000 years ago. (2)

The peak period: 6000–4000 years ago. This era is characterized by the wealth of jade tools, jade weapons and ritual jades it produced. In terms of shape, jade arrowheads, jade bi, jade rings, jade bracelets, jade cong and jade hu ( 琥, tiger-shaped jade ornament) were popular during this period. Other jade shapes unique to this period are the jade hoop in the shape of horse hoof, hooked cloud-shaped jades, conjoined double jade bi and triple jade bi. These all disappeared before the third period and failed to enter the jade ritual system of the Central Plain civilization. This period also saw a shift towards the formation of patriarchal societies. This era is also most likely around the legendary time when the Yellow Emperor made weapons out of jade. Jade weapons were symbols of a gradually popularized military power in the Yangshao culture.

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Jade production tools were found buried with males (Zhao 2005). In the Lingjiatan culture, along the Yangtze River Basin, meanwhile, from Tomb 87M6 was unearthed 32 pieces of stone yue (钺, battle axe) (Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and archaeology, 2006), and from Tomb 98M20 was unearthed six pieces of jade yue, 16 pieces of stone yue. According to archaeologists, the large number of jade and stone battle-axes were not for practical use, but were mass-made locally for trade with vassal states lacking jade materials. Unfortunately, the tomb owner’s sex and age cannot be identified, since no remains were left as a result of the acidity of the soil. One particular archaeological report points out a clear gender differentiation in the Lower Xiajiadian culture tombs of Dadianzi in Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, created 1000 years after the Lingjiatan culture. “Jade and stone yue were found in large male tombs, which may represent a particular class of warriors. A female tomb (M453), four metres deep, was unearthed with red pigments, white stone vats, grinding pestles, grinding stones and color painting tools. A whole pig and a few copper and jade ornaments were also discovered. This indicates that the tomb owner, and possibly its creator, enjoyed higher social status” (Guo 2003, 108). The tradition of the sorceress making ritual jades continued from the first period of the Jade Age to the second period. With the rise in armed conflicts and the formation of urban centres that characterized this period, the production and use of jade weapons developed considerably by the end of the second period, which was chronologically close to the beginning of the Xia civilization. Four fundamentally representative shapes of jade and stone objects were unearthed from 533 tombs of Xiajin Cemetery in Linfen, Shanxi (48 pieces of yue, 7 knives, 10 bi and 15 rings). Jade and stone yue accounted for 60% of the total findings (Song 2003, 128), becoming the object with the most significant symbolic meaning. Archaeologists in Shanxi province believe that the origin of these jades is the Dawenkou culture in Shangdong, in the lower reach of the Yellow River, and the Xujiagang culture in the Yangtze-Huaihe region. They envision a jade road along which the jade culture spread from east to west. Song Jianzhong, along with the Shanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, compared the shapes of jades from Xiajin and put forward the view that the porous jade knife belongs to the Xuejiagang culture, and the bi and ring to the Dawenkou and Xujiagang cultures (ibid., 135). Ma Jinhua (2007) also suggested that the technological tradition underpinning prehistoric jade culture in southern Shanxi can be traced to the Dawenkou and Xujiagang cultures. The origin of the jade ritual culture in the Central Plain is of great significance and is worth exploring along with newly unearthed objects. This author believes that the most important cultural phenomenon of the second period of the East Asian Jade Age is the influence of, and the interaction between the jade culture in surrounding areas, leading to the construction of the Central Plain jade culture system. Along with the establishment of the Central Plain regime, the gradual integration and unification of the ritual jades became an important field through which to study the formation of early Chinese civilization represented by the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The question remains: was the formation

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of the Central Plain jade sacrificial ritual system mainly influenced by the spread of jade culture from the surrounding areas, or did it develop independently? The former is widely supported by scholars. However, recently unearthed relics suggest that the latter should not be excluded. Jades unearthed from the cemetery at the Xipo site of the Yangshao culture in the hinterland of the Central Plain reveal new information. Site 2 is located at the junction of the three provinces of Henan, Shanxi and Shaanxi, the northwest of Xipo Village, Yangping Town, Lingbao City, Henan Province, and the south of the Zhudingyuan area. It faces the Yellow River in the north and connects the Qinling Mountains to the south. The total area of the site is about 400,000 square meters. Between 2001 and 2004 the site was excavated four times. A large-scale semi-crypt house F105 of the middle phase of the Yangshao culture was found, covering an area of 500 square meters and the indoor area of House F106 measures more than 240 square meters, which aroused the attention of academics. From April to July 2005, Henan Provincial Archaeological Research Institute and the Archaeological Research Institute at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences made a fifth excavation of the site, discovering 22 tombs from the middle phase of the Yangshao culture (c. 3300 BC). This was the first time that tombs had been discovered in the core area of the Yangshao culture. Funerary objects in the tombs contain 10 pieces of jades. They are of great significance because they are the earliest batch of unearthed jades in the middle reaches of the Yellow River area. According to the archaeological report, the 22 tombs unearthed from the Xipo site are rectangular vertical chambers, most of which have two platforms. The burial style is that of a single person lying on their back with straight limbs. Most tomb owners’ heads faced the west or slightly northwest. There is no burial container. Funerary objects are of pottery, jade, stone, bone and ivory, among which there is a large amount of pottery and bone, lesser amounts of jade, and even less stone and ivory. Of 22 tombs, 6 contained funerary jades, which accounts for almost one quarter of the total. There are 10 pieces of unearthed jade, of which single pieces were found in three tombs, two in two tombs respectively and three in one tomb. Only two forms of jade, namely jade yue and jade rings, have been discovered. There are nine pieces of yue and one ring. The jade yue is tongue-shaped, mostly thick in the middle and thin on both sides. The upper end is flat, and the lower part is a curved double-sided blade, mostly blunt and without evidence of usage. Eight out of nine pieces of jade yue have holes. The preliminary observations on the texture of the jade shows that nine of them are serpentine jade and one is white marble. The color is mainly dark green, but also includes greenish-white, brown-grey, yellow-green and white. Its hardness on the Mohs scale is about 5 (Ma et al. 2006). The contrast between the jades of the Yangshao culture of the Central Plain 5300 years ago and that of Linjiatan, Hanshan, Anhui, of the same period is huge. More than 300 pieces of various jades were unearthed from Tomb M23, excavated in 2007. It seems that the abundance of jade materials and the existence of the specific concept of jade worship are equally important conditions for the prosperity of jade culture, but they cannot be regarded as prerequisites (see the following text for details). The following archaeological report about the geological conditions of

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the Lingjiatan cultural site reveals the importance of the natural conditions in the flourish of prehistoric jade culture. In a 100-kilometer radius around the site, there is a wealth of coal, phosphorus, grindstone, clay, fluorite, dolomite, limestone, agate, crystal, turquoise, mica, serpentine stone, quartzite, tremolite, and actinolite. (Anhui Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and archaeology 2006, 4)

Local precious stone resources are so rich that it is not surprising to see impressive variety within the 94 pieces of jade unearthed from Tomb 87M15 in Linjiatan (tremolite, white agate, yellow agate, crystal, quartzite, serpentine stone) (ibid., 138–148). The jade worship of Linjiatan was similar in scale to that of the Hongshan culture in the north, but failed to continue and thrive. It spread to other areas and prospered again. For example, it reached its climax in the Liangzhu culture in the Taihu region, east of Linjiatan. The trade in jade materials and finished products across the regions from Lingjiatan to Liangzhu is an important cultural phenomenon of the second and third periods of the Jade Age. Reports show that there is evidence of the mining, storage and export of jade materials in both places. This author, in the autumn of 2011, collected jade material samples from the Liangzhu culture, created 4000 or 5000 years ago, from Xiaomeiling, Liyang, Jiangsu. After comparing the samples with the present jade deposit in Xiaomeiling, the Chinese Geology University report indicated that the new jade material is tremolite, while the Liangzhu jade materials have been calcified, with calcium accounting for more than 50%. As for the origin of jade production in Lingjiatan, there are indications that it was not entirely spontaneous, but has developed under the influence of jade worship in the North Yingyangying culture (Tian 1999). If it had not been for the importing of jade materials from the southwest (Wenchuan Min珉 jade) and the northwest (eg., Qilian jade, Kunlun jade) of China, there would have been no continuation of jade culture in the Central Plain, which was lacking in jade deposits. However, the availability of jade resources are only an important condition, and not an absolute necessity. Xiuyan County, Liaoning, is considered to be the main place in which Hongshan jades were produced. More than 70% of contemporary jade production materials come from here. But the centre of the Hongshan culture is not in Xiuyan, but in the Chifeng area, Inner Mongolia, hundreds of kilometres away. This phenomenon is intriguing. Guo Dashun, an expert from Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, asserted that Hongshan culture jade differs from today’s Xiuyan jade, and its real source is still unknown. The production of the world’s top jade in Xinjiang’s Hotan did not lead to the formation of a prosperous local jade culture in prehistoric and early civilization. A similar case may be found in Myanmar, which is rich in jadeite raw materials. “Jadeite mines were exploited very early (at least 1700 years ago) in northern Myanmar, but only a small portion was processed in Mandalay or Moga. A large part was delivered to China or Japan. Therefore, it may be deduced that no regions in North Myanmar can be called jadeite cultural circles, even in ancient times” (Chihara, 1998, 366). Let one consider the three places with a range of jadeite materials: Japan, Central America and Myanmar. The former two developed into the world’s only two jadeite cultural

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circles, while the latter did not. Thus, material factors are not the sole factor in the formation of jade culture. Accompanying mythologies and belief systems are the primary reasons behind this development. Here is another similar case. Lingbao city of Henan Province did not produce jade, but nine out of the ten jades found there were serpentine stones from the local middle-phase Yangshao cultural tombs. Where did these come from? And was there any belief or mythology of jade worship like that of the Lingjiatan or Hongshan cultures? More prehistoric materials from the Central Plain are needed for further discussion of the issue. It is worth mentioning that Lingbao is rich in gold deposits, but from the Yangshao culture to the Central Plain’s Longshan culture, and then to the closest Erlitou culture in Yanshi, although the state-level Central Plain regime and the palace-city had emerged by this period, gold resources had never been exploited. One cannot help but wonder whether it is material availability or consciousness that determines human behavior. Facts show that consciousness is the main driving force of action. Because the Chinese ancestors worshiped jade rather than gold, the huge gold mine reserves, measuring over 60 km, in Qinling, Lingbao, were kept intact until the Ming and Qing Dynasties (Li 2007, 28). If the mineral resources here were not gold but jade, then the jade culture of the Central Plain would have prospered much earlier. This culture developed from the production of turquoise products in the Peiligang culture, Henan, which dates back as early as 7000 ago (Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 2010, 127). Not only this, but if the Central Plain region had been rich in jade material supplies, then the peak of jade culture would have come earlier than the those of the north Hongshan, south Lingjiatan, Liangzhu, and Shijiahe cultures, and even the late northwest Qijia culture. The jade culture of the Central Plain finally started to thrive 3000 years ago, as exemplified by Phase 2 of the Erlitou culture. Although the jade culture of the surrounding areas declined after the end of their peak periods, it continued to thrive in the Central Plain. The exchange of jade culture between different regions needed to be accompanied by changes in consciousness; that is to say it had to be accompanied by the spread of jade worship throughout East Asia, which paved the way for the unification of the entire Chinese region. What is worth noting during this period is that the best Hetian jade materials were transported to the mainland in batches and within a short time they replaced, and overwhelmed local jade varieties, becoming the major resources for the jade production in Xia, Shang and Zhou states. Thus, jade culture was ushered into the Central Plain, although much later than in the surrounding areas. The increased importance of Hetian jade marks the transition into the third period of the Jade Age. There was a jade road between the Central Plain and Sicuan, Qinghai, and Xinjiang before the rise of silk road, and it had several routes. The jade road had a significant impact on the economy, trade, religious beliefs, customs and cultural values. Artifacts of the Erlitou culture have similarities with that of the southwest Sanxingdui culture and northwest Qijia culture, connoting interaction among the three. The same cultural exchange of jade is evidenced in the influence of the east Dawenkou and Longshan cultures on the Central Plain’s Taosi and Erlitou cultures. It should be noted that there is a blank period of several hundred years between the middle and late periods

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of Yangshao culture. There is only a small amount of jade found from middle phase. Since the 1980s, however, ritual jades have been found many times in Qingliangsi, Potou Village, Ruicheng, Shanxi. Most of them are jade bi, and occasionally jade knives, jade rings, jade yue and jade cong are unearthed. These are known as Potou jades (Li and Zhang 2003), which belongs to the Miaodigou Phase 2, late Yangshao Culture (5000 years ago) (Ma 2007, 250). In addition, there is a blank period of about three hundred years between the Taosi and Erlitou Phase 2 cultures. Further archaeological discoveries are needed to fill this gap. The fourth phase of the Erlitou culture, meanwhile, connects smoothly with the Shang Dynasty. The archaeological sites belonging to the second period of the Jade Age are the Hongshan, Lower Xiajiadian, Dawenkou, Xuejiagang, Lingjiatan, Liangzhu, Yangshao, Miaodigou 2nd phase, Taosi, Longshan, Qujialing, Shijiahe, Majiayao and Qijia cultural sites. (3)

The closing period. This period overlaps with the rise of the Bronze Age, dating back about 3000–4000 years, and is roughly contemporaneous to the Xia and Shang Dynasties in ancient history, or equivalent to the popular archaeological term “Chalcolithic period” (Yan 1984). In order to illustrate the importance of old material and technological forms giving way to the new, consider one historian’s assertions: It is difficult to give a short and satisfactory definition of a Bronze Age. A chalcolithic period may arise merely through the influx of metal objects by trade; a true Bronze Age, on the other hand, implies some real knowledge of metallurgy by the inhabitants of the region concerned. The necessary prerequisites for the spread of metallurgy were a more stable food-supply, the possibility of larger social groups, and greater subdivision of labor. The advantages of metal should not, however, be exaggerated…. For weapons of war, however, metal has obvious advantage that it is less likely to break at a critical moment. Metallurgy must have been practiced widely in the Near and Middle East soon after 4000 BC, but metal ousted stone there very slowly—and still more slowly. (Singer et al. 1954, 503)

The above statement can be simplified as follows: the Bronze Age is likely to have arisen through the spread of metallurgy and its replacement of stone crafting. Metal is more significant in the reform of weapons than it is farming tools. The period that existed before metal completely replaced stone is the so-called Chalcolithic period. According to these conclusions, it may be inferred that metallurgy began in the Near East 6000 years ago, and had a great impact on the birth of Near Eastern civilization more than 5000 years ago. However, while metallurgy had been practiced in the Central Plain 4000 years ago, it did not have any critical influence on the birth of the Chinese civilization, because China (in the time of absence of metallurgy) already had its own sacred traditions, enshrined in jade mythology. The new mythological views that the rise of metallurgy ushered in could therefore not replace the old jade mythological views, which were well entrenched. At most, this resulted in gold and jade being valued equally. The production of bronze yue and bronze huang was an evolution of jade yue and jade huang, and held the same symbolic meaning. This is

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an example in which big tradition culture shapes and restricts the small tradition, and highlights the characteristics of the Chinese civilization. In terms of popular shape designs, the third period is characterized by jade gui, jade zhang, jade bi, jade huang and jade handle-shaped objects. Jade cong, popular in the second period, were declining in this stage. They were replaced by long and flat jade gui, which required simpler production techniques. Jade gui may have developed from jade yue or jade ben (锛, adze), which also declined in the third period because of the rise of bronze yue. The change of symbols from stone yue to jade yue to bronze yue reveals elements of the ancient history of royal power. The former two, although not practical tools, were common in prehistoric tribes. The power they symbolised and denoted was far weaker than the early copper yue, one of which has been unearthed from high-ranking tombs in the Erlitou site of the Central Plain (Chen 2008, 143). Until the Shangcheng ruins of Zhengzhou were discovered, the number of copper yue being excavated was gradually increasing. Nonetheless, jade yue and copper yue coexisted until the Western Zhou Dynasty. The prehistoric jade cong, jade yue and other important ritual objects flourished for two thousand years, and finally declined with the end of the Jade Age. The later part of this period coincided with the advent of the small tradition of writing. Early Chinese writing forms like oracle bone and bronze inscriptions provide evidence to those studying the formation of myths. The oracle script for hong (虹, , the arched bridge of the double-headed dragon (drinking water) is rainbow) is vivid proof that jade huang symbolised “rainbow dragon”. Therefore, during this period, unlike the declining jade jue, which had less of a mythological connotation, jade huang, with its dragon associations, was booming and was listed as one of “the six ritual instruments” in The Rites of Zhou. It developed into a variety of shapes. From the Erlitou culture to the Shang Dynasty and the Western Zhou Dynasty, the formation of Chinese kingship was accompanied by an institutionalization of the Central Plain jade ritual system and the gradual decline of jade culture in the surrounding areas. More importantly, the import of Hetian jade from the Western Kunlun Mountains increased rapidly and Hetian jades became the core symbols of power and wealth for the rulers of the Xia, Shang and Zhou. Jade beliefs survived to the Bronze Age, triggering the creation of a ritual and music system which valued both gold and jade. Then, through its development in the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods, and the Qin and Han Dynasties, the core values of jade as representing li (ritual), rui (symbols of authority) and de (virtue or power) was consolidated and handed down to later generations and continued for 2000 years after the emperor of Qin unified the whole country. From the imperial jade seal of the first Qin emperor to those of the Qing Dynasty, it is evident that a set of ancient Chinese rituals were preserved, and an unparalleled jade culture was constructed. Burial jades from Erlitou high-grade tombs differ in nature, and this indicates that the Central Plain regime had still not yet formed a unified system of jade veneration. However, the symbolic meaning of ritual jades did become more obvious and unified. From the Erlitou site were unearthed a total of 93 pieces of jade, among which 25 were handle-shaped, accounting for more than 30% of the total. But the origin and

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use this handle-shaped jade is not very clear. In their appearance, they are made of selected materials both with and without exquisite carving, representing the foremost techniques of the time. It accounts for a large percentage of jade in the later Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties. A thousand years later, this regional jade tradition in the third period of the East Asian Jade Age disappeared in the wake of new trends of jade production featuring complex decorative carvings in the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States Periods. Erlitou culture can be divided into four phases. There is basically no evidence of there being ritual jades in Phase One (except for a sole jade shovel unearthed from the Cuoli site, Luoyang). Phase Two may be seen as the period of inception. A total of 14 pieces of jade have been discovered from this phase. In the third and fourth phases, jade production thrived: 46 pieces have been unearthed belonging to Phase Three and 30 to Phase Four. Even so, the scale of jade production in the capital cities of the Central Plain cannot reasonably be compared with that of the Yangtze River tribal cultures like Lingjiatan 1500 years earlier, or the Shijiahe culture in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River several hundreds of years earlier. Not only was there a lack of jade deposits in the region, but jade culture during the construction of the Central Plain monarchy was catching up with more developed jade cultures outside the region. In terms of archaeological discoveries, meanwhile, the “six ritual instruments” system does not really provide a truly factual account of the ritual system that existed in the Western Zhou. Rather, it incorporates the imagination of later generations. It did not exist in the Xia, Shang or Zhou dynasties. Instead, unearthed jades from the third period must be considered. The third period of the Jade Age effectively incorporates the jades of the Shang Dynasty. Xia Nai (1983) classified these according to three categories more than 30 years ago: (1) ritual jades, referring to six ritual or sacrificial instruments: cong, bi, gui, zhang, huang and hu; (2) weapons and tools: spear, arrowheads, dagger-axes, axes, chisels, shovels and knives; (3) decorative objects, which may have magical functions like warding off evil spirits: gui (簋, bowl-shaped bronze vessel), palettes, thumb rings, human figures, animal carvings, and accessories. However, some newly unearthed objects do not fall into these three categories, such as handle-shaped jades. It is also not appropriate to see xuanji (璇玑, notched disc) and jue as types of bi, one of the six instruments. Moreover, human figurines may not simply be regarded as decorative objects. Huang Cuimei, together with the Tainan National University of the Arts, proposed a classification based on shapes and functions, which works well for potteries and bronzes, but not for jades (2002). As Huang has stated, “Because the identification of the function involves a considerable degree of subjective interpretation, and because that interpretation is often “posterior”, the function used as the first criterion will result in assigning specific functions to specific object shapes. Besides, this overly simplistic inference is very likely to ignore the change of objects’ functions over space and time and to fail to recognize effectively the links between various types of objects” (ibid., 223). Clearly, then, the role of jades in ancient Chinese society is very complex, and as such, the classifications used will not rigidly adhere to the concept of the “ritual instruments”. Huang divided Shang jades by shape and style: (1) round and circular,

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(ring, bi, huang, bracelet, jue, etc.); (2) straight and rectangular (cong, gui, axe, zhang, etc.), (3) image resemblance (animal and human figurines, etc.). By referring to the rise of ritual bronzes, meanwhile, she discussed the three types of jades in the Shang Dynasty that lost sanctity and were gradually reduced to treasures showing off wealth: “The symbolic meaning of jades in the Neolithic Age as the primitive instrument of sorcery has completely faded.” (ibid., 243–244). In this regard, one may prefer to reclassify but at the same time question the “loss of sanctity” of the Shang jades. There is no doubt that there is a general trend through ancient history of jade losing its sanctity, but this did not happen in the Shang, because people then were essentially superstitious. In this sense, therefore, whether it be geometric shaped or image-like jades, the mythical meaning needs research from a multidisciplinary perspective, rather than a flat denial. Even a long time after the Shang was replaced by the Zhou, the influence of jade mythological narratives remains clearly detectable. In particular, the following two pairs of Western Zhou dragon-shaped relics from high-ranking tombs with exquisite craftsmanship are worthy of careful identification and research: a pair of “jade pendants with human figure and dragon carvings” (ibid., 100–101) and another pair of “bird-shaped jade pendants with human figure, dragon and fish carvings” (ibid., 106) were unearthed from the No.1 Tomb at Qiangjia Village, Fufeng County in 1981. The latter two pieces were found on either side of the tomb owner’s head, are of the same size and quality, and sport similar decorative patterns. The burial arrangement, inherited from the two dragon burials of the Niuheliang tombs (of the Hongshan culture) has a mythical purpose. The two dragons protect the tomb owner during the latter’s ascent to heaven (Ye 2012b). The unearthed jade pendants from the Chu State tombs in Xiongjiazhong, Jinzhou, Hubei, which depict human figures riding on a dragon to heaven, are further evidence of this. Jades and stone reliefs play an important role in the construction of mythological ideology up to the Han Dynasty. Analysing these three periods was necessary in order to have a holistic understanding of the rise and fall of the East Asian Jade Age in early Chinese civilization. Although the Jade Age ended by merging into the Bronze Age, its cultural values formed a lasting legacy in local civilization. Concepts like jade symbolizing heaven’s mandate and jade being the medium between deities and human passed on to later generations, having a far-reaching impact on the formation of Chinese culture. It is written in the book Guanzi (管子) “They ordered pearls and jade to be the first-rate currency such as gold to be second-rate currency and coins to be third-rate currency” (Zhai 2005, 1481). Such a sequence is a good reflection of the big tradition of jade culture in the small tradition of civilization. Two thousand years later, Zhang Hongzhao (1921/2010), a pioneering Chinese geologist, despite having received a Western education, followed the principle of the ancients that gold and jade belong to the same type, and classified precious stones into three groups, in the order of jade, stone and jin (金, metal). The similarity between Zhang’s and Guanzi’s order fully reflects the status of different materials in the minds of the Chinese. The third category of jin includes huangjin (黄金), baijin (白金) and chijin (赤金), corresponding to gold, silver and bronze. The naming follows the principle of color applied in the naming of jade,

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such as white jade and green jade. Gold is more valuable than silver, which is more valuable than bronze. This cultural value is deeply rooted in Greek mythology that time itself is divided according to these metals: the Golden Age—the Silver Age— Bronze Age—Iron Age. But in the cultural memory of the Chinese civilization, there was a Jade Age that came before the Metal Age. Mythology and legend related to jade worship may also be found in the inherited literature of Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other countries and regions. The mass production of jade jue, jade tubes, jade sticks and other mysterious objects has been evidenced in archaeological findings from the prehistoric culture of the eastern part of Taiwan Island, such as the Pinuyuma (Taiwan Museum of Prehistory 2005). It seems that the Jade Age is not only an important cultural phenomenon in the initial period of Chinese civilization, but also a universal phenomenon in East Asian civilization. Therefore, the “East Asian Jade Age” and the “Chinese Jade Age” are inseparably interconnected.

7.3 The Beginnings of Jade-Ware: Mythological Conceptualizations of Jade Jue and Jade Huang In today’s East Asia most people know little about jade jue and jade huang except those who love antiquities or who often visit museums. However, history book lovers can recall the scene of the feast at the Hong Gate (a feast set up as a trap for the invited) described by Sima Qian. Fan Zeng, during the banquet, made signals with jade jue (玦) to Xiang Yu, telling him to kill Liu Bang. 玦is a homophonic pun for 决 symbolizing resolution. Similar accounts can be found in Xunzi (荀子). “Ambassadors on goodwill missions use the gui baton. Knights on missions of inquiry use the bi disc. Officers who deliver summons use the yuan ring. Envoys who break off relations carry the jue jade crescent. For the restoration of broken relations. the huan jade circle is used”(Knoblock 1999, 855). The five instruments have their respective metaphorical meanings in the Warring States Period. 玦 is a homophonic pun for决, meaning breaking off relations. 环 (huan) is a paronomasia for返 meaning restoration of relations. Even in today’s Chinese dictionaries, jue is explained as a penannular jade ring with an opening, the symbol of breaking off a relation. However, fewer people know that this is an extended meaning given to it by later generations. Jade huang also appear in pre-Qin history books many times as a national treasure. There are two extraordinary pieces of huang. One is called “White Jade Baiheng of Chu” (楚之白珩), the other is called “Jade Huang of Xiahoushi” (夏后氏之璜). They are as mysterious and priceless as the jade He Shi Bi (和氏璧, He’s jade disc). The latter is more famous because as Sima Qian put it in his history book: “To return the jade bi intact to the State of Zhao”, a phrase which has since become a well-known cultural event and a Chinese idiom. However, “Jade Huang of Xiahoushi” is used by pre-Qin scholars to express nostalgia because it is directly connected to the rulers of Xia. “White jade Baiheng of Chu”, as the name suggests, is the national treasure of

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the state of Chu. As written in the Discourse of the States (Guo Yu, 国语), “Wang Sunyu, a senior of Chu, paid an official visit to Jin. Duke Ding of Jin held a banquet in his honour. Wearing jing-ling jade and serving as the master of ceremonies during the reception, Zhao Jianzi asked Wang Sunyu, ‘is the famous white jade Baiheng still in the state of Chu?’ Wang Sunyu answered, ‘Yes.’”(Zuo 2012, 357). Concerns about huang reveal its importance as a symbol of sanctity. Hence, the driving force of jue and huang in history cannot be ignored. They are the earliest two forms of jade, judging from the shape of jade in the first period of the Jade Age, allowing that small and common jade tubes and beads are excluded. The most peculiar cultural phenomenon among all in the East Asian jade cultural regions is the coincidental emergence of jade jue. Examples have been discovered in Japan, Russian coastal areas, South Korea, China, the Philippines and Vietnam. Jade huang is also a common type of jade in certain East Asia regions. This leads to additional questions. Why did jade production start with jue and huang? What are the beliefs and ideas behind this? In the past, due to the lack of necessary references within the small tradition materials, these questions were unsolved. Today, however, the prehistoric big tradition offers clues as to the answers to these issues. Sima Qian failed to record the exact position where Fan Zeng wore jade jue. However, archaeological relics suggest that jade jue were ear pendants, equivalent to the Chinese character珥 (ear ornaments of jade). The Classic of Mountains and Seas proclaims repeatedly that the characteristics of sorcerers, sages king and deities are ershe (珥蛇). Guo Pu notes that it literally means hanging the snake through the ear, but what does ershe really mean? A rare snake-shaped jade earring of the Hongshan culture, unearthed from Tianjiagou, Lingyuan County, Liaoning Province, sheds light on the question. Legends of ershe are not mythological inventions, but derive from prehistoric jade traditions. This snake shape may be an imitation of the dragon-snake. This possibility should not be ruled out. One of the reasons for this is that the shape of the dragon is a common shape among Hongshan culture jades. For instance, three annular jade dragons stored in the Aohanqi Museum, Inner Mongolia, have an opening like jue (Shao 2004). They are in fact dragon-shaped jue with a diameter of between 5 and 7.5 cm, the same size as that of jade earring jue. The former have a small hole at the neck to allow them to hang from a hoop, while the latter has a small hole in the snake’s tail. Thus, referring to inherited literature, the mythical symbolism of jade jue can be roughly explained as follows: eryu (珥玉) is equal to ershe, meaning the wearing of snake-shaped jade earrings. The term ershe is recorded nine times in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, always in reference to the features of gods or sage kings. Why? Understandings about the human body and the ear in traditional Chinese medicine offer clues. These concepts are built on mythological cosmologies that believe the universe is a living body. The human body, as a microcosm of the universe, has an inseparable relationship with the wider universe. As the opening of the book Listen to Your Body: The Wisdom of the Dao (Guo and Powell 2001, 3) explains, “We usually think of our bodies as complete in themselves, separate from the air we breathe and the ground we walk on. It is true that the body

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is a whole universe in itself. But it is part and parcel of the total universe in which we live and to which we are connected every minute of our lives”. The figure of the Ear Hologram of Body (ibid., 8) shows the ear imagined as an inverted embryo-like human body, curled up in the uterus. The upper part of the helix corresponds to the hand and foot, and the ear lobe the head. Earrings are worn on the earlobe. As shown in the Ear Acupoints map, the acupoints of eyes, tongue, inner ear forehead and temples are concentrated in the earlobe. Traditional Chinese medicine was not created out of thin air. Its origin lies in the big tradition, in Stone Age mythological thinking about the universe. The idea that the essence of the universe is focused on the earlobe makes it the most important part of human body to communicate between heaven and man. Modern Chinese people who are not familiar with this knowledge may find this difficult to understand. However, once they learn the ancient view of the human body and of the universe, the puzzle of ershe can gradually be resolved. Why is ershe used as a sign of the deities, sorcerers and sages? Hua Yubing believed ershe is the archetype on which jade jue developed (2000). Tian Guanglin held that jade jue of the Xinglongwa culture embodies the worship of the snake. Why worship snakes? the mythological analogy is that the embryo-like body resembles a curled snake, but it could also signify the snake’s hibernation and moulting, understood by the ancient peoples as symbols of coming back to life, and more broadly of the goddess of life. In the inherited literature, one can still find information about prehistoric goddess worship and snake god worship in the description of the “snake body” of the great goddess Nüwa. Through further analysis, one may see that in the characterization of deities and sorcerers, ershe and the riding of a dragon appear at the same time, often as a symbol of divine power and unpredictability. The colors of the snakes are green (seven times) and yellow (two times). The use of the two colors, in general, corresponds to the ancient color distribution of jade. It is surprisingly consistent with the color of jade jue unearthed from the Xinglongwa cultural site and jade dragon jue from the Hongshan cultural site. Is the concept of ershe the reason that snake-shaped jade earrings were made and worn? Well-versed in inherited literature and paying attention to antiquities, Rao Zongyi (1998, 15) argued that the Chinese character 旬 (xun) originated from the dragonshaped jade of the Hongshan culture. With a radical玉 (jade), the Chinese character 珣 (xun), together with玗琪 (yuqi), is the name of jade for the tribal peoples of China’s Northeast. The oracle-bone form of旬means ten days, corresponding to the myth of ten suns in The Classic of Mountains and Seas. It is not impossible that the jade dragon or snake represents the sun. The sun god in the American Indian myths appears in the form of a “feathered snake”, which is described as “The sun sent Quetzalcoatl” (Ye 1992, 165). The ancients used the symbolic snake-shaped jade earring to communicate between people and the sun god—the light and source of life. Rao’s explanation makes a unique point. In short, the rise of jade jue must have mythological factors behind it, which needs further research. In contrast, the jade huang myth has a clearer and more unified interpretation. “Huang” and “jade huang” are the names given to such jade by the Chinese in

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ancient writings. A large number of similar jade objects were unearthed in a wide non-Han cultural area before Chinese characters appeared. At that time, it is likely that there was no such name as “huang”. Perhaps they were known as “kogok”, “magatama”, or “curved jade”. So, what is their archetype and origin? Prehistoric people used jade as a symbol of a mysterious meteorological change— the rainbow. In the ancient Hebrew religious mythology, the rainbow is interpreted as a symbol of the covenant between God and man. Genesis 1: 9 tells the story of God making a covenant with Noah using the sign of a rainbow after flooding the earth. “I have set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and the earth” (2008, 12). It is not surprising that prehistoric peoples had similar mythological understandings in different cultures, because of the commonality in their mythological thinking. The Hebrews imagined that the Lord could use the rainbow to be a medium between God and human. They could certainly also imagine the Lord himself as a rainbow (Ezekiel 1: 26–28). And above the expanse over their heads there was the likeness of a throne, in appearance like sapphire; and seated above the likeness of a throne was a likeness with a human appearance. And upward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were gleaming metal, like the appearance of fire enclosed all around. And downward from what had the appearance of his waist I saw as it were the appearance of fire, and there was brightness around him. Like the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud on the day of rain, so was the appearance of the brightness all around. Such was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD. (2008, 1330)

The discovery of this “three in one” meaning—huang, dragon and rainbow—has been an academic breakthrough thanks to archaeological discoveries since the twentieth century. Over thousands of years, natural phenomena have long been given mythological explanations. Jade as a natural object has been mythologized by the human imagination. The emergence of jade huang is the materialization and objectification of the “rainbow-dragon” mythological concept, which can be summarized according to the following five points: First, the rainbow symbolises the power of the deities. The appearance of good and evil deities symbolises good fortune and bad fortune. Second, the rainbow is controlled by the deities. It is a colourful bridge between heaven and earth. Third, although jade is produced on earth as a beautiful and translucent stone, it has been imagined as a sacred object endowed by deities to the human world, like the rainbow. One can refer to the legend of the rainbow and the myth of five-color stones (Nüwa mending the sky). Fourth, the use of the color jade to simulate the rainbow and produce rainbowshaped jade objects expresses the basic beliefs and desire to communicate between heaven and earth, between deities and humans. Fifth, jade huang must resemble the rainbow not only in color, but also in shape. Moreover, it needs to imitate the mythical image of the rainbow dragon, especially of the two-headed dragon. Therefore dragon, dragon-head, or two-headed dragon carvings can be found on jade huang.

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The reconstruction of jade huang myths leads to a reconstruction of big tradition prehistoric mythological views. It is important to note that as a result of the limitations imposed by the division of subject knowledge, the object and image narratives behind the newly unearthed jades have not been given sufficient attention by scholars. Interdisciplinary research is needed for further exploration. The common foundations of East Asian jade culture are jade mythological beliefs and concepts. Probing the similarity of these concepts is conducive to constructing the archetypes on which later culture developed, which in turn sheds light on interpreting the ideological connections between prehistoric cultures and the relevance of cultural relics.

7.4 Chinese and Japanese Jade Myths: A Case Study of the Kojiki and the Nihongi East Asian jade culture retains the same basic mythological belief, that is, jade is a hierophany. It belongs to heaven and the deities, and is the gift of deities to humans. Jade thus not only has economic value, but religious value and derivative political, military, aesthetic and moral value. This common belief in Japanese culture, though it seems to occur in a later period because of the later emergence of written records, still vividly reflects prehistoric mythological and religious culture. The following is a discussion of jade mythological elements in the two oldest documents that chronicle the history of Japan: the Kojiki and the Nihongi. (1)

The creation myths: the Floating Bridge of Heaven and Heavenly Jewelled Spear

The Kojiki and Nihongi are the two oldest written documents in Japan that record the creation myths. Section. III of the Kojiki gives the following account: Hereupon all the Heavenly Deities commanded the two Deities His Auguestness the MaleWho-Invites and Her Augustnness the Female-Who-Invites, ordering them to “make, consolidate, and give birth to this drifting land.” Granting to them a heavenly jeweled spear, they [thus] deigned to charge them. So the two Deities, standing upon the Floating Bridge of Heaven, pushed down the jeweled spear and stirred with it, whereupon, when they had stirred the brine till it went curdle-curdle, and drew [the spear] up, the brine that dripped down from the end of the spear was piled up and became an island. This is the island of Onogoro. (Chamberlain 1932, 21-22)

According to the annotated Kojiki published by the major Japanese publisher Shogakukan (Ogihara and K¯onosu1983, 52), the Floating Bridge of Heaven can be interpreted as a rainbow or a boat. The bridge in the Nihongi was given a respectable name. This reveals that the rainbow or the boat, sailing in heaven’s river, is imagined as the channel between heaven and earth, the same analogy which occurs in many myths. The rainbow’s unpredictability and uncertainly constitute the basic characteristics of

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the association of ‘the Floating Bridge of Heaven’. In the Kojiki it is first stop for the deities to land on the earth: So then [the Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity and the High-Integrating-Deity] commanded His Augustness Heaven’s Prince-Rice-ear-Ruddy-Plenty; and he, Leaving the Heavenly Roch-Seat, pushing asunder the eight-fold heavenly spreading clouds, and dividing a road with a mighty road-dividing, set off floating shut up in the Floating Bridge of Heaven, and descended from Heaven on to the Peak of Kuzhifuru which is Takachiho in Tasukushi. (Ibid., 133-134)

Beside the rainbow bridge connecting heaven and earth, there is an inherent sacred and mysterious material referenced—jade. This is the original tool used by the brother and sister in the Japanese myth to create the world and the Japanese archipelago—the heavenly jewelled spear (天沼矛). With the spear pushed down into the sea, drops of water (or brine) accumulated into islands. This amazing detailed description is a show of the creative power of the jewelled spear. In various versions of Nihongi天 沼矛 is written as天琼戈 or天琼矛. Real jade spears were found in use on the Chinese continent four or five thousand years ago, evidenced by archaeological discoveries from Miaodigou Phase 2 cultural site of the Yangshao culture. Four thousand years later a large number of jade spears were excavated from the Erlitou site in Yanshi, Henan (Tao 2005, 420) and 39 others from the Fu Hao Tomb of Anyang Yin Ruins (Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 1980). After the Western Zhou Dynasty, jade spears developed from weapons and sacred ritual instruments into non-practical aristocratic treasures and decorations (Zhang 2007). Why is this sacred object, which emerged three thousand years ago, recorded in the creation myth of the Japanese ancient books from 1200 years ago? It is said to be endowed by more ancient deities to the two gods of the narrative, as can be seen from the Nihongi: The Gods of Heaven Addressed Izannagi no Mikoto and Izanami no Mikoto, saying: “There is the country Toyo-ashi-hara-chi-i-wo-aki no midzu-ho. ‘Do ye proceed and bring it into order.’ They then gave them the jewel-spear of Heaven. Hereupon the two Gods stood on the floating bridge of Heaven, and plunging down the spear, sought for land. Then upon stirring the ocean with it, and bringing it up again, the brine which dripped from the spear-point coagulated and became an island, which was called Ono-goro-jima…” (Aston 1896, 14)

The Heavenly Jewelled Spear as the creation tool of the two ancestral deities, and the Floating Bridge of Heaven from which the deities descended to earth, have a similar function in their mythological narratives, namely to connect heaven and earth, the sacred and the profane. This is also the basic meaning of all divine things. The annotation for 天琼矛(tian qiong mao), in its first appearance in the text of the Nihongi is that琼 means jade (Kawamura 185, 6). This clearly explains the nature of the spear. This detail shows the importance of jade mythological elements in the Japanese concept of creation. This heavenly jewelled spear bestowment is in accordance with the use of jade as a sacred token in ancient Chinese ideology. The myth brings together the sacredness and rationality of the creation of Japan. Moreover, the significance of jade’s sacred vitality and creative power cannot be ignored.

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Jade beads and the sun god: symbol of ruling the Plain-of-High-Heaven In the section XI of the Kojiki: At this time His Augustness the Male-Who-Invites greatly rejoiced, saying: “I, begetting child after child, have at my final begetting gotten three illustrious children,”[with which words,] at one jinglingly taking off and shaking the jewel-string forming his august necklace, and he bestowed it on the Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity, saying: “Do Thine Augustness rule the Plain-of-High-Heaven.” With this charge he bestowed it on her. Now the name of this august necklace was the August-Store-house-Shelf-Deity. (Chamberlain 1932, 51)

The Creator God used the jewel-string he wore as a symbol of the ruler of the Heaven Plain. This mythological narrative embodies a historical truth of the big tradition. Those who wore jade were, at that time, the social elite—sorcerers, fortune tellers and mediators between deities and humans. This can compare with the myths of gods wearing precious stones in the Sumerian literature 5000 years ago. Though the Kojiki was written at the beginning of the eighth century AD, the jade worship it records is exactly the same as that of the early civilizations. This provides one with evidence to reconstruct the basis for the East Asian jade culture with reference to Japanese mythology. The “jingling” sound reveals another important message: the worship of jade is not only based its visual qualities, its beautiful colors and translucent crystal properties, but also on the sound that it can create. In East Asia, the inherent relation between ritual jade and ritual music has not yet been systematically understood. In fact, as seen from the tombs of the tribe chiefs and sorcerers of the Hongshan, Xiaoheyan and Lingjiatan cultures, that each tomb owner is wearing many bracelets (two to ten) on each hand suggests that the music required in the ritual performance had the function of mediation. The system of ritual jades from China’s Zhou and Shang Dynasties clearly had musicological significance. The slight collision between jades and between jade and metal produces a wonderful sound, which was likely the motivation for such systems and the origin for the expression “golden sound and jade vibration”, symbolizing Confucius’ great virtue. Such ritual experiences can be traced back to the Central Plain monarchs according to the unearthed bronze bells and jade chime-stones from the Erlitou ruins about 3700 years ago. One can better understand the significance of the jingling sound of the shaking jewel-string in the Kojiki when it is considered in the context of East Asian prehistoric jade ceremonies. For example, jade huang is the most common shape of prehistoric East Asian jade. In addition to the various explanations offered in ancient Chinese books, Zhang Heng, a polymath in the Han Dynasty, also gave a musical interpretation, “Resplendent are their coloured patterns and carved designs; The sounds of my pendant jades carry long and far” (Xie 2013, 329). Archaeological findings suggest jade huang is also the earliest and the most common among the six jade instruments. Was the beautiful sound of jade huang associated, by the early humans, with the voice of the gods? Sacred ritual jades were used to safeguard the monarch and the people, symbolizing the gods guarding the human world. This is embodied in the wearing of jade objects by the shaman, producing the sounds from heaven. As Eliade described, “We have

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seen that the Shaman has seven bells on his costume, representing the voices of the seven celestial maidens” (1972, 277–278). The interpretation of “jade sound” in the East Asian culture will be further discussed in Chap. 13. It is worth noting that the Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity, the Japanese sun goddess, used jade beads as symbols of his rule of the Plain of the Heaven. It is interesting to speculate as to whether this can be traced to ershe, jade jue and curved jade, that is, the symbol of the sun god. Research in comparative mythology on the relationship between the sun god and the snake god, and between the sun god and jade can provide a starting point. Gimbutas reveals close connections between the snake, the goddess, and the sun: the snake and the sun were regarded by early humans as symbols of life force; they had been personified as goddesses throughout prehistory before becoming male following the establishment of patriarchal societies (1989, 121). Hence, the myths of the snake goddess and the sun goddess came into being in the prehistoric era. This is manifested in the sun goddess and her jade beads in early Japanese civilization, where there is strong evidence for the existence of matriarchal societies (Ye and Li 2010). In his book The Snake and the Cross Japanese mythologist Yasuda Yoshinori drew a similar conclusion without referring to Gimbutas, by comparing Eastern and Western myths. The mythologization of the snake and the deer, and sun goddess worship were based on ideas of life regeneration in the prehistoric culture of Japan. This is supported by the ceramic figurines unearthed from Nagano Prefecture Tengye ruins in the Jomon period. On the figurines’ head there is a coiled viper. This prehistoric image shows that, like the image of the snake goddess in Mediterranean culture, the ancient Japanese also believed in the snake witch. “For the snake witch, the sacrifice of snakes and listening to the snake’s oracle means no more than changing herself into a snake” (Yasuda 2004, 180). The snake witch transformed into a snake just as the snake is wrapping the body. A sacred rope made out of bunches of straw twisted and wrapped together decorating the Japanese shrine or the temple is a symbol of the intercourse of a male snake and a female snake. Yasuda also believed that the snake in the Jomon period was a god, but in the Yayoi period, the snake’s sanctity was transferred to the deer’s body. The divine animal changed from the snake to the deer, which in turn became the emperor’s symbol. With this conversion the snake god was demonized, and heroic snake-chopping legends began to form (ibid., 58). In view of this, it can be concluded that the belief in a sun goddess and the sanctity of jade was preserved from the Jomon period, while belief in a snake goddess was lost. It is difficult for later generations to link the snake with curved jade, jade string or the Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity. (3)

Use of curved jade jewels to ascend to heaven and create life One story in the Nihongi goes as follows: When Sosa no wo no Mikoto was about to ascend to Heaven, there was a Deity whose name was Ha-akaru-tama. This Deity came to meet him and present to him beautiful maga-tama of Yasaka jewels. So sosa no wo no Mikoto took these gems and went up to Heaven. At this time Ama-terasu no Oho-kami, suspecting that the intentions of her younger brother were evil, prepared war and questioned him. Sosa no wo no Mikoto answered and said:—‘Truly the

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sole reason of my coming is that I wished to see my elder sister face to face, and moreover to present to her these beautiful curved jewels of Yasaka gem. I dare not have any other purpose.’ Then Ama-terasu no Oho-kami asked him again, saying:- ‘wherewithal wilt thou prove to me whether thy words are true or false?’ He answered and said, —‘Let the and me bind ourselves by an oath. If while we are bound by this oath, the children produced are females, my heart is to be accounted black, but if they are males, it is to be thought red.’ So they dug three true-wells of Heaven and stood to one another. (Aston 1896, 37-38)

There is a corresponding account in the Kojiki. The Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity created deities from jewels worn on different parts of the body: curved jewels eight feet long twisted in left brunch of her hair and jewels twisted in the right brunch of her hair, in her head dress, in her left and right arm. (Chamberlain 1932, 57-58)

The details of the main gods wearing jade jewels correspond in some ways to the jade wearing of ancient Chinese imperial aristocrats and gentlemen. It is like the description of the Queen Mother of the West wearing a jade hair ornament yusheng (玉胜) (Ye 2011a). The narrative of the Nihongi compressed the five kinds of jade into one, and named it with seven Chinese characters (瑞八坂琼之曲玉). 曲玉 (quyu) is also known as magatama. According to the Japanese-Chinese Dictionary (2002, 2027) it is curved jade pendant or comma-shaped jade pendant. There is a strap hole on the thick side. It emerged in the Jomon period and more objects were excavated from the sites of the Yayoi and Kofun periods. It is made of jadeite, jasper, agate, crystal, amber, talc, earth and glass, and was for decorations and sacrificial purposes. In view of this, the curved jade in the Japanese creation myth is not born out of literary fiction but is a sacred object based on a physical archetype in prehistoric jade culture. 瑞 (rui) and八坂琼 (ba ban qiong) are modifiers, reflecting the connection between Chinese jade culture and Japanese culture. The Chinese character瑞 is a key word of Chinese jade culture. A detailed analysis will be conducted in Chapt. 11. 八坂琼is also written as八尺琼勾玉 (eight-foot curved jade). The sacred瑞八坂 琼之曲玉 (a kind of jewel in Japanese, more specifically a jade pendant in Chinese) has the function of ascending to the heavens and regenerating life. Based on the textual narrative, jade beliefs in ancient Japanese mythology can be summed up in the following seven points: (a) (b) (c) (d) (e) (f) (g)

Jade is the most valuable treasure. Jade belongs to the deities. Jade belongs to the realm of heaven. Jade symbolises rui (瑞): a token bestowed by deities. Jade is the origin of sacred life. Both jade and metal are mythologized objects. Jade is a medium between heaven and earth, transmitting sanctity.

The above comparative analysis shows that these seven points are parallel to the Chinese jade mythological view, though the two are separated by a large chronological span. This is again evidence of the foundation of a common mythological view in the East Asian jade culture or the East Asian Jade Age.

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Great-Country-Master God also named Great-Country-Jewel God It is written in the Nihongi: Oho-kuni-nushi➂ no Kami is also called Oho-mono-nushi no Kami➃ , or else Kuni-dzukuri Oho-na-mochi➄ no Mikoto, or again Ashi-hara no Shiko-wo➅ , or Ya-chi-hoko➆ no Kami, or Oho-kuni-dama➇ no kami, or Utsushi-kuni-dama➈ no Kami. His children were in all one hundred and eight-one Deities. ➂ Great-country-master. ➃ Great-thing-master. ➄ Country-make great-name-possessor. ➅ The ugly male of the reed-plain. ➆ Eight thousand spears. ➇ Great-country-jewel. ➈ Apparent-country-jewel (Aston 1896, 59).

Here is listed six other names of Great-Country-Master God. The last two contain of “jewel” or “jade”. That “jade” is used as a modifying element of the deities name suggests the concept of divine jade (or more broadly, precious stones) existed in the ancient Japanese culture. In the Kojiki and the Nihongi, there are many deities with jade (玉) in their name or title, like 玉祖命, 布刀玉命, and丰玉毗卖命. In the Nihongi, when the sun goddess shut herself in the rock-cave of heaven, all the other gods were worried so that “the ancestor of the Imibe (weavers’ clan) made offerings, and Toyo-tama, the ancestor the Be of Jewel-makers, made jewels to lure her out” (ibid., 47). The names of the ancestor are various, such as羽明玉, 丰玉, 天明玉, 玉屋, 櫛明玉 (Kawamura 1923, 53). According to cognitive and linguistic anthropology, the more names a thing has, the more important it is in its culture. The various names of the jade-makers demonstrate that jade production played a significant role in building imperial power. In turn, this helps to understand why many Japanese deities were named after jade. In Chinese mythology, jade is used in the names of many deities, such as Jade Girl (玉女), Queen mother of the Jade Pool (瑶母) and Emperor Zhuanxu (颛顼). Later, the literati’s preference for the “jade names” in their works made such names popular among the ordinary people. Even the name of the Yellow Emperor has some connection with the jade huang, which will be discussed in Chap. 12.

7.5 Comparison Among Chinese, Japanese and South Korean Jade Myths: Archetypes of Red Jade and Curved Jade (1)

Amanohiboko (The Heavenly Sun Spear) In the Kojiki a story goes like this:

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Moreover of old there had been [a man] called by the name of Ama-no-hi-boko, child of the ruler of the land of Shiragi. This person crossed over here [to Japan]. The reason of his crossing over here was [this]: in the land of Shiragi there was a certain lagoon, called by the name of the Agu Lagoon. On the bank of this Lagoon a certain poor girl was [taking her] midday sleep. Tune solis radii, colesti arcu smiles, in privates partes impregerunt. Again there was a certain poor man, who, thinking this occurrence strange, constantly watched the woman’s behavior. So the woman, having conceived from the time of that midday sleep, gave birth to a red jewel. Then the poor man who had watched her begged [to be allowed] to take the jewel, and kept it constantly wrapped up by his side. This person, having planted a rice-field in a valley, had loaded a cow with food for the labourers, and was getting into the middle of the valley, when he met the rule’s son, Ama-no-hi-boko, who thereupon asked him, saying: “Why enters thou the valley with a load of food upon a cow. Thou wilt surely kill this cow and eat her”. Forthwith he seized the man and was about to put him into prison, when the man replied, saying: “I was not going to kill the cow. I was simply taking food to the people in the fields.” But still the [ruler’s child] would not let him go. Then he undid the jewel [which hung] at his side, and [therewith] bride [the ruler’s child]. So [the latter ] let the poor man go, brought the jewel [home], and placed it beside his couch. Forthwith it was transformed into a beautiful maiden, who he straightway wedded, and made his chief wife. Then the maiden perpetually prepared all sorts of dainties with which she constantly fed her husband. So the ruler’s child [grew] proud in his heart, and reviled his wife. But the woman said, “I am not a woman who ought to be the wife of such as thou. I will go to the land of my ancestors”—and forthwith she secretly embarked in a boat, and fled away secretly across here [to Japan] and landed at Naniha. (Chamberlain 1932, 313-315)

This intriguing Japanese myth connects its narrative background in the Japanese archipelago with the Korean Peninsula. Ancient Silla (Shiragi in Japanese) is the ancestral state of today’s North and South Korea, where the myth of jade is again a literary motif as a result of common cultural genes it shares with the rest of East Asia. It is natural to associate the myth of Amanohiboko (Heavenly sun-spear) with the Korean myths of King Jumong, the founding ancestor Tangun and Yeonorang, and Seonyeo. One needs to note that the wife of Amanohiboko was originally herself red jade, given birth to by a woman impregnated by the sunlight. After the prince accidentally took the red jade home, it transformed into a beautiful girl. Jumong was hatched from an egg born out of a woman impregnated when a ray of sunlight shone on her body. The similarity is plain, and the shared symbolic importance of the sunlight reveals the connection between the two myths. In the Japanese myth, jade is the key motif. This suggests the extraordinary attributes of jade were also valued highly in the ancient myths of the Korean peninsula. Jade jue and curved jade were sacred objects symbolizing the source of life in the late Bronze Age and after. For example, the golden crown symbolizing imperial power was decorated with comma-shaped jade ornaments. In the Japanese myth, the Silla is jade instead of an egg, and curved jade is one of the three symbolic objects of Japanese imperial power. Amanohiboko took eight treasures from Ancient Silla to Japan, revealing that the origin of the Japanese Izu Shinto shrine is connected to jade objects from the Korean peninsula. The name Amanohiboko contains a metaphor of the sun, which is another key motif. His wife was actually the daughter of the sun god. In the end she left the prince of Silla and went to Japan. Does this reference the exchange of jade culture between the two countries? In the legend of Yeonorang and Seonyeo, after Seonyeo

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left for Japan, the sun and the moon stopped shining. After a sacrificial offering to the heavenly God with Senoyeo’s silk fabric in Silla, the sun and the moon started to rise again. It is believed, in fact, that the two myths connote a triple relationship: women— jade—the essence of the sun and the moon. Jade beads, silk and mirrors in Japanese mythology are symbols of Amaterasu. Jade objects and silk fabric representing the essence of the sun and moon have mythological interpretations. The ritual of offering these two things symbolise offering one’s vitality to the deities, including the sun god and the moon god. According to the Kojiki, her brother became angry, hurling a flayed pony at her loom, killing one of her attendants in a fit of rage. Amaterasu was scared and shut herself inside the heavenly rock cave. In consequence, when the supply of silk fabric was cut off, the sun lost its vitality. Then the whole Plain of High Heaven was obscured and all the Central Land of Reed-Plains darkened. Owing to this, the eternal night prevailed. Hereupon the voice of the myriad Deities like unto the flies in the fifth moon as they swarm and a myriad portent of woe arose. (Chamberlain 1932, 313-315)

The vitality of the sun goddess is restored by way of an offering to attract the sun goddess out of the rock cave. Here the jade, bronze mirror and textiles represent, in general, the mature system ritual materials in East Asia—silk and jade were of primary importance, then bronzes. Some scholars have speculated that the image of the sun goddess is vaguely related to that of a witch in other myths. Korean scholars believe that in the Tangun myth the heavenly treasure that Hwanwung brought back is a mirror. Since the bronze mirror is considered a shamanic ritual instrument, Tangun is thus a shaman king with the power of communicating with the deities. Japanese scholar Mishina Shoei suggested that the sun goddess’ reliance on jade and bronze mirrors shows that she was not the deity who received the sacrifice, but was a woman who offered sacrifice to deities (1973, 428). However, given that it seems the gods need sacrifices for vitality (essence), such assertions appear invalid. The priests conducting the rituals usually pretend to be deities, and the gods commonly descended by means of possessing of the body of those sorcerers (Ye 2010b). Sunlight is interpreted to be representative of the vitality of the deities in these myths. The motif “the sun shines like a rainbow” in the myth has research value, because this vivid metaphor connects the myth of the sun, the rainbow dragon myth, the jade huang myth and the birth myth. This author sees pregnancy by sunlight as the archetype on which later birth myths develop. Other varieties include pregnancy by the wind, the spirit, birds’ egg, mulberry and even dragons (Ye 1991, 231–217). Today, through the image narratives gleaned from jade huang and curved jade, one can find combinations of images of the rainbow, dragon, snakes, phoenix, fish, and tiger, and understand the metaphorical connection between these images, and their relationship with the sun myths and pregnancy motif. For more than 1000 years, the Kojiki and the Nihongi have been regarded as the orthodox ancient history books of Japan. Since the introduction of Western studies to the east, there have been significant changes to this view. History is now regarded almost as science and empirical evidence is required to prove the narratives provided

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in ancient books. As a result, modern historians began to approach the two books using advances in the study myths and legends. In the 1970s, the Japanese scholar Umehara Takeshi (1999, 266) pointed out that the nature of the two chronicles compares with the Homerian epics and the Old Testament. By reconstructing the foundations of the myths contained in these two books, it is possible to acknowledge their value more fully. Although the written records were created much later on, information about mythological beliefs reflected in them contains elements of the original myths. The primitive simplicity of many of them reflects and refracts the big tradition of prehistoric culture. Hence, the version of the jade myth that they present can, to some extent, supplement the deficiencies of ancient Chinese ancient books and records, and play an important role in allowing comparison and mutual interpretation, such as in the case of the vivid presentation of the connection between of jade and life, and the concept of “jade and silk are the essence of the sun and the moon”. The native myths familiar to the Japanese are those presented in Shinto, but these do not reflect the original beliefs of myths. Recent religious historiography has, in essence, discovered that the worship of the shrine is a later element of Japanese religious history. At first, they worshipped natural things. A mountain, a tree or a stone might be regarded as a deity, or as the place where deities live (ibid., 276). These local field reports help to restore the foundations of belief in an East Asian jade culture, and are an impetus to investigate the root causes of jade becoming a political, religious and historical symbol. One thus has a better understanding of divines generating life in the Kojiki. Having begged the Heaven-Shining-Great-August-Deity to hand him the augustly completer [string] of curved jewels eight feet [long],—that was twisted in the left august bunch [of her hair], and with the jewels making a jingling sound having brandished and washed them in the left—Pool-Well of Heaven, and having crunchingly crunched them, HisSwift-Impetuous-Male-Augustness blew them away, were Her Augustness Torrent-MistPrincess…(Chamberlain 1932, 56-57)

The sacred jade ornaments that the goddess wore were ordinary jewels or jade. They symbolise her “essence”, and can regenerate new deities after ritual procedures like washing and blowing. This mysterious function sheds light on prehistoric jade production and customs. It is not difficult to see that the belief system represented by jade mythology was the natural religion of East Asia in the pre-Shinto period, and provided the basis of later belief systems such as Confucianism, Daoism and Shinto. It is of great importance that the basic elements of these big traditions are elaborated upon, such that the origins of civilization, the construction of theocratic ideologies, and the beginnings of power narratives might be better understood. In summary, jade mythology plays a role in setting the archetypes on which Japanese mythistory would develop, in much the same way as Chinese mythistory. The ancient Japanese books analysed here support the idea that polytheism and fetishistic beliefs existed during prehistoric times. With the support of the fourth type of evidence, one may thus build a rough chronology. Jade and jadeite emerged as sacred materials in the Japanese archipelago as early as the Jomon period. Batches of unearthed prehistoric jades bear witness to the existence of jade belief, while

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the mirror and sword became the new sacred objects of the metal age. There are thousands of years that separate the emergence of the old and new sacred objects. The ancients could not differentiate between these and regarded the three treasures— the sword Kusanagi (草薙剑), the mirror Yata no Kagami (八尺镜), and the curved jewel Yasakani no Magatama (八尺琼勾玉) as descending from heaven at the same time. However, today scholars are able to make a clear distinction. (2)

Curved jade: myths of life origin

The most precious treasures in the National Museum of Seoul are the crowns of Silla, a profound symbol of imperial power. The crowns, with comma-shaped jewels of jade, look like trees with plenty of fruit. Such jewels are also found attached to the shoulder straps and belts of the rulers. The number of comma-shaped jewels can number up to 60 or 70, indicating they were mass produced. They can be traced back to prehistoric times, because single comma-shaped jade ornaments are also showcased in the prehistoric culture exhibition hall in the Chuncheon National Museum. Among the exhibits there were also jade jue—its shape no different from that excavated from relic sites of the Xinglongwa, Zhaobaogou and Hongshan cultures. In Korean culture, jade objects emerged much earlier than gold objects. The earliest kogok are semi-annular in shape and made of Tianhe stone, dating back to the Neolithic Age. The stone is not a common material, though has been also discovered among the archaeological relics of China’s Hongshan and Qijia cultural sites. A photo in East Asian Jade (Deng 1998b, 234) indicates the burial form of the sarcophagus tombs found at the excavation site of Songguk-ri, Buyeo, Chungcheongnam-do, South Korea, is the same as that found in the Jishi tombs of China’s Hongshan culture. In addition, another photo of a pair of magatama unearthed from the Goejeong-dong, Daejeon City, Chungcheongnam-do, shows that their shape corresponds to that of the conjoined double huang in China. The difference is that Korean kogok mostly have one drilled hole at one end, while China’s jade huang have two holes at each end. There are exceptions. On pages 334 and 335 two pieces out of 32 curved jades have two holes. One piece of semi-annular kogok looks no different from China’s semi-annular jade huang. Because of their wide distribution and the diversity of shapes they took in prehistory, some jade huang in China have only one hole, such as two from the Hexin cultural site, one without pattern from the Shjiahe cultural site and a dragon-shaped one from the tombs of the Western Zhou at Zhangjiapo, shown in the same book (ibid., 65, 85, 239). The method of wearing huang is similar to that of wearing magatama. In this regard, huang and kogok, if not completely the same, at least overlap in their appearance and functionality. According to Kim Byung-mo, curved jade of similar type can also be found in the Korean Peninsula bronze era sites, such as Taep’y˘ong-ri (대평리/大坪里), North Pyongan, North Korea and Gonam Shell Mound, anmyondo island (Lim 2012). In 1966 grinding stones and curved jades were unearthed from a Bronze Age jade workshop in Jinyang reservoir fortifications, Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea. Radioactive carbon dating shows that the two objects date back to 1590–1310 BC and 1620–1400 BC (Lee 2004, 178). If correct, these historical physical objects

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belong to a period one or two thousand years earlier than the oldest Korean historical documents. Lim Byeonghee (2012) pointed out that the cultural belt of curved jade worship extended from the Korean peninsula to the Japanese archipelago. As was mentioned before, the three sacred treasures of Japan consist of the sword Kusanagi, the mirror Yata no Kagami, and the jewel Yasakani no Magatama. These three artifacts share a level of similarity with the shamanic artifacts of North Asia or the “three heavenly seals” (天符印) of Hwanung (환웅/ 恒雄, father of Tangun). There are many similarities between Japanese mythology and Tangun mythology. In addition to Japan, curved jade was found in Pazyryk tombs in the eastern part of the Altai (5–3 century BC). Large felts in the tombs bore paintings of knights, shamans and possibly magatama on the horse’s chest and nose. Curved jade symbolises the four kinds of mythological living entities: insects, fish, the moon and the fetus. They are all related to life. The insect eggs become adults by moulting or shelling. The seemingly ugly nymphs grow and develop into butterflies or dragonflies after shedding their skin. For insects, melting is a regeneration process. There are different kinds of insect. Silkworms can spin silk. The ancient Egyptians believed that insects laying eggs in feces or on corpses symbolised regeneration. Fish which can produce a large amount of caviar are also a symbol of fruitfulness. The moon symbolises life, death and rebirth. The fetus obviously represents the birth of life. After fertilization, the egg begins cell differentiation and gradually becomes a fetus. However, before developing facial features, human fetuses look similar to fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. Although humans are viviparous, there are structural similarities between viviparity and oviparity. Eggs are surrounded by hard shells. In order to hatch from the shell, the shell must be broken. The human fetus is surrounded by an amniotic membrane, which is similar to an egg. The ancients’ observations were integrated into mythological analogies that incorporated worms, fish, the moon and the fetus into a whole: the life process is summed up as the cycle of pregnancy, birth, death and rebirth. Through jade, an artificial symbol, the connection between the four mysterious phenomena of life could be symbolised. After synthesis and abstraction, Quyu symbolises the process behind the origin of all life. One form of curved jade is “C” shaped jade. The Hongshan culture in northeastern China is known for its rich production of C-shaped jade dragons. In 1971 a dark green C-shaped jade, dubbed “China’s first jade dragon” (26 cm high) was unearthed in the Chifeng region, Ongniud banner, Inner Mongolia, and is now preserved in the National Museum in Beijing. In 1986 a similar C-shaped yellow jade dragon was unearthed from the Huanggutun site (Yu 2004, 97), now preserved in the Ongniud Banner Museum. In 1979 a semi-annular bird dragon image was discovered in the Hongshan cultural site in Balinyou Banner. It is flat, round and curled, resembling the bird fetus (ibid., 118). Could the worship of curved jade in Korean national history, therefore, be traced back to the C-shaped or semi-annular jades of the Hongshan culture? Lim Byeonghee and some other Korean scholars are of the belief that it can. Some C-shaped jade objects symbolise a combination of animals. In mythology it is common that the body parts of two animals or of animals and people are combined together to create a new living body. For example, Fuxi and Nüwa are often depicted

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as having a human head and a snake’s body. In the past, the origins of such a strange image could not be verified. Today, the Hongshan jades provide physical examples of such imagery. The strange creatures of mythology are spawned from the imaginative interpretation of the metamorphosis of creatures in reality. The emergence of C-shaped jade objects embodies the process. It is not strange in mythology to see fertilized eggs turning into the fetus, the fetus into a bear, the bear into a person, a person into a bear, and a bear into a dragon. Freed from the shackles of rational thinking, it is easy to see the law of the mythological world is the law of metamorphosis. Lin’s views above coincide with those of Chinese scholars, whereby the dragon image can be derived from the image of the fetus. This is evidenced to some degree by the animal-shaped jades of the Hongshan culture such as the pupa-shaped jade and small bear-shaped jade excavated from Zelimu Meng, Inner Mongolia. The latter depicts a bear’s head and a pupa’s body, which may simulate the embryonic bear (Sun 1998, 107). The bear skulls and bear statues unearthed from the Niuheliang Temple of a Goddess in the Hongshan culture indicate that the bear totem culture in northeast Asia has profound historical roots. The creation myth of Korea, the Tangun myth, is also a standard bear totem narrative, which extends the mythological symbolism of rising from the dead (drawing on interpretations of the bear’s hibernation in the winter and summer as an archetype) to the political myth that imperial power was endowed by gods (“bear man” in Japanese mythology). The image of Ungnyeo (웅 녀 / 熊女, bear woman) and mother of Tangun embodies the tradition that the Stone Age bear god was understood to be female. This corresponds to the bear mother model in Europe (Gimbutas 1989, 116–117), and to the bear bone fragments and jade carvings of the “bear dragon” unearthed from the Niuheliang Goddess Temple of the Chinese Hongshan culture (Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 1997, 82) (Fig. 7.1). According to evidence for the distribution of prehistoric jade culture in northeastern China, the Siping Mountain jade culture in Dandong area, the Liaodong Fig. 7.1 A jade bear of the Hongshan culture. Photographed the Taipei Palace Museum in 2008

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peninsula—separated by a river from the Korean peninsula—is likely to have played a pioneering role in spreading jade culture eastward to the Korean peninsula and the Japanese Sea region. In the myth of Amanohiboko, his wife was transformed from red jade (赤玉). The term was officially recorded under the entry of Buyeo (夫余) in the Records of Wei State in the ancient Chinese history book Records of the Three Kingdoms (San Guo Zhi, 三国志) (Chen 1959, 45). About jade worship in ancient Korea, it says, “The country is good at raising animals, famous for horses and red jade”. Does this record about red jade support the red jade myths of the Silla Kingdom in Japanese history books? During the Sui and Tang Dynasties, Japan sent its personnel on large scale missions to China to learn. The possibility of cultural exchange here cannot be ruled out. Of course, red jade might have spread from the Korean peninsula to Japan. The jade culture of Buyeo Country is like that of China in terms of its jade ritual systems and jade burial suits (jade box). Records suggest that the jade culture of the Korean peninsula has a Chinese connection. The jade burial box of the rulers of the Buyeo Country bears similarities to the jade burial suit of the Han Dynasty. Meanwhile, the Buyeo treasures such as jade bi, gui, zan (瓒, impure jade) share a similarity with the jades of China’s pre-Qin to Han Dynasties. However, today’s Korean scholars have doubts as to the authenticity of this account (Kim 1993, 24–25). In terms of the forms these prehistoric jades took, the curved jade of the Xinglongwa culture and the single-hole semi-circular jade pendant found in the northeastern region (Zhou 2011, 4), which was popular as early as 8000 to 7000 years ago, may be regarded as the ancestral prototypes for the single-hole curved jades found in the Korean peninsula and the Japanese archipelago. The smaller sized single-hole objects may be perceived as earrings, since they were worn on the ears instead of chest. The Hongshan culture provides physical evidence for the origins and perpetuation of ershe, which leads to new interpretations of the dragon myth. The archetype of this mythical creature has long been debated in the academic community. Some say it is snakes, others crocodiles, lightning, a lizard or a hippopotamus. Oracle-bone experts, drawing on the earliest form of Chinese characters, advocate a rainbow or a cloud as the answer. Today, evidence indicates that there are multiple sources for the dragon’s image. The jade dragon fetus, that is, the penannular-shaped jade dragon and C-shaped dragon of the Hongshan culture suggests the dragon’s head and body are very likely to be derived from conceptions of the bear and the snake. Lim (2012) put forward the idea that curved jade might represent the archetype for the jade dragon fetus, which is the starting point of any differentiation. As the jade dragon fetus took the shape of a C, the Hongshan culture’s C-shaped jade gradually transformed into a dragon-like form. Of course, there are significant differences between the C-type jade of the Hongshan culture and curved jade. The latter was unearthed in places like sarcophagi, dolmen, and stone tombs. The form of stone tombs created by the Hongshan culture are very similar to those of prehistoric Korea. C-shaped jades are often a combination of dragons and other animals. Goguryeo’s tomb murals and pairs of small and big curved jades also show the relationship

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between the dragon and curved jade. The murals of fifth-sixth century Goguryeo hunting tombs discovered in Nampo City, Pyeongannam do, North Korea, depict images of four gods: Azure Dragon, White Tiger, Black Turtle and the Vermillion Bird, as well as the three-legged crow. Curved jade was painted on the dragon’s tail. As the snake’s genitals are in the tail, where it lays eggs, this may indicate that the dragon is about to give birth to a baby. Moreover, troughs on pairs of small and big curved jade are like the dragon’ scales. Dragons were said to have 81 (9 × 9) scales on their backs, and there are 81 troughs. This again implies a connection between the curved jade and the dragon, and more so, a connection to the origin of life—the state before the development of the fetus. In the mythological world, curved jade differentiates all symbols. Lin proposed that the symbolic association between curved jade and the dragon reveals the mythological thinking inherent in the northeast Asian myths. The differentiation and unity of the life cycle constitute the core of these prehistoric cultural beliefs. Previous research on unearthed East Asian prehistoric jade has been limited to the archaeological data, and has not paid enough attention to the prehistoric mythological beliefs and construction of early state ideologies that contextualize these objects. The introduction of a comparative mythological perspective enables one to explore the object and image narratives behind these cultural relics, investigate the hidden mythological views contained in their symbology and probe into the role that religious concepts like a largely unified jade belief played in creating social coherence and a sense of community (Bocock and Thomson, 1985). This is an important area of future research. As for the origins of the Japanese magatama (curved jade), there are various theories about its origins, ranging from ancient fishermen’ worship of the crescent to its similarities with the fetus or earrings (Chihara 1998, 366). The study of jade culture in China, Japan and South Korea has allowed for great achievements in breaking the academic limitations of the “single nation” vision of history, and paves the way for the overall study of East Asian jade culture (Fig. 7.2).

Fig. 7.2 Prehistoric curved jade beads unearthed from Gangwon-do. Photographed at the Chuncheon National Museum, South Korea

Chapter 8

Jade Worship: The Primitive Belief Systems of Chinese Civilization

This chapter discusses the concept of jade worship, a key theme in the formation of Chinese civilization. Jade worship is an umbrella term for the primitive belief system that gave rise to much of Chinese cultural history. This chapter seeks to answer two related questions: first, why should one examine the origins of Chinese civilization from the perspective of belief systems and mythology? Second, how and why did “jade worship” become China’s primitive national belief system? (Fig. 8.1).

8.1 The Origins of Chinese Civilization from the Perspective of Belief Systems and Mythology Much in the same way that creatures develop basic defining biological characteristics that are carried forward with them through millennia of evolution, today’s ancient civilizations all contain cultural genes and bear birthmarks that point to a much earlier period of origin. In the history of world civilization, it is generally accepted that all prehistoric cultures exhibit general habits in the way they conceptualized the world around them. Vico and Cassirer have named this kind of prehistoric way of thinking “poetic wisdom” or “mythological thinking”. The ideas of these civilizations were mostly enshrined in the symbolic narrative of the myth, rather than being communicated through conceptual, theoretical reasoning. The formative period of Chinese civilization is no exception to this. Therefore, to explore the development of Chinese thought and spiritualism, one must first somehow revert to the prehistoric East Asian people’s state of consciousness and recover the unique beliefs and concepts that existed in this region as they existed in mythology and legend, and then locate and interpret this relevant mythological heritage as it is manifested in later documents. Building on the above ideas, this author has sought to sum up the basic patterns that connect mythologies of the universe and of life during the genesis of Chinese civilization in the book Philosophy of Chinese mythology (1992). This is done through a © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_8

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Fig. 8.1 A double beast-headed jade eagle unearthed from Lingjiatan, Anhui Province. The centre of the eagle’s body is engraved with concentric circles and an octagonal star pattern

detailed analysis and interpretation of the inherited classical literature. Twenty years on, countless archaeological discoveries have allowed myth-historians to transcend the constraints of literature and to see the unique cultural roots of Chinese civilization—a strong and lasting jade culture. Resultantly, progress has been made in the mission to find the prehistoric elements and cultural “genes” that underlie the relatively coherent and ubiquitous (within the geographical region of China) traditional Chinese mythological cosmology. It is important to note that the term “myth”, as used here, is no longer a purely literary term, but a carrier of thoughts and symbols that help to encode cultures. “Myth” is embodied in mythological images, ceremonial buildings, religious ritual instruments, and even in the formation of early Chinese writings such as oracle bone scripts. As such, the definition of mythology used by academics should be far broader than merely myth as it exists in literature, especially when one is exploring the prehistoric collective ideas and ideologies of a time before philosophy and writing emerged. The study of “mythological philosophy” will lead scholars to look beyond myth as it appears in literature, and to delve deeper into what underlies and preceded these textual myths. From the perspective of the history of communication, jade became the most important carrier of Chinese traditional cultural elements in the period before the development of early Chinese characters. As early as eight thousand years ago, jade became a symbol of the northeast Asian peoples’ experience and wisdom, and jade belief systems extended to the entire East Asian region, including the southernmost Lingnan region and the Hexi Corridor area in the northwestern part of China, owing to cultural transmission. Even the prehistoric jade cultures found in Taiwan, such as the Beinan culture, should not be regarded as isolated cultural phenomena, but should instead be understood to exist within the wider context of East Asian jade culture. The jade jue with four protrusions exhibited in the “Catalogue of Beinan Ruins Jade” (Taiwan Museum of Prehistory 2005) (Fig. 8.2) in Taiwan’s National Museum is almost the same shape as those unearthed in Guangdong. The evidence points to the existence of a prehistoric cross-strait cultural exchange. Because the prehistoric cultures did not have developed writing systems, such cultural exchanges could not be documented, and thus to understand cultural exchange more fully one must explore sources beyond writing.

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Fig. 8.2 Jade jue of the Taiwan Beinan culture. Photographed at the National Museum of Taiwan history in 2009

It is useful to question where the roots of Chinese culture might lay. In the past, academics exploring this issue have mainly confined their research to historical documents. The debates among modern scholars have mainly revolved around Confucianism and Daoism. Archaeological discoveries of the late twentieth century have, meanwhile, provided new evidence and opened a new horizon for the exploring of the origins of Chinese culture. Some difficult questions that could not be answered by reading the inherited literature alone have been resolved in this way. A common belief system that preceded and influenced the emergence of Confucianism and Daoism began to surface, namely belief in jade and its mythological construction. If one were to use a concise terminology for this, East Asia’s oldest hidden belief system, it would be “jade worship”. Young when compared with the jade beliefs evidenced by archaeological materials, Confucianism and Daoism, as are supported by historical documents, emerged only two thousand five hundred years ago. In the early twentieth century, Hu Shi claimed Confucianism can be traced to the priests of the Shang, but his view was rejected by several scholars such as Qian Mu and Guo Moruo. Knowledge of the religious beliefs before the Shang Dynasty was still extremely limited at that time. Now people realize that beliefs about jade and its mythological properties emerged six to eight thousand years ago, owing this knowledge to the many unearthed jades from the middle and late Neolithic period in China that have been discovered. One of the earliest appeared in the Xinglongwa culture in the Chifeng area (Fig. 8.3) (for a detailed analysis see Chap. 8). Using the methodology of “material culture research” Fig. 8.3 Jades of the Xinglongwa culture. Photographed at the Chifeng college museum in 2006

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(Buchli 2004) used in cultural anthropology, and in applying the theory of “physical object narratives” (Ihde 2008) in newer historiography, if one combs the evidence pertaining to the existence and evolution of ritual jades before the emergence of the written text, a common root connecting Confucianism and Daoism can be found. The discovery of the jade road that ran through the Hexi Corridor area during the formational period of Chinese civilization four thousand years ago is key not only to understanding the ancient beliefs and myths that existed about Kunlun jade, but also to answering the question of why Confucian gentlemen likened virtue to jade, and where the Daoist beliefs that the consumption of jade led to eternal life originally come from. At the same time, exploring the jade road help one can reconstruct the cultural exchange channels that existed between China and the West long before the well-known silk road, and find how elements of the prehistoric West Asian civilization entered through Central Asia and Xinjiang into the Central Plain. Moreover, it can reveal which cultural elements were brought from the West, such as wheat planting and bronze casting technology, with Hetian jade exported from the west into the Central Plain and the role of these cultural factors in the birth of the Central Plain Chinese dynasties of Xia, Shang and Zhou (Ye 2008b). Based on the new archaeological materials, Chaps. 4 and 6 have explored the theory of the “Jade Age” proposed by archaeologists and jade academics as a cultural phenomenon that played a fundamental role in the birth of Chinese civilization. In studying its distribution and evolution, the interrelation and commonalities among the Hongshan, Dawenkou, Lingjiatan, Liangzhu, Longshan, Shijiahe, Qijia and Taosi cultures can help one to reconstruct a common core set of prehistoric beliefs within China, in turn revealing jade worship to be the oldest ancient belief and mythological system of China. It laid a foundation for Chinese ritual culture, starting about five thousand years ago at a time when there were no writing and metals. At that time, jade ritual systems emerged as a prominent feature of these proto-civilizations outside the Central Plain. The “culture is rich”, according to Confucius, in the west Liao River Basin and the lower reaches of the Yangtze River to the Circum-Taihu Lake area (Fig. 8.4). Here the “culture” cannot be referring to writings or bronzes, but only to jades. The six ritual instruments in The Rites of Zhou all have their archetype, or “ancestors”, in prehistoric jade culture. This verifies the authenticity of the Rites. However, those jades confirmed to be from the Western Zhou Dynasty are very different from those of the six-instrument system, pushing the writing time of this book to the Warring States Period or later. According to this observation, the six instruments cannot be seen as deriving from the jade belief systems of the Western Zhou Dynasty, but as reminiscent of the decline of the Western Zhou Dynasty. In other words, jade worship declined with the fall of the Zhou. When one looks to the jade worship of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, Confucius’ saying “Zhou had the advantage of viewing the two past dynasties” now has clearer meaning – the Zhou inherited their jade culture from the dynasties that preceded them (Chang 1982). The construction and interpretation of jade worship can therefore lead to a greater understanding of mythical evidence relating to the original Chinese civilization.

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Fig. 8.4 Jade burial items (bi and cong) of the Liangzhu culture unearthed from Tomb 3, Sidun, Wujin, Jiangsu Province. Photographed at the Nanjing museum

8.2 Why Jade Worship Became the National Belief System It is generally believed that in the history of Chinese culture, Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism collectively represent the fundamental characteristics of Chinese indigenous religions, and demonstrate a tendency towards pluralistic interaction. However, the three religions emerged relatively late in the history of cultural development, so they do not in themselves represent “cultural origins”. There are other religions that are comparatively less popular, these being Nestorianism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Islam, Judaism and Lamaism. These religions were mostly the result of the spread of foreign culture, and entered into China even later than the core three. They are not mainstream religions in China, but are linked to religious distribution in wider Asia. The concept of “jade worship”, an even more ancient native belief system, is groundbreaking. Here are a number of elements that separate this “jade belief system” from the religions listed—it does not have an established “typical” building of worship, nor a formal hierarchy of priests or scriptures, nor even a unified set of doctrines. Why, then, can it be seen to be a coherent belief system? The reasons are as follows: Firstly, “jade worship” highlights the most unique features of the indigenous cultures of China. Chinese religious history, in line with international practice, is essentially studied using the standard terminology applied to world religions. However, to some extent it has become absorbed into world religious history in a way that fails to highlight the rich and unique geographical and national characteristics of China. For example, the first chapter of The History of Chinese Origin (Mu and Zhang 2007) contains nine religious phenomena: nature worship, spirit worship, reproductive worship, totem worship, ancestor worship, primitive mythology, primitive sacrifice, witchcraft and divination. The names of these nine religious phenomena

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Fig. 8.5 An imperial jade seal from Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911)

are entirely based on international religious theory, and are basically common to the construction of religious history in any other country, but none of them cater to the practical needs of China. Looking at this from the perspective of “writing culture” theory used in anthropology, it is evident that this ignorance may lead to a blind spot. Chinese jade worship as a religious phenomenon has a long history, and it needs to be recorded in Chinese religious history (Fig. 8.5). Nevertheless, jade studies, whilst having no official status within the academic discipline system, began to emerge in recent years and a greater sense of importance has come to be attached to the religious significance and function of jade. At present in the field, various terms associated with Chinese jade culture have arisen, such as “sacred jade objects”, “jade worship” (Zeng 2005), “jade theology”, “jade rites studies” (Wang 2004), “wu’s (shaman’s or sorcerer’s) jade” (Yang 2006), “jade sacrifice” and “jade divination”. The lack of a systematic terminology may hinder future research and demands a standardization of the terms used. In view of this, “jade worship” as used herein not only serves as an umbrella concept for the above religious worship concepts pertaining to jade, but also will be used to convey the unique and original religious characteristics of jade as compared with other major belief systems. Secondly, jade worship is by far the earliest known belief system in China. It had an immense and far-reaching impact on the culture and literature of later generations. The myths contained within jade worship laid the foundations for the imaginative world of Chinese literature. Ancient books like The Biography of King Mu and The Classic of Mountains and Seas contain many tales clearly developed from jade beliefs and myths. In the past, they were difficult to understand, and therefore, the historical value of these books was underestimated. The Classic of Mountains and Seas was classified as a novel. Now, thanks to excavations which reveal the distribution and extent of jade culture from the prehistory to the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, one can not only understand the relevant content that would inspire later literature, but can also see that the accounts provided in such literature are not pure literary fantasy, but are in fact based on mythological archetypes created through the jade worship of the ancients. In other words, jade myths in pre-Qin literature have important historical value.

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Examining the role of jade culture in shaping the cultural foundations that would give rise to the Chinese civilization with attention to the background of the history of civilizations has been a new area of research over the past two decades, as evidenced by the creation of several important monographs. The research paradigm gradually shifted from literature-based to cultural relics-based studies, then to multidimensional research utilizing the quadruple-evidence method. The 15 volumes of The Complete Works of Unearthed Jades in China (Gu 2005) contain over one-thousand color pictures of unearthed jades in China, offering an unprecedented overview of jade culture. Together these monographs (Wu and Xu 2009; Liu 2007; Yang 2006; Chang 2004; Sun 2008) cover a period spanning from prehistory to the Xia, Shang and Zhou, and give an insight into how jade worship and related jade ritual utensils triggered the birth of Chinese civilization. Thirdly, jade worship, as a primitive belief system with strongly East Asian regional characteristics, meets the basic theoretical conditions of religious construction. The following analysis will present a multi-dimensional interpretation of this from the perspective of the sociologist Durkheim’s Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1995), the religious theorist Eliade’s The Sacred and The Profane (1987), Dhavamony’s Phenomenology of Religion (2006) and the anthropologist Clifford Geertz’s The Interpretation of Culture (1973). Durkheim argued that religions consist of many sorts of beliefs and rituals (1995, 47). Eliade believed that all human experience can be divided into the sacred and the profane. In essence, the nature of religion is a system of beliefs and practices related to sacred things. In the course of nearly three thousand years of development from the Xinglongwa jades the Hongshan jades, it can clearly be seen that the beliefs and rituals of jade worship evolved very gradually. Eight thousand years ago, jades produced by the Xinglongwa culture mainly consisted of earrings, generally considered to be decorative objects of the human body. There was also the view that jade ornaments had magical qualities about them. Prehistoric sorcerers communicating with deities were often symbolically depicted with ear piercings and jade jue. Hongshan jades, produced five or six thousand years ago, included jade bi and jade huang, two of the six ritual instruments. There were also jades in the shape of animals, such as jade dragons, jade silkworms, jade turtles, jade eagles and jade owls. Moreover, there were other jades whose shapes remain unclear, such as the so-called “horseshoe-shaped jade” and “hooked cloud-shaped jade”, for which the production process must have been complex and time-consuming. They are generally believed to be the religious instruments used by the wu masters and other religious leaders. Their ritual function is very obvious. An impressive example of the sacred value of jade is two round polished jade pieces inlaid within the eyes of a goddess’ statue produced by the Hongshan culture (see Chap. 8, Sect. 8.3). During this period, the sanctification of jade was quite developed. In Eliade’s religious terms, jade can be recognized as “hierophany” in the Chinese civilization. Of all the stones, jade not only represents the deities and heaven’s mandate, but symbolises eternal life and the highest value of the human spirit. From the golden eyes of the Niuheliang goddess to the jade burial suits of the

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emperors of the Han Dynasty, the special ritual behaviours of the rulers, dominated by jade beliefs, and their evolution can be roughly discerned. The title of Chapter Six in Dhavamony’s book is “Religious Meaning of Myth”, which alone is a clear indicator that the work goes beyond the purely literary approach to myth. Dhavamony believed that living a mythical life means having a true religious experience that is different from secular life (2006, 156). Jade ritual instruments were used as a medium for people to enter the world of the deities and live an eternal life. Of course, this produced a distinctive Chinese mythology. Accounts of Yu receiving the emperor’s jade gui and King Mu offering jade bi to the deities of the Yellow River before leaving for the Holy Mount are mythological narratives about jade worship. If one only sees them as literary works, then one will fail to see their religious meaning and undertones. Geertz (1973, 125) put forward that “the anthropological study of religion is therefore a two-stage operation: first, an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols which make up the religion proper, and, second, the relating of these systems to social-structural and psychological processes. My dissatisfaction with so much of contemporary social anthropological work in religion is not that it concerns itself with the second stage, but that it neglects the first, and in so doing takes for granted what most needs to be elucidated”. In the case of Chinese religious studies, the systemic study of the meanings encoded and embodied in the early jade ritual instruments as religious symbols has been neglected. Except for a few scholars like Wu Daguan, Luo Zhenyu, the majority of modern researchers (except experts in archaeology) have lacked the specialized knowledge and experience necessary for such analysis. It was Hayashi Minao (1925–2006), a Japanese scholar, who wrote two masterpieces based on the archaeological data: Studies of Chinese Ancient Jades (1991) and A General Survey of Ancient Chinese Jades (1999). Emphasizing the status of jade worship as a national belief system will help to reverse this situation and restore the pursuit of knowledge related to this field in schools, whilst promoting research across disciplines such as ancient history, history of art, history of religion, and comparative mythology.

8.3 Jade Worship and the Archetype of Chinese Culture A country’s national belief system or religion must lay a firm foundation for its spiritual culture. When today’s tourists visit the Calligraphy and Painting Hall in the Imperial Palace Museum, Beijing, they can see a grand rosewood folding screen inlaid with jade inscribed with a version of the “Thousand Character Classic” (qian zi wen, 千字文) written by Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty, and they can imagine how he was immersed in an atmosphere of sacred jade. From the perspective of cultural archetypes, Chinese characters and vocabulary developed in the context of jade worship make up a large proportion of the entire language and highlight the characteristics of Chinese culture. There are more than 100

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characters with the radical 玉 (jade) in Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters. In the “Thousand Character Classic”, a sixth century poem used as a traditional reading primer, the following lines “Gold is born in the River Li; jade comes from Mount Kunlun” point out the geographical zones of origin of the two key raw materials around which belief systems were constructed. River Li is a nickname for the Jinsha River, named after the nearby gold mines. Thousands of years before gold mining began in China, by far the greatest treasure was jade. Quality Hetian jade was produced in the Kunlun riverbed. In the history of the four ancient civilizations, only the “Chinese Character Classic” records the geographical location of jade production as a sacred place. Lu Jia (240–170 BC), a Han dynasty political writer, wrote: “Going into the mountains and sea to seek zhuji (珠玑, pearls) and yaokun (瑶琨)”. What is yaokun (瑶琨)? Behind it lies a set of beliefs and myths about the West and Hetian jade constructed by the Central Plain dynasties. The Chinese character yao (瑶) has given rise to mythical images and narrative motifs like yaochi (瑶池, jade pond), yaomu (瑶母, jade mother or Queen Mother of the West), and yaoji (瑶 姬, Gaotang goddess). If the Chinese character玉 refers to all types of jade (and more generally precious stones), then瑶with the radical王, which means玉, specifically refers to the finest jade produced in the Kunlun Mountains. In the mythological imagination the Kunlun Mountains have been portrayed as yushan (玉山, jade mountain), filling people’s minds over the millennia with thoughts of mystery and immortality. As is written in the Classics of Mountains and Seas, “350 li further west is a mountain called Yushan. This is the dwelling place of Queen Mother of the West” (Wang and Zhao 2010, 5). The mountain was perceived as a sacred mountain in the west, giving rise to the female personality of the Queen Mother of the West. As has been mentioned before, the Queen Mother of the west is also known as yaomu (jade mother), apparently named after the jade of the Kunlun Mountains. Such accounts were fictitious, and born of the imagination of the literati. Now, the unique nature of the Xinjiang Hetian jade mines and the fact that the Central Plain dynasties sought Hetian jade enable one to understand jade worship more deeply as a cultural type that would come to shape the ideals explored and defended in Chinese literature, and help one understand why the ancients worshiped and pursued fine jade to such a great extent. Beautiful jade, as hierophany, is associated with the deities and immortality, creating numerous mythical vocabularies in the ancient Chinese language. People are conceptual animals, and concepts influence behaviours. Any given particular cultural tradition is often the basis for the generation and restriction of a particular concept. An in-depth investigation of the important role that jade worship played in the development of the Chinese civilization will have a decisive influence on academia’s overall grasp of Chinese culture. It is no exaggeration to say that there is no other country in the world that has a jade mythological heritage stretching back eight thousand years. With a new understanding of the influential role of the primitive national belief system in China, the philosophy behind the narratives about the Jade Emperor and the Queen Mother of the West in The Journey to the West or jade myths in The Story of the Stone begin to surface.

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It has become clear that Chinese cultural history is centred around jade beliefs. This insight into cultural identity will help one see the value of the roots of indigenous wisdom. In summary, two groups of keywords are constructed when interpreting Chinese myth-history. The old keywords are very familiar: Confucianism, Daoism, literature, history, and philosophy. New keywords will be terms like “jade worship”, “national belief system”, “mythological thinking” and “myth-history”. Whether the more general “Chinese religion” or more specific “Chinese wu-sorcery”, “Chinese art” or “Confucian view of the body”, such terms are unable to point to the true characteristics of traditional Chinese belief systems. In contrast, “jade worship” is concise enough to achieve this. At the end of this section, there are three points to note before exploring the history of Chinese civilization: First, familiarity with history does not mean knowing it truly. One cannot re-enter history without studying myths. Second, history is deeply “encoded”. It is difficult to see the origin and characteristics of Chinese civilization without first deciphering the unique “code” of Chinese mythology before the emergence of Chinese characters. Third, history is currently broken. The main line of the development of Chinese civilization cannot be constructed without finding the lost elements in the chain.

8.4 “Sages” and “Jade Sound” A new understanding of the original national belief system will, it is hoped, usher in a new era of studies in Chinese thought. In the past, Confucianism and Daoist thought were studied separately. In modern academic circles, meanwhile, following centuries of historic divisions between academics and scholars on this subject manner, the Neo-Confucianism School and Neo-Daoism School have long debated which is the key pillar of the history of Chinese thought. The academic community needs to overcome this cultural short-sightedness and examine each’s cultural homogeneity from a more macro and far-reaching perspective. Chapter Three has defined the prehistoric culture before the use of Chinese characters as the big tradition, and the prehistoric culture after it as the small tradition. In this way, the Confucianism and Daoism, which emerged in the Spring and Autumn Period, are clearly both classified as parts of the small tradition. Analysis of the remarks and ideas of their respective founders, Confucius and Laozi, reveals a large degree of homogeneity between the two, particularly in the way they understand sages (sage rulers) worship and sacred objects (jade) worship. Each of these have existed for a long time, about two thousand years before the age of Confucius and Laozi. For Confucianism, the worship of sage rulers is the backbone of the Confucian view of history and political ideals. The worship of sacred objects forms is central to Confucian ritual culture. With the newly-discovered archaeological evidence indicating widespread prehistoric jade ritual distribution, one can now present a complete and continuous picture of jade myths and beliefs during the emergence of the Chinese

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civilization, from the question of “Ritual, ritual! Does it mean no more than presents of jade and silk?”, to the folk beliefs and practice of “a wu (shaman) serving the deities with jade”, and from “gentlemen’s de (virtue) was likened to jade”, to the ancient comparison of learning with “cutting, carving, polishing and grinding”. For Daoism, the worship of sage rulers and sacred objects is embodied in the political concept of pursuing inaction, returning to the innocence and the memory of the sage carrying jade underneath his dress. Sages occupied a noble position in the eyes of the founders of Daoism, as can be seen from the admiration for them in Dao De Jing (道德经) and Zhuangzi (庄子). Since both Confucianism and Daoism honour sages, the following are investigations of sages and sacred object worship as they appear in The Analects of Confucius, “The Five Conducts (Wu Xing, 五行)” of Chu Bamboo Slips and Dao De Jing, they aim to reveal the connection between sages and jade culture. The worship of sages in Confucianism is manifested in the remarks of Confucius and his disciples. In The Analects of Confucius, sage (sheng, 圣) is mentioned six times. (1)

Book VI Zigong said, “If a ruler not only conferred wide benefits upon the common people, but also compassed the salvation of the whole State, what would you say of him? Surely, you would call him Good?” The Master said, “It would no longer be a matter of ‘Good’. He would without doubt be a Divine Sage. Even Yao and Shun could hardly criticize him. As for Goodness- you yourself desire rank and standing; then help others to get rank and standing. You want to turn your own merits to account; then help others to turn theirs to account-in fact, the ability to take one’s own feelings as a guide- that is the sort of thing that lies in the direction of Goodness”. (Waley 1999a, 60–63)

(2)

Book VII The Master said, “A Divine Sage I cannot hope ever to meet; the most I can hope for is to meet a true gentleman.” The Master said, “A faultless man I cannot hope ever to meet; the most I can hope for is to meet a man of fixed principles. Yet where all around I see Nothing pretending to be Something, Emptiness pretending to be Fullness, Penury pretending to be Affluence, even a man of fixed principles will be none too easy to find.” The Master said, “As to being a Divine Sage or even a Good Man, far be I from me to make any such claim. A for unwearying effort to learn and unflagging patience in teaching orders, those are merits that I do not hesitate to claim.” Going xi Hua said, “The trouble is that we disciples cannot learn!”(Ibid., 72-75)

(3)

Book IX The Grand Minister (of Wu?) asked Zigong saying “Is your Master a Divine Sage? If so, how comes it that he has many practical accomplishments?” Zigong said, “Heaven certainly intended him to become a Sage; it is also true that he has many accomplishments.” When the Master heard of it he said, “The Grand Minister is quite right about me. When I was young I was in humble circumstances; that is why I have many practical accomplishments in regard to simple, everyday matters. Does it befit a gentleman to have many accomplishments? No, he is in no need of them at all.” Lao says that the Master said, “It is because I have not been given a chance that I have become so handy”. (Ibid., 91)

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Book XVI Master Kong said, “There are three things that a gentleman fears: he fears the will of Heaven, he fears great men, he fears the words of the Divine Sages. The small man does not know the will of Heaven and so does not fear it. He treats great men with contempt, and scoffs at the words of the Divine Sages”. (Ibid., 191)

(5)

Book XIX Ziyou said, “Zixia’s disciples and scholars, so long as it is only a matter of sprinkling and sweeping floors, answering summonses and replying to questions, coming forward and retiring, are all right. But these are minor matters. Set them to anything important, and they would be quite at a loss”. Zixia, hearing of this, said, “Alas, Yan You is wholly mistaken of the Way of the True Gentleman it is said,: If it be transmitted to him before he is ripe, By the time he is ripe, he will weary of it. Disciples may indeed be compared to plants and trees. They have to be separately treated according to their kinds. In the Way of the Gentleman there can be no bluff. It is only the Divine Sage who embraces in himself both the first step and the last”. (Ibid., 221)

Confucius mentioned “sage” six times in the above five citations, each time with a tone of longing and admiration. One of his disciples praised him: “Heaven certainly intended for him to become a sage”, and another sees a sage as who embraces in himself both the first step and the last. These remarks reveal the pursuit of the ideal Confucian personality involves three stages of development: commoners (mean or rough men)—gentlemen—sages. The core goal of the Confucian doctrine is to become “an internal sage and an external ruler”. People pursue the ideal state through learning and self-cultivation. Sages are not illusory deities, but noble men from the human race. Examples are Yao and Shun and other ancient sage kings. Compared with those role models, Confucius was very humble. As he said with a sigh, “The sage and the man of perfect virtue— how dare I rank myself with them?” He held them in awe and admiration and believed that in his life, it had been difficult to meet a sage; he was already very fortunate to even have met a gentleman. Nevertheless, as mentioned before, one of Confucius’s disciples regarded him as a sage intended for this greatness by heaven, as recorded in the transcripts of The Analects of Confucius. After Emperor Wu of Han made Confucianism the state orthodoxy, Confucius’ statues were put up in temples and he was worshiped as a sage. The traditional Chinese character聖 (sheng, sage) is composed of口 (kou, mouth) and 耳 (er, ear), which suggests the ideal of becoming of a sage had been passed on by word of mouth. Indeed, both the characters论 and 语 of 论语 (The Analects of Confucius) contain the radical 讠(言), which means speech or words, suggesting that for Confucius, teaching had been transmitted to disciples in some way by word of mouth. Innis (2007, 77) put forward “the task of understanding a culture built on the oral tradition is impossible to students steeped in the written tradition. The outlines of that culture can be dimly perceived in the written records of poetry and prose and in the tangible artifacts of the excavator”. He added that for centuries scholars have been concerned with the interpretations of written records in order to understand cultures. However, “Greek civilization was a reflection of the power of

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the spoken words. Socrates in Phaedrus reports a conversation between the Egyptian god Thoth the inventor of letters, and the god Amon in which the latter remarked that ‘this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves. The specific you have discovered is an aid not to memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth but only the semblance of truth they will appear to be omniscient and will generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show of wisdom without the reality.”(ibid., 78). Socrates called for a better kind of speech with greater power, and for people to know when to speak and when to be silent. As Innis commented, “the character of Socrates worked through the spoken word…He was the last great product and exponent of the oral tradition” (ibid., 79). This comment to some extent also applies to Confucius’s teaching. Later, Plato stood on the side of philosophy and prose and attacked poetry, particularly Homer, as irrational, which reveals the conflict between the growing power of writing and the old oral tradition. Confucius strongly supported poetry. As he once said, “If you do not study poetry, you will have no words” and “transmitting but not creating”. This is certainly not just a matter of personal interest to the sage, but a heritage he inherited from the big tradition. Oral communication involves utilizing sound and memory, and invokes the auditory sense rather than the visual processes of reading and writing. The characters 圣 (sage) and 声 (sound) are homophones and were used interchangeably in pre-Qin literature, suggesting a connection between the ideal of becoming a sage with the oral tradition in the preliterate age. As is recorded in the “The Five Conducts” of Guodian Chu bamboo slips: Golden sound symbolises goodness, jade vibration is symbolic of a sage. Goodness is representative of human order, de heavenly order. Only a man of de is able to make golden sound and jade vibration. (Liu 2003, 78)

Golden sound and jade vibration is a metaphor used by Mencius to describe the great sage Confucius. Its original meaning is not clear. Today, by referring to the above text, one can infer that it describes what a sage is by means of reference to their excellent sense of hearing. The prerequisite is that a human being must first have de. Here de does not refer to modern Chinese ethics or morality, but needs to be understood in the sense of heavenly order or mandate of heaven, different from the human order. Jade vibration with golden sound is used to describe the visual effects of jade ritual instruments, revealing the most important part of ritual and music teaching in pre-Confucian times. In the era before the emergence of metal musical instruments about 4000 years ago, the sound of gold was not possible in Chinese ritual music, but jade vibration was. If a “golden sound” was seen as the product of the small tradition with the advent of the Bronze Age, “jade vibration” was the genuine heritage of the big tradition. Huge jade chimes unearthed from the Taosi site at Xiangfen dating back 4500 years ago are physical evidence of this. The differentiation between the big tradition and the small tradition helps accentuate why “jade vibration” is more valuable than “golden sound”: the big tradition of communicating with deities through rituals and music is representative of the ancient

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heavenly order, and the small tradition of the sound of metal musical instruments. Although just as wonderful, the latter has a shorter history, more representative of human goodness. Nonetheless, there is much more to being a sage than simply this. The “Five Conducts” talked about five stages of self-cultivation. The four stages of ren (benevolence), yi (righteousness), li (ritual) and zhi (wisdom) fall into the category of the human order, and the other stage, sheng (sageness), belongs to heavenly order. “Wisdom” is interpreted as “see and know”, while “sageness” is interpreted as “hear and know” (ibid., 80). This distinction is thought-provoking. The former can be understood as involving reading and writing, clearly activities of the small tradition, while the latter is related to oral teaching, belonging to the big tradition and involving ritual singing and music. This therefore supports the connection between the defining qualities of “sageness” and the big tradition, and helps to understand why Confucius favoured poetry and music. Daoist saint worship is far more common than in Confucianism. In total, The Analects of Confucius has about 20,000 characters, divided into 20 chapters. The word “sage” appears 6 times in five chapters. Dao De Jing, also known as Laozi, has about 5000 characters, divided into 81 chapters. The word “sage” appears 31 times in 26 chapters. Statistically, the frequency of the word in the latter (62 times per 10,000 characters) is 20 times that of the former (3 times per 10,000 characters). This is a staggering figure. Why did Laozi love and honour the figure of the sage so much? For heaven’s way is to sharpen without cutting, And the Sage’s way is to act without striving. (Chap. 81) (Waley 1999b, 165) Therefore a sage has said: “So long as I “do nothing” the people will of themselves be transformed. So long as I love quietude, the people will of themselves go straight. So long as I act only by inactivity the people will of themselves become prosperous. So long as I have no wants the people will of themselves return to the “state of the Uncarved Block”. (Chap. 57) (Ibid., 117) For that which is under heaven is like a holy vessel, dangerous to tamper with. (And impossible to grab it.) Those that tamper with it, harm it. Those that grab at it, lost it. (Therefore the Sage does not act, And as a result, he doesn’t ruin things; He does not hold on to things, And as a result, he doesn’t lose things. ……Therefore the sage, “discard the absolute, the all-inclusive, the extreme. (Chap. 29) (Ibid., 59) Therefore the sage, Is all the time in the most perfect way helping men, He certainly does not turn his back on men. (Chap. 27) (Ibid., 55)

This author summarizes Laozi’s philosophical reasoning into “analogy reasoning” in mythological thinking (Ye 2005, 23–25). Humans should behave in the same way as heaven and earth do. The set pattern of Laozi is “therefore the sage”, a phrase appearing 21 times of the 31 overall sage citations. Hence, this pattern demonstrates Laozi’s inclination to express the truth of the cosmos and of life as the truth of the ancient sages. He named it—the sage’s dao. That the sage represents a positive role model is the basis of Laozi’s argument. The sage’s way is the fundamental goal of Daoist thought. What, then, is the difference between Confucianism and Daoism in the ideal of becoming a sage? The most obvious difference is that the sage in the Confucian context has a clear historical

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archetype, that is, the sage rulers like Yao, Shun and Yu, while in the Daoist context, the sage does not necessarily correspond to any particular sage rulers, but is instead a master of the way in a more general sense (see Chap. 77 of Dao De Jing). Although on some occasions the sage was described as capable of ruling the country (see Chap. 57 and 60 of Dao De Jing), he was often depicted as a mysterious ascetic, a reclusive spiritual master. The first part of the Confucian concept of “an internal sage and an external ruler” inherited Laozi’s doctrine, but the Confucian way of cultivation mainly centred around official ceremonial activities of the Western Zhou Dynasty, which Laozi strongly opposed. The sage’s way of Laozi advocated features like inaction and wordless teaching: Therefore the Sage relies on actionless activity, Carries on wordless teaching, But the myriad creatures are worked upon by him; he does not disown them. He rears them, but does not lay claim to them, Controls them, but does not lean upon them. Achieves his aim, but does not call attention to what he does; And for the very reason that he does not call attention to what he does. He is not ejected from fruition of what he done. (Chap. 2) (Ibid., 5) Heaven is eternal, the Earth everlasting. How come they to be so? It is because they do not foster their own lives; That is why they live so long. Therefore the Sage. Puts himself in the background; but is always to the fore. Remains outside; but is always there. It is not just because he does not strive for any personal end. That all his personal ends are fulfilled? (Chap. 7) (Ibid., 15) Therefore the Sage considers the belly not the eye, Truly, “he rejects that takes this”. (Chap. 12) (Ibid., 25) Therefore the Sage clasps the Primal Unity, Testing by it everything under heaven. (Chap. 22) (Ibid., 45) The Sage has no heart of his own; He uses the heart of the people as his heart. (Chap. 49) (Ibid., 101) Therefore the Sage Squares without cutting, Shapes the corners without lopping, Straightens without stretching, Gives forth light without shining. (Chap. 58) (Ibid., 119)

What then is the criterion for differentiating between the sage and the ordinary human being? A metaphorical expression in Chap. 70 gives the answer: Few then understand me; but it is upon this very fact that my value depends. It is indeed in this sense that “the Sage wears hair-cloth on top, but carries jade underneath his dress.” (Ibid., 143)

This saying of Laozi indicates that the relationship between the sage and jade is inevitable. Both Confucius and Laozi respected the figure of the sage immensely. Confucius was modest in saying he could not attain sagedom, while Laozi regarded himself as a sage and used metaphors to communicate the fact that he was not understood by people. Both of them advocate the dao. Confucius held that if a man in the morning hears the right dao, he may die in the evening without regret, whereas Laozi argued the dao that can be told is not the usual dao. For Confucius, the dao is grasped by the ear—the auditory organ, emphasizing the inevitable relationship between the dao and oral tradition. In other words, the way has nothing to do with the written word. Laozi considers that it is not enough to hear the dao. One needs to perceive the unspeakable dao. The Huainanzi integrates Daoist and Confucian wisdom, but tends to worship the dao (tao) and suppress Confucianism. It contains a

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metaphor which makes a clear distinction between the sage’s way of the big tradition and the classic writing of the small tradition. The metaphor is the eternal nature of the sage’s dao, described as like the everlasting tunes of gold and jade (stone) instruments, with the melody of stringed instruments being representative of the actions of the sage—changeable according to different circumstances. As is expressed in Huainaizi: Hence, what sages follow is called Tao, what they do is called Activity. Tao is like stone or metal musical instruments whose tunes remain unchangeable; and Activities are like the Qin and Se, the melody is always changeable in accordance with the fingering. Hence, regulations, rules of propriety and righteousness are nothing but tools used to administer the people, not the purpose of for administrating. (Zhai and Mu 2010, 887)

There is a striking contrast between the prosperous period, represented by the sage’s dao from the big tradition, and the chaotic period represented by the Confucian classics from the small tradition. When the Way for Unifying and Governing the World was lost, Shijing (also known as The Book of Songs) was produced, and when the Zhou Dynasty was in decline and the rules of propriety and righteousness were breached, Chunqiu (also known as The Spring and Autumn Annals) was created. Both Shijing and Chunqiu are books containing great thoughts, however, there were produced during chaotic periods, and the followers of the Confucius have used them to educate generation after generation. Is it really as efficient as educating the people with the successful experience of the Three Emperor Ancestors? If Shijing and Chunqiu are valued because they contain some of Tao of old, then in history there were some periods existing before the times of Shijing and Chunqiu. The time whether Tao is lost are not good as those when Tao is wholly possessed. Reading deceased kings’ Shijing and Shangshu is not as good as listening to their words in person; listening to their words in person is not as good as possessing the sources of their words. When the sources of their words are possessed, it cannot be articulated with words. Hence, Tao that can be talked about is not the permanent Tao. (Huannanzi) (Ibid., 883-885)

The simile “Tao is like stone or metal musical instruments” once again illustrates that oral teaching was crucial to the teaching of the Tao or Dao. Ancient writings like The Book of Poetry and The Spring and Autumn Annals cannot fully represent the Dao. It is good to hear the spoken words of ancient sages and even better to receive the teaching without words. One should learn wisdom from the big tradition and not be confined to the small traditions of writing and book knowledge. Considering that there was no metal production in the big tradition, one has reason to amend the “stone or metal instruments” to “jade instruments”. Jade, the sacred material valued by the Chinese civilization, is the underlying basic element for both Confucianism and Daoism. It is no exaggeration to refer to this as the common cultural gene of all Chinese civilization. According to Wang Guowei and other scholars, jade ritual instruments are the root of the Chinese ritual culture. Later, the followers of Confucianism developed analogies comparing people’s virtue to jade. The worship of jade in Daoist philosophy and the worship of the Jade Emperor in the Daoist religion follow a logical train of thought. Now, the thousands of years of jade culture that underpin Confucianism and Daoism have manifested itself to academics more clearly, and will help to solve some mysteries about the Chinese civilization.

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8.5 The Ethnography of Sage Myths: Wu and Xi as a Medium Between Heaven and Man It is of interest at this point in the discussion to consider what kind of person might meet the requirements for a sage. The Discourses of the State of Chu recorded the conversation between King Zhao of Chu and his advisor Guan She Fu during the Spring and Autumn Period, and gave an explicit answer: In ancient times people and spirits did not intermingle. There were people whose essence was keen, who were without discord and who were able to be single-minded, reverent, correct and upright. Their wisdom could compare what was appropriate with regard to above and below, their sagacity could glorify what was distant and announce what was bright. Their clear sight could glorify and illuminate it; their keen hearing could hear it pervasively. If one were like this, the spirits would descend to them. If to a man, he was called a xi; if to a woman, she was called a wu. (Raphals 2013, 268)

This interesting conversation reveals that sagacity or sageness (圣) was considered as a trait of wu 巫 and xi 觋 by intellectuals in the Spring and Autumn Period. Therefore, wu and xi are the archetypes of the sage honoured by both Confucianism and Daoism. In The Analects of Confucius, the Master agreed with the saying from the men of the south: Without stability a man will not even make a good shaman or witch-doctor. (Waley 1999a, 149)

It seems hard to understand why Confucius praises wuyi (巫医, witch-doctors) at first sight. If one looks closer from the perspective of the big tradition, one may understand that they are representative of the ancient spiritual mediums, and that it was these figures that that Confucius valued highly. Liu (1990, 543) annotated that wu are spirit mediums and healers, referring specifically to female shamans. Xi was used for males. He also cited from The Rites of Zhou that the role of witch-doctors was passed down from generation to generation, so that they exhibited proficiency. Now it has become clear why witch doctors were honoured by Confucius. After the big traditions were obscured by the small tradition of writing, the sanctity of wuxi or the witch-doctors was gradually lost, and they were even seen as a base profession by secularized social values. Confucius and Guan She Fu were contemporaries. The terms wuyi or wuxi they used respectively should be understood to refer to the same type of people, those who could facilitate communication between heaven (or the deities) and man. This ability was only possessed by very few. These people were chosen as wu, xi or shamans insofar as they stood out from the ordinary. According to many anthropological field reports, the shamans were selected based on their supernatural and sacred nature (Eliade 1972, 71–109). Anthropologists’ research on the shaman identity in shamanistic societies shows that they were a small group of people in their community. They would undergo a special experience before acquiring power and healing energy. This group of people can be called “injured doctors”. The energy used in their shamanic treatment came from their own healing experience, and they underwent a process of personality reinvention similar

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to reincarnation. Historiographical accounts mostly focus on ecstasy as a manifestation of personal piety, while anthropologists see it as “a social fact” (Lewis 2003, 18). Anthropologists, meanwhile, tend to believe that it is the shamanic culture that gives the legitimacy and sanctity to the shamanic state of consciousness. In other words, religious historians believe that these over displays of ecstasy were seen as signs that a deity was present and with the shaman. The division between the sacred and the profane is an important analytical distinction in the study of comparative religion. The distinction between the two and the spiritual symbolism of hierophanies have become a constant theme of religious studies and even general humanistic studies. Eliade (1972, 68) started with Siberian myths concerning the origin of shamans in his Chapter Three “Obtaining Shamanic Powers”. In doing so he set an example for elevating the study of mythology from a solely literary context to a religious context. Robert Ellwood redefines “myth” from an interdisciplinary perspective: “[The myth] is a story of gods, heroes, or other exceptional beings, usually set in primordial times or in an alternative world, which establishes in narrative from the basic worldview and values of a society it sets forth the origin meaning and practice of the society’s organization rituals and codes of behavior” (2008, 1). Karen Armstrong argued that “a myth can never be understood in a purely profane setting” (2005, 55). The post-modern call for restoring the myth to the sacred calls to mind the Olympic flame. If it does not come from the hands of the priestess in the Temple of Athens, its sacredness is non-existent. The study of Chinese mythology over the past century can be divided into two schools: one set on deconstructing the sanctity of the sacred, the other eager to find the sacred in the profane (with Chang Kwang-chih as the primary representative of the latter). The former aims to break down and deconstruct the ancient sacred sage rulers by interpreting them as mythical and unreal historical figures. The latter aims to restore the sanctity of secular things by reconstructing and highlighting the cultural achievements made by ancient sages—the shamans. These two schools seem to be contradictory, but they are actually interlinked and complementary. The deconstruction of rigid belief in the sage ruler genealogy as set out in the classic literature suggests a doubt about the authenticity of the ancient Chinese narrative tradition. If those sage rulers were not real people, they must have been added for sacred purposes that related to the mythological beliefs of the time of their invention. In other words, their creation was not random nor pure literary fantasy. As long as mythological study is no longer simply confined to the literary position and placed in the original cultural context of beliefs and rituals, the sanctity of the mythical characters is likely to be restored. Ragland quoted from W. J. Gruffydd the four stages through which the tale has grown to its present form: 1st stage—Mythology; 2nd stage—Mythology becomes history. 3rd state—Mythology becomes folklore; 4th stage—Folklore is utilized to form literary tales (1958, 129). Anthropological research focuses on the union of state and religion in the early societies of primitive peoples, and has coined a set of compound terms such as “sage rulers”, “divine kingship” (Wang 1986, 191–192), “witch king” or “priest king”. This set of terms can bridge the two popular research

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Fig. 8.6 A Jade jue with four protrusions. Photographed at the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung in 2009

paths: to restore the sacred from the profane and the profane from the sacred. In this new context, it is not only those poets who imagined themselves ascending to heaven or descending to earth that were mediums between the divine and the profane, but even sage rulers like Yao, Shun and Yu—the rulers Confucius worshiped—have been reduced to shaman-like mediums between heaven and man. Yu, the sage ruler controlling the flood, was called shenwu (spirit shaman). King Tang of the Shang Dynasty, who sacrificed himself and prayed to avoid calamities, was called dawu ( 大巫, great shaman). Qi, who ascended to heaven and was bestowed the celestial music “nine arguments” (jiu bian, 九辩) and “nine songs” (jiu ge, 九歌), processed supernatural powers like a shaman. That those sage rulers communicated with heaven and deities with jade are examples of the prevalence of jade worship in these later traditions. One may attain a new understanding of the wu archetype represented in the sage myths that is supported by the archaeological findings of the late twentieth century (Fig. 8.6). Once the concepts of the “legendary period” and the “archaeological period” correspond, present understandings of history will be impacted. Two principal goals need to be established in the mission to re-understand the origins of Chinese civilization. One is to restore its traditional oral culture, that is, the ancient rituals and music culture of the preliterate age, so as not to be confined to the evidence presented in much later texts; the other is to restore the sacred ritual context of local religion, so that wuxi and shamanic practices can be used as reference for the study of sage worship in Confucianism and Daoism.

8.6 Jade Worship and Sage King Genealogy of the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties What the academic community refers to as “history” is essentially a set of written texts about past events constructed by people that lived either during or after them. The school of scepticism, taking an empirical approach, attempts to separate myth

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from history. It defends the objectivity and credibility of history and holds that myths are fictitious and thus should be discarded in an objective analysis of the past. The cultural heritage of the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties was questioned, as in Hu Shi’s remarks, “There is no history before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty”. However, the jade ritual instruments recovered in archaeological excavations can be used as evidence for the later historical accounts, such as the following: “wu is a spirit medium and uses jade to communicate with the deities”, as recorded in Explaining the Graphs and analysing the Characters (Duan1988, 19). The following paragraphs list the sage rulers and their jade symbols as mandates of heaven as they are described in the historical records, and turn to jade ritual instruments from the archaeological excavations for correlating evidence. Emperor Yao: Yao was bestowed a jade plaque by heaven. (Record of Heretofore Lost Works; Shi Yi Ji拾遗记) Emperor Shun: He called in (all) the five jade-symbols of rank; (finally) returning their symbols to the various princes. (The Book of Documents) (Legge 2013, 13) Emperor Yu: When Yu assembled the States on mount of Too, there were 10.000 States whose princes bore their symbols of jade and offerings of silk. (The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming, Zuo Zhuan, 左传) (Legge 2011, 814) Emperor Yu: Yu presented the dark-coloured symbol of his rank, and announced the completion of his work. (The Book of Documents) (Legge 2013, 73) Emperor Qi: Qi ascended to heaven wearing jade huang and was bestowed the celestial music “nine arguments” and “nine songs” (The Classic of Mountains and Seas) Emperor Tang: Tang himself took up his great battle-ax and chastised Kun wu. He then chastised Chieh and obtain precious jades. (The Records of the Historian). (Legge 2013, 13) Western Zhou period: Jiang Taigong (named Lu Shang) caught jade huang when fishing and became an advisor to King Wen (The Book of Documents) Western Zhou period: King Wu overthrew Tyrant Zhou and collected a great number of jades. (Remaining Zhou Documents) Western Zhou period: He then took the business on himself, and reared three altars of earth on the same cleared space; and having made another altars on the south of these, and facing the north, he took there his own position. Having put a round symbol of jade (on each of the three altars), and holding in his hands the lengthened symbol (of his own rank). (The Book of Documents) (Legge 2013, 13) Western Zhou period: To the duke of Loo (Pih-kin the duke of Chow’s son) there were given-a grand chariot, a grand flag with dragons on it, the huang-stone of the sovereigns of Xia. (The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming) (Legge 2011, 754, slightly modified.) Western Zhou period: King Mu visited Emperor Huang’s place, was presented with jade and met the Queen Mother of the West. (The Biography of King Mu) The Spring and Autumn period: After Confucius finished editing the Spring and Autumn Annals and the Books of Filial Piety, he fasted, knelt down facing the North Star, and reported to Heaven. The sky turned dark, and a white mist covered the land. A red rainbow came down from the sky, and changed into a piece of yellow jade three feet long. (Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals, Sou Shen Ji, 搜神记) (Gan 2004, 533)

The twelve records mentioned above refer to figures ranging from the sage kings Yao and Shun to the uncrowned king Confucius, and include a total of 11 sages: Yao, Shun, Yu, Qi, Tang, Jiang Taigong, King Wen, King Wu, Duke of Zhou, King Mu,

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the Duke of Loo and Confucius, a selection representative of the orthodox tradition of Huaxia. These writings centre on the relationship between the sages and sacred objects, and construct a complete genealogy without a missing generation. Most of them are sage rulers, and the first rulers of a dynasty, except Jiang Taigong and Duke of Zhou (both were advisors) and Confucius. The sacred jade ritual instruments were symbols of communication between heaven and man, and between the deities and man in the narratives. Jade signifies the sacred, the mandate of heaven, or destiny, and thus indicates the legitimacy of the owner’s rule and of their inheritance of civilization, an indicating that is supported by physical evidence. In general, when an old dynasty was replaced by a new one, the details regarding the obtaining of precious jades by the incoming rulers were recorded, which demonstrates that the ancients firmly believed that “treasure” changing hands was material evidence for the transfer of the mandate of heaven. Such events were not just of economic value, but were concerned with the legitimacy of the kingship, hence they were recorded. For example, the “Jade Huang of Xiahoushi” handed down from the Xia and Shang to the duke of Lu in the Zhou Dynasty had more symbolic value as a signifier that the new ruler has rightful royal power than it had economic value. This author has applied religious concepts like “fetishism” and “hierophany” to explain the sacredness of jade instruments in the minds of the Huaxia people and thus has attempted to explore the formation of Chinese identity in prehistoric times. Chinese identity emerged around the same time as the construction of the Central Plain jade ritual system thousands of years ahead of the rule of the first Qin emperor. The use of the imperial seal to represent supreme state power by rulers from the first Qin emperor to the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty is evidence for the longevity of cultural identity and of the core values underlying the jade myths constructed in Central Plain dynasties. Before 1921, there was insufficient evidence to verify the existence of a coherent jade narrative in the period stretching from Yao to Confucius. Wang Guowei argued for the use of oracle bone inscriptions as the second type of evidence to explore ancient history, so that later scholars can prove that jade rituals in the Shang Dynasty were not later fictionalized, but reflected the beliefs and ritual practices of the Shang people (Wang 2007). This author believes that the circumstantial evidence of anthropology and folklore can be used as the third type of evidence, and unearthed objects as the fourth type of evidence. If one looks at new evidence that was unavailable to the ancients, it is clear that the geographical distribution of prehistoric jade production and use stretches back to much earlier than the Yao and Shun era. Based on this new knowledge, academia on both sides of the strait has expanded the study of the special fields of Chinese jade and jade culture research, bringing an unprecedented set of traditional academic views to the ancient king genealogy that was thought to have been destroyed by the modern Doubting Antiquity School. In exploring the “Jade Huang of Xiahoushi” from the Hemudu culture of 7000 years ago all the way to the Spring and Autumn Period, thousands of jade huang have been unearthed, and their age and distribution gives evidence for the mythological view of the trinity of huang—dragon—rainbow.

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The most typical jade is the double-headed dragon jade huang, such as that excavated by archaeologists at the Altar site of the Hongshan culture in Dongshanzui, Kazuo County, Liaoning Province. The artifact is bluish white, and 4.1 cm long. The two ends are both carved into the shape of a dragons’ head with a long mouth, slightly open, and diamond-shaped eyes. (Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 1997, 62). It is a stunning visual insight into “real” prehistoric ritual jades, the kind that Confucius and Sima Qian wanted to see and could not see. Jades like this connect myths with the cultural tradition of jade. Previous mythological literary research has failed to trace the source of much mythological imagery to the preliterate era. Likewise, folk narratives passed down by word of mouth do not allow one to realize the origins of such tales and imagery. Now, with the help of the fourth type of evidence, that is image narratives as seen through physical objects, one can directly find the mythical symbol of the doubleheaded dragon (as commonly manifested in the huang of the Hongshan culture and which imitated the rainbow in their appearance), more than five thousand years ago—thus these jade huang of the Hongshan culture can tell much of oral culture and mythology in the big tradition. Looking for changes in the shape and functions of jade huang from pre-history through into the period of civilization also provides valuable symbolic information when researching ideology related to myths and rituals. The Qijia culture in the Ganqing area, which is thousands of kilometres away from the Liangzhu culture, also had a large-scale production of jade, but its shape and underlying mythology are obviously different from those of the Liangzhu culture. According to archaeological studies, there are a certain number of jade huang items found belonging to the Qijia culture, all of which are fan-shaped, with holes, and exquisitely made. Some are onethird or one-quarter circular; others are jade bi with three pieces of huang. This shows that the huang in the Qijia culture was a ritual instrument, not simply an ornament (Ye 1998, 181). What mythological belief is the combination of jade huang and jade bi based on? Since Qijia culture is closer to the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties in terms of geography and time, its jade ritual system and concepts are more closely related to the national ritual system that emerged. The way that a jade bi was composed at this point, with two, three or four pieces of huang, was still popular in the Western Zhou. For instance, a jade bi with three pieces of huang was unearthed in the western part of Gaojiazui Village, Taibai Township, Fufeng County, Shaanxi Province in 1980 (Zhouyuan Museum 2008). At the same time, there have also been found groups of jade pendants, with jade huang being the most common style found. ranging from small groups of less than ten artefacts, to vast quantities like the 204 jade objects found in Tomb No. 63 in the Cemetery for Marquis of the Jin Kingdom in Quwo, Shanxi. The collection is made up of more than 40 pieces of jade huang, which embody good wishes for the dead king to ascend to heaven. Jade huang carries mythical connotations of the rainbow bridge of the dead, which matches the significance of jade bird carvings. A combination of jade huang and jade bi appeared in Western Han Dynasty paintings unearthed from the Mawangdui Tomb in Changsha, and the lacquer paintings of the Western Han Dynasty from the No. 1 tomb at Shazitang,

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Changsha. The bi symbolises the gate of heaven and the huang the bridge. The circumstantial evidence of these images can still give clues to interpreting the wide use of jade huang in burials. In addition to jade huang, other jade artefacts have been sorted according to the corresponding sage kings of the time of their creation. The constellations of jade ritual instruments of the state level created chronologically close to the Yao and Shun era were unearthed from the ruins of the Taosi in Shanxi, dating back 4500–4200 years. Those close to the Xia Dynasty are represented by jades unearthed from the Erlitou site in Yanshi, Henan. In addition, there are constellations unearthed from the Shijiahe culture in Hubei, the Longshan culture in the northwest of Shaanxi, and the Qijia culture in the Ganqing area. The Shang Dynasty jades were the most developed in the reign of Emperor Wuding. The Western Zhou Dynasty’s jade production saw a real turning point under the reign of the King Mu of Zhou, and formed a peak period in terms of quantity, material selection and quality of production. It was King Mu who obtained a large amount of high-quality Hetian jade after he travelled to the western region, which greatly stimulated the jade production of the Central Plain Dynasty. Hence, the book The Biography of King Mu, which was viewed as a novel in the past, with its plot of jade seeking and worship, should be recognized as a reflection the truth, it captures the profound belief in jade by referring to the excavated jades of the Western Zhou Dynasty after the reign of King Mu. One may take the cultural relics of the Western Zhou Dynasty unearthed in the Yu State Cemetery, Baoji as an example. “The burial period of the Yu State cemetery spans from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle King Mu period, but the jades unearthed in Tombs BRM1B, BRM1A, and BRM2 all belong to the King Mu period, and there are relatively few jades of the early Western Zhou Dynasty (Cai 2010, 376). But the point of origin for the jades from the early Western Zhou Dynasty requires closer investigation. The Shang Dynasty royal treasures were captured by King Wu of Zhou. For example, the jade dragon numbered BRM1A:37 was confirmed as “the original jade passed down from the late Shang Dynasty and not reprocessed” (ibid., 18). In Tomb M26, the tomb of the Ms. Lao, which was newly unearthed in the Liangdai Village of Hancheng, Shaanxi Province, there is actually a Hongshan culture jade pig-dragon made of the Xiuyan jade that was collected by the Zhou people (Sun and Cai 2007, 39). From its appearance, it is no different from the Hongshan culture jade pig-dragon unearthed in western Liaoning. In the tombs of the Qin State of the late Spring and Autumn Period, which were unearthed in Fengxiang, Shaanxi, the jade ritual instruments of the Hongshan culture were also discovered (Gu 2005, 26). This evidence shows that the time in which jade was first used as a sacred object and collected by the generations of people was much earlier than most people have estimated. Some scholars have speculated that: “Shaanxi’s Guanzhong is the leading distribution area of the Miaodigou phase of the Yangshao culture. The Hongshan culture jades in western Liaoning are very likely to pass on to Guanzhong in the same period” (Liu 2010, 339). Inherited literature such as The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming records the deeds of the pursuit of Xia Dynasty jades in the Spring and Autumn Period—it is clear that mythologized jades retained their value into this period. From the Spring and Autumn

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Period to the Western Han Dynasty, the Jade Huang of Xiahoushi (Xiahou’s Jade or Xia Hou’s Huang) became a legendary treasure, which was repeatedly mentioned in the book Huainanzi. Whoever gained the Xiahou’s Jade would certainly keep it in a small box, because this is the most precious thing in the world. However, the soul is much more precious than Xiahou’s Jade. Hence, sages react to the “being” according to the “not-being” and must get to the bottom of things. By adhering to “emptiness”, they take in the real condition and must know every detail of it. By remaining indifferent to mundane affairs, tranquil, and adhering to “emptiness”, they enjoy their lifespan. Hence, they are not too distant or too close to others, and they simply maintain their De to reach a harmonious state and comply with the will of Heaven. They are in accordance with Tao, accompanied by De, not taking action to bring happiness or trigger misfortune. Their spirits stay at the right places, and their souls adhere to Tao. Therefore, life or death makes no difference to them, so they are regarded as the Most Supernal. (Zhai and Mu 2010, 405-407) Hence, if a person has great virtue, do not pay attention to the details; for a person held in high repute, overlook his peccadilloes. It is inevitable that even Xia Hou’s Huang has flaws and the Bright-Moon Pearl has some flocculent structure, but people in the world still regard them as the most precious treasures. Why? Their insignificant defects do not outweigh the big merits. (Ibid., 931-935)

Although as an artifact itself jade is silent, if studied appropriately it can tell academics much about its production and use. Thus, the conditions necessary for reconstructing the mythical chronology of the sage king and the sacred objects can be restored. In this regard, the research paradigm of examining the interaction of the four types of evidence, whilst difficult to carry out, has promising prospects.

8.7 Jade Virtue and Jade Beauty In the long prehistoric period, the big tradition formed by the long-term ceremonial practices of wu serving the deities with jade led to a system of beliefs and myths by which jade came to be seen as sacred and eternal, a system of worship which one might simply name jade worship. The high attention to the color and sound of jade in the ceremonial rituals became sacred knowledge passed down from generation to generation. The custom and concept of regarding jade as a treasure was born out of the concept that jade represents the will of deities and the mandate of heaven. This theme runs through the mythological history of the four dynasties of Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou. This laid the foundation for later myths and rituals as Confucianism and Daoism emerged. After the decline of Western Zhou, the princes’ confederation still used jades and silks as tokens to express the creation of an alliance or reconciliation, such that the deities would take on supervision of the alliance. Jade and silk are still able to represent the gods, as is recorded in The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming. High Heaven has sent down calamity, and made my two lords see each other, not with jade and silks, but with the instruments of war. (Legge 2011, 168, slightly modified.)

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Jade transformed from merely being representative of the deities to being the ideal symbol of the Confucian character. The practical basis for this transformation was that the wu, holding jade in the sacrificial ceremony in prehistory, was gradually replaced by the kings of the dynasties. The appearance of the jade phase correlates with the rise in popularity of using jade to describe the qualities of human beings. In the part of “Major Odes” of The Book of Poetry: “As carved and chiselled is the sign on gold and jade that brightly shine, so our tireless king will resign. His boundless state with might and main” (Wang 2008, 527). These four lines describe the beautiful texture of jade as a metaphor for the authority of the Zhou Dynasty emperors and their rule of the country. Such rhetorical terms, that make reference to both jade and gold, could not be used one or two thousand years prior to The Book of Poetry, because there was no gold production, only the production of jade. Initially reserved for the emperor and royal family alone, officials and intellectuals of the ruling class over time gained the authority to also use jade as a metaphor for themselves and others. This conversion process took place long before the birth of Confucius. It is written in the “Songs of Qin” of The Book of Poetry “My lord’s a man of topmost grade, as good and precious as jade” (ibid., 219–221). It is already clear here the subject has changed from the emperor to the so-called gentleman. From prehistoric times to the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, the customs of jade worship in the history of Chinese civilization were undergoing significant development. At this stage in time, jade objects evolved from the exclusive artifacts of prehistoric tribal wizards or chiefs to the key symbol of royal power and the sacred props of national rituals. Long before the systematic creation of Chinese characters— in the form of oracle bone inscriptions—emerged, jade symbolic systems had been popular before the Xia Dynasty, and finally came to be integrated into the culture of the Central Plain region. In accordance with this development, the corresponding jade concepts (and associated magical qualities of jade)—for serving deities, practicing sorcery, and for ritual ceremonies—were gradually formed. It is on this basis that the Confucian doctrine aimed at restoring the authority of the Western Zhou kingship and Zhou rituals was born. The Confucian view of jade was developed from the sacred tradition of the emperor’s jade system that had existed since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The combination of the Confucian view of the gentleman and traditional divine jade beliefs developed the new classical doctrine of “the gentleman’s virtue is compared to jade”, and finally gave jade a moral and personal significance, making it a special symbolic representation of the virtues of benevolence and morality. Jade became a physical, earthly instrument that fully embodied metaphysical and divine meaning, thus laying the foundations of the later Huaxia jade culture (Fig. 8.7). There are three aspects that need to be highlighted when it comes to the characteristics of the Confucian jade virtue theory: The first is that Confucianism had to inherit and transform prehistoric jade beliefs, which regarded jade as representative of deities or divine essence, and turn it into a useful tool in the moral transformation of a gentleman’s personality. In this way, jade became a symbol of the ideal goal of the Confucian way of life. As a beautiful material, jade acquires metaphysical value on the level of figuration. According to The Book of Rites, when Confucius is answering why a gentleman sets a higher value

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Fig. 8.7 A jade face unearthed from shenmu of the Longshan culture. Photographed at the Shaanxi Provincial museum in 2009

on jade than min (珉, jade-like stone), he points out that jade has eleven traits: ren (仁, benevolence), zhi (智, wisdom), yi (义, righteousness), li (礼, ritual), yue (乐, music), zhong (忠, loyalty), xin (信, faith), tian (天, heaven), di (地, earth), de (德, virtue), and dao (道, truth). These 11 traits of jade can be regarded as the core values of Confucian thought. The second is the important category of Chinese classical aesthetics, wenrun ( 温润, soft and glossy), and its use in the analogy that compares man and jade. Judging from the unique visual and tactile experience of jade in Chinese culture, the Confucian maxims of the gentlemen are the same as those of the sages in the 58 chapter of Laozi’s Dao De Jing, who are described as “bright but not dazzling”. Whether it is “wenrun” or “bright but not dazzling”, it is derived from the soft and restrained oily luster that is unique to the Hetian jade seed material. The third is the mythological combination of the dragon, the phoenix, and jade. Both the dragon and phoenix are symbols of the Chinese nation. The jade dragon and jade phoenix as ritual instruments existed since prehistory and lasted all the way through to the Qing Dynasty. Indeed, they still have an important influence in the auspicious culture of modern Chinese society. Since the Song Dynasty, ordinary people also used jade. They continued to inherit the ideas of “comparing virtue to jade” and “using jade in rituals”, as can be seen from the jade ritual instruments that have been unearthed from the period, and their descriptions and definitions in a large number of classical documents. At that time, the custom of expressing aspects auspicious culture through jade objects was formed both in and out of court. This period also produced an important theoretical work of jade, Lü Dalin’s Archaeological Map, which studied a variety of jades. Over thousands of years, Chinese society went from viewing jade as primarily a physical embodiment of Confucian ethical ideals to valuing it largely for its aesthetic beauty.

Chapter 9

A Mythological Analysis of the Origins of Chinese Jades: A Case Study of Jade Jue in the Xinglongwa Culture

9.1 Factors Behind the Formation of Jade Culture Jade production, as an indicator of the emergence of Chinese civilization, is detectable earlier than other indicators. Jades appeared in the Xinglongwa culture in Chifeng in northern China 8000 years ago, which is twice as long ago as the other three indicators of civilization—cities, a writing system, and bronzes—each of which emerged around 4000 years ago. According to academic definitions, jades like jade jue and jade daggers are currently considered to be among the earliest elements of Chinese jade culture. However, due to insufficient research into the reasons for the sudden emergence of jade production, it is generally supposed that this production was intended to satisfy the aesthetic needs of ancient peoples. Zhang Zhongpei, director of the Archaeological Society of China, once defined jade culture according to four phases, namely “jade likened to beauty”, “divine king’s jade”, “jade symbolizing rites”, and “jade likened to virtue”. As for the first phase of jade culture, he explained: Dating back to the Xinglongwa culture (c 6000 BC), people had already made small jade objects. Pure and gentle nephrite was then independent from exquisite gems and stones. … Stretching back to the Songze culture (c 4000-3300 BC), … jades just served as decorative and beautiful ornaments. … The nature of the precious stone as “jade likened to beauty” didn’t entirely change, but rather accrued new functions such as to “indicate wealth” and “represent nobleness”. (Zhang and Xu 2008, 1)

The theory that “jade likened to beauty” was the first phase of jade production in Chinese history represents the authoritative and popular opinion in academia as to the origin of Chinese prehistorical jades. The archaeologist Zhu Yanping also held the opinion in his article entitled “Reflections on the Origins of Jade Jue in East Asia” that “The current research fails to explain exactly the function of the jade jue. Even though most scholars interpret jade jue as some kind of earrings, they still couldn’t affirm whether such standard ‘ring-shaped’ jue stands for the initial form of jue” (ibid., 185). The article also presents the opinion that since jade jue in the Xinglongwa culture © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_9

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was exquisite and delicately crafted, it must have been preceded by a phase of stone jue. The book The Origin of Jades in East Asia, published in 2007 and co-compiled by the Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, highlights the pioneering achievements made by the Chinese archaeological community in their study of jades in the Xinglongwa culture. The book presents the original appearance of prehistorical ancient jades through a series of exquisite and realistic color pictures. Many research papers containing perspectives on the economic and cultural background of surrounding settlements, as well as micro observations on types of jades and jade processing technologies, are also compiled in the book, and these provide a refreshing reading experience. In particular, this book employs anthropological research materials and evidence drawing on the practices of numerous ethnic minorities, for example turning to the “big earlobe” custom of the Li ethnic people in Hainan Province to explain how such large, thick jade jue could be used to adorn the pierced ears of prehistoric people. It also makes reference to various multi-disciplinary approaches for the study of ancient jades. However, discussions about the functions of jade jue and the factors behind the origins of jade production still rest on general speculation, failing to paint a clear picture of the spiritual context of the Neolithic Age, and failing to explore the sacred or spiritual reasons for wearing jade. Fu Luowen, an anthropologist at Harvard University, pointed out: Jade was considered a valuable item in the Hongshan Culture, but such a prevailing custom was not innate at all. One must consider whether jade objects were the most valuable among other objects made with similar materials and forms prior to the Hongshan culture. Actually, jades from the Xinglongwa culture feature simple forms and appear in limited number, with daggers, jue, axes, tubes, beads, and pendants being the main categories. During the Xinglongwa culture, the “level of value” that these jades held is not that obvious, thus we still need more sound evidence to prove whether jades from this culture symbolise nobility. Meanwhile, jades from the Xinglongwa culture still lack some traits that can be clearly associated with specific social and symbolic meanings. (Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences & Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2007, 234)

It is universally acknowledged by the academic community that the value of jades to the Hongshan culture was a tradition derived from the earlier Xinglongwa culture in the same region. Due to an insufficient understanding by academics of the dual symbolic meanings of a jade object’s material and shape, one may consider that jades from the Xinglongwa culture lacked social symbolic meaning. In the Stone Age, primitive people were able to distinguish jade materials from ordinary stone materials and make ornaments for themselves, which is a meaningful production behavior exclusive to human beings as symbolic animals. For people in the Stone Age, mythological concepts and thinking, instead of rational thinking in the modern sense, was the most common means of understanding the world. In mythological thinking color conveys strong symbolic meaning. Observing that the upper cave men had already managed to use red hematite at funeral ceremonies for tens of thousands of years, one can predict that primitive peoples were able to endow some symbolic meaning to the color of natural objects. Since dark green jade or bluish white jade are close to the color of the sky, it may seem natural to regard such jade as a

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Fig. 9.1 An 88 kg jade pig of the Lingjiatan culture, dating back to 5300 years ago. Photographed at the Anhui Museum

heaven-sent sacred object. The cross-cultural mythological view of jade can provide references for such associations. For example, bluish green lazurite saw extensive worship and mystification in the Sumerian and Egyptian civilizations thanks to its night-sky color (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 1145). Clear and shining crystal is regarded as a sacred object from heaven according to Tibetan Buddhism. For instance, the concepts of surya kanta and chandra kanta were formed in accordance with this belief. Meanwhile, crystals were used to make Buddha statues, Guanyin statues and pagodas. Mount Meru, a sacred mountain with five peaks in Hindu, Jain and Buddhist cosmology, is considered to be the centre of all physical, metaphysical and spiritual universes. The east side of Mount Meru was also considered to be made of crystalline material (Beer 2007, 202). dzi beads (瑟珠, heavenly beads) in onyx are also recognized as sacred objects in Tibetan Buddhism. The owners of dzi beads usually adhere to the creation myth which says, “Dzi beads are jewels spilled by gods. When pearls and jewels are broken or smashed, gods will scatter them on earth” (ibid., 203). In the minds of the ancient Chinese ancestors, the sky was conceived as being made of jade, while bluish green jade was also associated with heaven-sent sacred objects, all of which endow jade ornaments with symbolic meaning and the ability to communicate with gods and supernatural spirits, exorcise evil spirits, and protect and bless men (Fig. 9.1). This is the “mythological view” for the origin of jades that this chapter tries to illustrate, based on the view of “jade likened to beauty”. In aboriginal myths about human origins, the motif of heaven-sent sacred stones often narrates stories of human beings or immortals born from stone. The first line of the song called “The Song of the Stone Kid”, an old ballad popularly sung by the Yami people in Taiwan, goes like this (Yang 2011, 657): “Upon the burst of a huge rock fallen from Heaven, our ancestor was then born”. A legend among the Yami people says that in ancient times, a god was born from a meteorite fallen from heaven, while a goddess came to the world from bamboo. The two married and gave birth to six children (ibid., 660–661). What supports the above-mentioned motif is the belief that here a sacred stone possessed the sacred power to create life. Generally speaking, the conceptual foundation of jade myths echoes such beliefs and highlights the distinctive feature of jade to reflect rays of light. Light can then be considered as a medium of divine power (cf. Kunz 1915, 279). The intentions of inventing, making and wearing jade objects are not only to seek and show off its beautiful appearance, but also to embrace the divine power and

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vitality of heaven. Chinese people now still believe that wearing jade can preserve the body and ward off evil spirits. Derived from ancient beliefs, such a popular notion remains unchanged despite thousands of years of evolution. In the third part of the book The Origin of Jades in East Asia, a long paper entitled “Jades in the Xinglongwa Culture and Plant Cosmology” by Deng Cong, sets out to explore early jades from the perspective of color symbolism. It also presents the opinion that yellow-green jade can represent a plant cosmology, that is, the green color commonly found in the plant world is used as an archetype “in pursuit of eternal metaphysical notions” (2007, 292) implied in jades through their similar coloration. The paper illustrates in detail how yellow-green jade constitutes the primary prehistorical symbol of things associated with the color green in East Asia, bringing far-reaching influences to the eastern cultural identities in later generations. “The special status of the traditional yellow-green color has never been interrupted in Eastern Culture. Ancient countries like China, North Korea and Japan have always had a preference for green celadon. Yellow-green jade and green celadon both belong to a broad “green-preference” culture. They can be traced back to the same origin and coordinate with each other, making a great contribution to world culture” (ibid., 293). Records about “cang (苍) jade” and “cang jade bi” in inherited literature are also quoted in the paper, which specifies that cang color actually indicates yellow or yellow-green color. All these speculations and assertion warrant further discussion. What is especially valuable here is that the paper focuses on the symbolism associated with coloured jade, and the implications of these associations. However, it is almost certain that the most common association of coloured jade was not with the green plants on earth, but with the blue sky above. As is recorded in The Rites of Zhou, “Cang jade bi was used to pay homage to the heaven; yellow cong (琮) was used to pay homage to the earth”, this passage has formed the basis of a common consensus on this topic among the community of jade researchers. The denotative meaning of the Chinese character 苍 (cang) covers the colors green and yellow. Phrases like 苍山 (green mountains) and 苍山翠柏 (green pines and verdant cypresses) are typical examples of its use. Meanwhile, the yellow bird (oriole) has another name—canggeng (仓庚). Nevertheless, the original meaning of the character 苍indicates the blueness of the sky. The top three explanations of 苍 (cang) in The Grand Dictionary of Chinese Languages (1997, 5516) are listed as follows: (1) (2) (3)

Cyan color (including blue color and green color). Gray white color. It refers to heaven.

The term 苍天(cangtian, heaven) was widely used in the era in which The Book of Poetry was compiled. For instance, as written in the “Songs of Wang: The Millet”, “Gracious Heavens, oh! Who’s brought all this woe?” (Wang 2008, 119). Legends like “Nüwa mending the heaven” also show the relationship between “cangtian” and jade. The detail with which Nüwa smelted together five-coloured stones in order to patch up the azure sky also unveils people’s mythological belief some form of “jade sky”. Apart from its color, jade is also characterized by its translucency, another feature

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that can be likened to the sky. Polished jades can reflect light rays, which helps jade stand out among other inorganic substances. Such uniqueness rendered it as a sacred and divine object in the mythological imagination. This is the key to comprehending the belief of jade myths in East Asia. Texts also show the sacrificial purposes of jade and silk in ancient ceremonies. The book Discourses of the States: Discourses of Chu (Guo Yu: Chu Yu; 国语·楚语) discusses the duties of clergy officials which included placing jade and silk in sacrificial ceremonies (Zuo 1988, 560, 562)— another potential example of big tradition culture seeping into later times. In addition, it can also be proved that the sacrificial rules of the Spring and Autumn Period were derived from prehistoric traditions. During the Warring States Period, Qu Yuan once compared himself to cheng (珵) in his work Enchanting Sorrow. People in the Han Dynasty did not know the origins of what cheng indicates. However, Wang Yi, a writer in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220) noted, in Xiang Yu Shu (相玉书), that cheng obviously referred to a piece of fine jade according to descriptions of its size and shiny features (You, 1980: 367). Later scholars held different opinions about this gem. Some say it is jade hu (玉 笏) or ting (珽), while others say it is heng (珩). Ting is said to be the jade hu or big gui held by Tianzi (天子, Son of Heaven), as The Book of Rites mentions that the son of Heaven carried ting (Ruan 1980, 1475). Zheng Xuan and Wang Yi both cited from Xiang Yu Shu when making observations about jades. It is a pity that this book failed to be handed down from past generations. Its author is not known, nor when it was written. It is thought to be an ancient book, likely dating back to before the Qin Dynasty and almost certainly being written before the Han Dynasty. From what is known, Xiang Yu Shu can be rated as the first known valuable book about jade study in ancient China. The above citations from Wang Yi and Zheng Xuan all emphasize the transparency and shining characteristics of jades. Apart from their visual appearance, jades, especially jade musical slabs and jade pendant sets, can produce fantastic musical sounds. As is written in the Enchanting Sorrows, “Th’clanking phoenix bells of jade amusing my ears, And the waving banners of clouds fleecing the skies (Qu 2006, 31). With its mythological connotations, jade was preferred by the ancient peoples of East Asia thanks to its integration of visual, auditory and physical qualities, as is shown in the saying that a gentleman is “soft and smooth like jade”. Gradually, the whole value system that featured “jade as heaven, gods, and treasure” was established, laying the foundations for an ideological code that would shape Chinese civilization.

9.2 Jade Jue: The Mythological Functions of Jade Earrings Jade jue earrings are known as the oldest form of earring in East Asia. Section 7.3 of this book provides initial discussions about jade jue earrings. From the perspective of the origins of Chinese jades, columnar and ring-shaped jade jue are regarded as of the two basic shapes of jade jue from the Xinglongwa culture (Fig. 9.2), these being the earliest popular jades in China. From the middle period of the Neolithic

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Fig. 9.2 Jade jue of the Xinglongwa culture unearthed from the Baiyin Changhan site in Linxi County, Inner Mongolia. Photographed at the Inner Mongolia Museum

Age to the era of the Qin and Han Dynasties, jade jue were passed down as a style, retaining something close to their original shape over thousands of years. Figure 9.2 shows sketch drawings of jade jue and other jades unearthed from the Xinglongwa site, artefacts which are not only among the earliest worn jades currently known in China, but also reveal two elements of the shape of jade jue in early times. Similar ring-shaped jade jue have been frequently found in archaeological discoveries across East Asia. Currently, archaeologists have found prehistorical jade stone jue (dating back 7000 or 8000 years ago) in places ranging from Hemudu (modern Yuyao in Zhejiang Province), the Japanese archipelago, and South Korea to the coastal areas of Russia (Zhu 2008). Within this wide geographical region, the concept of “jade jue culture” evolved. Since jade jue culture lasted for almost 6000 years, this concept can be considered as belonging to the big tradition. Prior to the production of luxury funerary objects like jade clothes sewn with gold wire, it was jade jue, jade masks, and other jade decorations that were considered as mythological items to help the noble tomb owner live eternally after death. Jade jue and jade fish were found placed behind the neck of the tomb owner at the M92 royal tomb of Marquis of Jin at the Tianma-Qucun site in Shanxi Province (Xu et al. 1995, 20). Although the jade jue found in the above two sites are about 5000 years apart in terms of time, the custom of “jade decorating ears” never changed across this chronological span. In contrast, the common custom of wearing gold, silver and copper earrings was cultivated after the Metal Age, replacing the jade carving age. Compared with the big tradition of wearing jade earrings, metal earrings are relatively new arrivals belonging to the small tradition. One may further explore the reasons for the emergence of jade earrings. About 8000 years ago the ancient Chinese peoples, whose life expectancy was about 30 years (Wang 2010, 19), lived a hard life: halffarming, and half-hunting and gathering. It is unlikely that they had the freedom to dedicate time to making aesthetic decorations with hard jade materials which are difficult and time-consuming to cut and process. This book argues that jade jue production was not motivated by a desire for aesthetic appreciation or decoration, but rather oriented itself towards the pursuit of beliefs and mythological views. Without beliefs as motivating factors, the people of the Xinglongwa culture would not have expended the energy and skill for such high-end production at that time.

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One might also speculate as to what kind of belief or mythological view could be powerful enough to encourage people to produce jade decorations in such a context. This issue can be approached in two ways. First, one must attempt to comprehend the mythological view of the human body held by these ancient people, and discover the great significance of the ear so as to interpret the function of jade jue as an earring decoration. Second, one must make clear the significance of the mythological beliefs embodied in jade materials. This may refer to the concept of the “mystical precious jade” or the virtual incarnation of the “sacred life force” (精, essence or energy). That is to say, transparent and glowing jade crystals represented invisible supernatural powers. According to the Chinese mythological view, the human body was a micro-cosmos within the macro-cosmos, while ears represented miniature specimens of such a micro-cosmos. For example, auricular acupuncture therapy, a treatment adopted in traditional Chinese medicine, focuses only on ear acupuncture, since it regards the ear as a miniature form of the human body. The top of the skull is commonly known as tianlinggai (天灵盖, crown of divinity) or tianting (天庭, heavenly court). All these appellations contain ancient information, semblances of old means by which human beings could reach the highest authorities and communicate with deities. The reason why early jade production so often created objects for the head is because they were made to satisfy the need to communicate with deities. Due to their position and outward raised shapes, extruding parts of the human body like hairs and ears were associated with human “antennae”, linking the person with heaven and the deities. In other words they were a medium or bridge between the macro-cosmos and the micro-cosmos from the perspective of mythological cosmology. As is put in The Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei: The relationship between Heaven, Earth and a myriad of things of the world is just like the component parts of the body of a person being united, and this is known as Great Harmony. On the other hand, there are different organs such as the ear, the eye, the nose and the mouth, as well as different crops and the hot and cold seasons, and this is known as Diversity. Thus, various things are in existence. Heaven creates a myriad of things and sages examine and master them. That can be explained by the origin of Heaven and Earth, the occurrence of thunder and lighting, the creation of a myriad of things and the peaceful lives of people and creatures as well. (Lü 2005, 25-27)

During the era of the Xinglongwa culture, there may have not been such mature interactions between heaven and man, but the belief that the “essence of the being” can communicate with the deities was sufficient to drive the inception of jade production. However, decorating ears with jades representing the deities and spirits was not a custom shared by all social strata in the Xinglongwa culture. It was the exclusive privilege of the social elites, namely people who had the authority to communicate with the gods. These social elites were considered as saints in their tribes. On behalf of all members of a community, they were able to obtain divine commands from heaven, achieve communication between gods and man through ceremonial behavior, and contribute to society by healing diseases, warding off evil, and exterminating disasters by virtue of their communicative powers. Notably, jade earrings and jade

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necklaces were regarded as unique tokens for saint-like figures such as wuxi and shaman. Due to the rarity of unearthed jades from the Xinglongwa culture, one supports the validity of the above judgement. Those jades were mainly recovered from house sites or residential tombs inside of house sites. A residential tomb was a higherranking tomb than a public cemetery. Jades were discovered in a handful of over 180 house sites. Altogether 23 pieces of jades were unearthed. Most of them are instrumental items like jade axes and jade ben, which carry unique symbolic meanings for spiritual beings. Decorations such as jade jue were mostly found in residential tombs, obviously burial objects for tomb owners. A few of them were unearthed in the house sites or earth strata. The Nantaizi site, a historical site belonging to the same period as the Xinglongwa culture, covers an excavation area of 3000 m2 . However, not a single jade object was discovered among 33 house sites. Thus, one can conclude that due to the scarcity of jade materials, jade production and usage was influenced by the availability of resources. Jade was by no means a popular social item, but a luxury object of the top elites in some communities. For example, the tomb owner of the central house site M118 in the settlement of the second phase of the Xinglongwa culture was a 50-year-old man, a social leader at that time, who possessed rich and valuable burial objects, including jade jue, a male pig and a female pig. This house site may be the most luxurious one of all 180 residencies of the Xinglongwa site. Another example is the settlement centre of the Chahai site, with five houses backing the central square, known as the “houses of jade users”. In the square, red stones form a dragon-like shape surrounded by over ten tombs and three sacrificial pits. “From the above settlement structure, five “houses of jade users” made up an intact group in space and may have played an important role in sacrificial activities” (Deng 2007, 271). Such background analysis can bring clarity to the origins of jade jue as well as the origins of jade production by these ancient peoples. “Historical Site and Analysis”, the first part in the book The Origin of Jades in East Asia, was written by Yang Hu and Liu Guoxiang, two archaeological excavators. They held that the descriptions of the Xinglongwa site and residential burial customs are necessary background knowledge to comprehend the origins of jade jue and its social functions. Their analysis and speculations regarding the primitive religious belief in the Xinglongwa culture are as follows: The religious belief of the Xinglongwa culture gave priority to ancestor soul worship and prey soul worship. The popularization of residential burial customs is considered as important evidence for ancestor worship at that time, endowing some residences with functions both for living and sacrifice. As for prey worship, pig and deer were two major sacrificial animals. The well-arranged sacrificial pit groups discovered in the southeast of the west region of the Xinglonggou settlement is a significant component of the settlement layout. In the No. 35 major sacrificial pit, there lies a pig skull with holes on the forehead. Furthermore, pottery shards, incomplete stoneware, and natural stone were used to form a S-shaped body. Such a layout is representative of the spiritual sublimation of religious sacrificial concepts, rather than being indicative of pure animal worship. (Institute of Archaeology of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences & Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2007, 20)

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The study of religious sacrificial relics in the semi-agricultural, semi-huntergatherer society of the Neolithic Age is the primary premise for reconstructing people’s ceremonial behavior and mythological beliefs, which helps to interpret the relations between the small number of jades and the ritual “caste” of the upper classes. According to archaeological records, the jades of the Xinglongwa culture were mainly discovered in residential tombs, an exclusive privilege for certain elites not shared by all members of society. At present, residential tombs have been excavated in three historical sites: the Xinglongwa, Xinglonggou and Chahai sites. Over 180 house sites were discovered in the Xinglongwa site, more than 30 of which contained residential burials. As for the Chahai site, only 6 residential burials were discovered among the 55 house sites. Members of society who once enjoyed such residential burials only account for 11–16% of the whole population. Residential burials seem to have been more popular in the Xinglonggou site, since 20 were discovered as residential burials among its 37 excavated residence sites. Based on this statistical data, archaeologists deducted that “Residential burials in the Xinglongwa culture had specific rules. Not all members of society could be buried in the house after death” (ibid., 21). Such speculation is beyond all doubt. What needs to be further explored are the conceptual factors underpinning residential burial customs and the unbalanced proportion of residential burials in the three sites of the Xinglongwa culture. As for conceptual factors, the view “out of kinship consideration or special meaning, residential burial is characterized as an ancient and peculiar burial custom to bury the dead inside the residential house” (ibid., 21) is clearly in contradiction with the above-cited deduction: If the kinship factor was a key motivation behind residential burials, does this mean that only a few people in the community cared about their family? Obviously not. Therefore, this kinship factor is not enough to fully explain the restriction of the residential burial custom. As may be seen from the following signs, people buried inside the house may be those who could communicate with deities, namely, magic-practitioners or their families. The first sign is that there were abundant burial objects in the residential burials, such as groups of stone objects and potteries, most probably serving as ritual instruments. Jades including double jade jue were also discovered beside the ears of the tomb owner, which is usual. Another sign is the obvious burn marks detectable on the burial objects. For instance, in the No. 22 house site of the Xinglonggou site, four people were buried together on the northwest corner of the house, with “obvious burning marks” (ibid., 21) on the potteries and stone objects. These marks are traces of the funeral ceremony. Abundant burial objects, together with specific funeral practices evidenced in their funerals, verify the outstanding status of the dead. At that time, leaders in the society were mostly saint-like figures with the ability to communicate with deities. Among the aborigines in Taiwan, residential burial customs are still employed today. For example, in Reports on Fan Ethnicity (2008, 147), the burial custom of the Ibahu community of Bunun people is described as follows: “Family members shall take turns to look after their sick folk. Once a sick person passes away, he or she can be buried inside the house. The three-feet-deep tomb will be dug by wooden sticks instead of hoes in case other family members may also suffer death. Slab stones were erected surrounding the tomb walls. When burying the body, the male faces

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east, while the female faces west. All belongings of the dead then become burial objects”. Another example is that of the Take-todo tribe. The burial location is based on the status of the dead. “Generally, the young deceased ones will be buried inside of the house. The householder will be buried under the slab stone in the outdoor working place. Other adults will then be buried in mountains or farmlands” (ibid., 149). This shows that the residential burial of the Bunun people is selective, bearing no direct relation to a “degree of kinship” factor. On the contrary, it may be related to people’s age and capacity. Although the householder will be buried outdoors, his tomb is actually close to the house, in direct contrast to other adults who were buried among mountains and fields. Anthropologists give a further explanation as to the origins of prehistorical residential burial. That is, it is expected that those living in the house will be protected from attacks by devils with the help of the dead soul who owns special powers to communicate with the gods. The book Inside the Neolithic Mind, written by David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, also refers to a specific custom: at Jericho and Ain Ghazal, infants were buried beneath thresholds or in walls so as to protect the house and its inhabitants (2005, 81). They applied their knowledge of mythological cosmological understanding in the Neolithic Age to interpret its peculiar burial customs that were shaped by contemporaneous beliefs in spirits and the supernatural. Furthermore, one needs to go back to discuss the relevance of the existence of jade jue in the residential burials of the Xinglongwa culture. Jade was primarily used by social leaders or religious ceremonial groups 8000 years ago, which is itself indicative of jade’s ability to communicate with the divine. Wang Guowei once studied the structure of the Chinese character 礼 (traditional Chinese character 豊, rite). The structure of 豊 is like two pieces of jade being served in 豆 (dou), a traditional food container and sacrificial vessel. These are all in a sense literary records about the relations between jade and rites. The function of a rite is to achieve communication between people and deities, with jade serving as the medium. This stems from the following mythological concept: jade, the sacred object, conveys the gods’ will, heaven’s mandate, and vitality (Zhu 2005, 21–30). According to the inherited literature, one can possess a strong soul and even communicate with gods once he or she wears fine objects. What is the reason for the above statement? Discourses of the States: Discourses of Chu can give some clues: “Jade objects and silk fabrics are regarded as two essential essences”. Notes given by Wei Zhao also mention that bright and clean things all indicate fineness (Zuo 1988, 570). Jade is seen as the essence of things, thanks to its transparent, clean and shining appearance. Furthermore, it also becomes the medium for communication between man and deities by virtue of its clear dark green color that echoes the color of the sky. Another medium is the blood of sacrificial animals. At the M118 house site, two whole pigs and jade jue were buried with the dead, coinciding with the sacrificial rites that were adopted in later generations to bring jade objects, silk fabrics and sacrificial animals together. Currently, archaeologists interpret cases of “whole pigs and jades” in residential burials as follows: “It is a real reflection of the unity of ancestor worship and the worship of animal spirits, which in turn may be one of the earliest examples and forms of totem worship in China” (Yang and Liu 1997). The above studies are

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useful attempts to interpret the ideas underpinning ancient belief systems based on prehistorical relics. Only by taking them into account can one stand a chance of affirming that residential burial “carried double functionality as a place for both living and sacrificing”. The above functions deserve further in-depth study, perhaps by combining other phenomena evidenced in residential burials, including secondary burials, dismemberment of the head from the body, and ornamental plaques made from human skulls, with the above analysis. As revealed by the book Inside the Neolithic Mind, the purpose of using humans or animals as sacrificial objects is to seek blessings by communicating with a supernatural power. “Houses of the dead” were also evidenced in the sacrificial site, places where human skulls were placed in order as human sacrifices. It may be seen that such customs, such as human and blood sacrifices, were privileges only for social elites who wanted to connect with the spiritual world through these sacrifices. “They had the power to send people, whether sacrificed children, specially selected individuals or captives, into the other world and, by effecting such cosmological and supernatural transitions, to benefit the living” (Lewis-William and Pearce 2005, 82). Such sacrificial customs aimed to please the spiritual world and earn a sense of safety for the whole community by sacrificing certain individuals. Unlike the prehistorical “house of the dead” in West Asia, residential burials in the Xinglongwa culture were likely also home to similar human blood sacrifices. For example, pieces of a tomb owner’s skull found in a residential tomb in Xinglonggou. Another example is that of the No. 7 tomb of Xinglonggou, in which a piece of round-shaped ornamental plaque made from a human skull was found worn on the right hand of the tomb owner, while another, hollowed with a round top and square bottom, was on his chest (Fig. 9.3). The third example looks to the No. 23 residential burial in the C-region and the I-spot at the Xinglonggou site, which evidence suggests was a joint burial tomb of a man and a woman. It is also known as “the earliest known joint burial for a grown man and woman in northeast China” according to the photo’s caption in the exhibition room of the work team of Institute of Archaeology in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and the International Research Centre for Hongshan Culture in Chifeng University. Observing the skeletons of these two tomb owners, one may see that the male’s skeleton is complete, while the shorter female is missing her toes, with her Fig. 9.3 A carved human skull mask of the Xinglongwa culture, dating back to 8000 years ago. Photographed at the Exhibition Room of the International Research Centre of Hongshan Culture in Chifeng University in 2006

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skull twisted towards the left side of the body. Such a gesture may be intended to represent her with her head bowed towards the male tomb owner. This is not to say, however, that this indicates that the people suffered natural deaths, or that this was the burial of a couple. Instead, it may reflect elements of their sacrificial customs, and could be an example of human sacrifice. The book, Chinese Archaeology: Neolithic Age, has a prudent attitude towards such a phenomenon, and even maintains an ambiguous attitude towards residential burials. Joint burials of two children and a couple of adult man and woman were also discovered in Xinglonggou. On the floor of Room F22 lie pieces of their skeletons. In these tombs, some dead may lose their upper limbs, lower limbs, or skulls. Although residential burials are not strange things in ethnology, burying the dead inside the house in the Xinglongwa culture is obviously not normal burial behavior. Its implications still need further exploration. (The Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 2010, 162)

The above discussions have focused on the opinion that people wearing jade jue are the ones who communicate with the deities, that is, the upper class in Xinglongwa society, and that jade carries mythological and spiritual significance. To better illustrate the social status of the wearer of jade jue, one can provide the third and fourth types of evidence in order to gain multilateral comparisons and, through these, verification of the view. The third type of evidence refers to oral folk tradition or living cultural customs beyond literature. Shamans in north China and sorcerers in south China often used headwear (mystical hats) or earrings to serve as specific signs. For example, Bimo, the sorcerer in the Yi culture, usually wears earrings. Eliade in the book Shamanism stated there is a key procedure that narrates details of the initiation rites of shamans in Siberia, namely that a blacksmith-shaman will proceed to lead the audial and visual rites of psychic recreation, creating a state of trance or ecstasy in the candidates as a part of their initiation process. He (blacksmith-shaman) changed his eyes; and that is why, when he (the candidate) shamanizes, he does not see with his bodily eyes but with these mystical eyes. He pierced his ears, making him able to understand the language of plants. (Eliade 1964, 42. The words in the brackets are added.)

In shamanism, ear piercings and the act of wearing earrings are often regarded as essential ritual practices. It is still a part of modern shamanic ceremonies. Moreover, in myths of the region pertaining to a journey to the underworld after death, or the way to the land of the dead, the deceased often need to have their ears re-pierced. “Now this operation is distinctive of shamanic initiations” (ibid., 363). Since the shaman is the only leader in the tribe who can traverse through both life and death, his ear piercing and earrings are tokens of his status. Such examples of practices appearing in ongoing culture are helpful in unravelling the mystery of the human spirit. Beyond the aesthetic qualities of jade ornaments, one may seek additional mythological and devotional factors that led to its popularity among ancient peoples. The fourth type of evidence refers to unearthed objects and images: prehistorical jade carvings featuring images of wu and xi or deities wearing protruding earrings as tokens of their special status. For instance, a white-jade human statue created in the later Neolithic Age, currently housed in the Shanghai Museum, highlights a pair of

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Fig. 9.4 A jade carving of a head unearthed from the Shijiahe cultural site in Tianmen city, Hubei Province, wearing column-shaped jade jue. Photographed at the Capital Museum of China

big column-shaped jade jue on the earlobes. Another example of this are the batches of prehistorical jade carving figures excavated in the Shijiahe cultural site in Hubei Province. A figure wearing big earrings was a common element of jade head statues about 4000 years ago (Fig. 9.4). From the Xinglongwa culture 8000 years ago to the Shijiahe Culture 4200 years ago, with cultures including the Zhaobaogou, Hongshan, Xiajiadian Lower falling between them chronologically, all the way to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties 3000 years ago, one can see a clear line of inheritance of jade jue from the prehistorical period to early civilized society, during which the ring-shaped jade jue did not change its shape on the whole. From the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, jade jue became flatter and more compact. Meanwhile, a new type of jade jue with a dragon or cirrus cloud design was derived from plain ear jue. It should be noted that after the West Zhou Dynasty, the status of the jade jue wearer expanded from solely being an item belonging to the prehistorical sorcerer and shaman to being a commonly owned item of the royal nobilities and even to the ordinary wealthy classes. According to statistics provided in the book Zhangjiapo Jades of the Western Zhou Dynasty, jade jue has been excavated from tombs ranking in the first class to the fourth class of the West Zhou Dynasty (general signifiers of the status of tombs). Generally, these jade jue bear a similar shape. The only exception is that jade jue materials used in the fourth class tombs are of lower quality, being made of serpentine and graphite. For example, three pieces of jade jue were unearthed in Tomb M342, one of which was made of serpentine, while another two were graphite. In addition, graphite jade jue was black, one of which was broken in the middle and repaired with two holes drilled at both ends for further use (Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 2007, 85). Assessing such details, one can surmise that despite the popularization of

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jade jue in the West Zhou Dynasty, it was still rare and precious at that time. Once damaged, people still tried to repair it as much as possible. The book Zhouyuan Jade Collection, once exhibited seven jade jue from the West Zhou Dynasty unearthed in Fufeng, Shaanxi Province from 1976 to 1992 (Zhouyuan Museum 2008, 36–38). With a diameter of three to four centimetres, these seven jade jue are nearly the same as those of the Xinglongwa culture. Yet compared with the 1–1.8 cm thickness of jade jue from the Xinglongwa culture, these seven jade jue experienced a great reduction in thickness to only 0.2–0.3 cm. Since the thinner jade ear jue weigh considerably less, the wearer would not be required to pierce larger earholes.

9.3 Mythological Functions of “Jade Representing Eyes” Jing (精) represented the essence of life force (qi) in the mythological understanding of the human body of ancient China. In later generations, jing was further divided into yin and yang, and the Trinitarian belief of jing, qi and shen (精, 气, 神; essence, qi and spirit) was then derived. Might a similar concept have been conceived by the Xinglongwa culture? Here is a living example. In 2001, a girl’s skull was discovered in the M4 residential tomb at F10 of the Xinglonggou site, with a jade jue embedded in her right eye, which was interpreted as being symbolic of “jade representing eyes”. Similar phenomena were found on the clay figure of the goddess (Fig. 9.5) of the Hongshan culture and the bronze culture of the Baikal region (Guo 2006). Since “jade representing eyes” is never a random phenomenon, it certainly possessed its own mythological motivation. How, then, might one interpret this kind of cultural practice? At present, it may be a feasible research approach to make a cross-cultural comparison from the perspective of human body mythologies. Jade carries the implications of “essence” or “spirit” in life, thanks to its transparent and clear appearance. The Chinese character 精 (jing, essence) has the same pronunciation and certain meaning with another Chinese character 睛 (jing, eye). This is never Fig. 9.5 A clay figurine of goddess of the Hongshan culture, dating back to 5500 years ago, unearthed at the Niuheliang Goddess Temple, using grey jade as inlaid eyes. Photographed at the Liaoning Provincial Museum in 2007

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a coincidence, since people’s audio and visual perceptions of the world are also the result of the interaction between their vital essence and the outside world. Therefore, the light entering the eyes makes up people’s eyesight. Without certain overarching sacred ideas, the peculiar behavior of putting Xinglongwa jade jue into the right eye of the human skull would not occur at all. But why was it done? The answer may be that jade was understood to represent the eyes or one’s vital essence. In Sumer and Akkad over 4000 years ago, precious stone beads with holes were known as “eyestones” (Dalley 1989, 160) and had divine power. Buddhist mythology believes in the notion of “sky eye”, arguing that the sky eye can penetrate the six realms of existence, far or near, high or low, front or back, inside or outside, and the future. Tibetan Buddhism worships a similar musical instrument called “sky bead” (sky eye), believing that the eyeball-like circle on jade possesses boundless supernatural powers. There are plenty of examples about the interchangeability of 睛 and 精 in ancient books. For example, it is written in Xunzi: Undoing Fixation that “A blind man (tilting his head back) and looking up will not see the stars; so men do not have him determine whether there are stars or not. The essential vigour of his eyes is impaired” (Knoblock 1999, 697). Here, the essential vigour indicates the function of the eyes. Chinese idioms like 目乱精迷 (mu luan jing mi) also written as 目乱睛迷 are used to mean being in a dazzled and confused state. Homophones like Chinese character 精 and 睛 carry similar associations in terms of the brightness of eye and the shininess of jade. Both of them can express the concept of “essence”. According to circumstantial evidence provided by ethnology, since jade is considered to be a token of the deities, it deserves to act as an incarnation of the gods. For instance, the “eyestone” was typical in Sumer. As for the Mongol culture, pearls and jade were often used to represent the eyes of gods. In Japanese mythology, when the first ancestor Izanagi held the cleansing rite, he begot Amaterasu (the sun goddess) from the washing of his left eye and Tsukuyomi (the moon god) from the washing of his right eye. Izanagi’s eyes represent the most sacred source of life, which can incarnate Amaterasu and Tsukuyomi, the two most honoured gods in heaven, who respectively govern the plain of high heaven and the state of night in response to ancestral god’s orders. In addition, there was a god named Susanoo, the tempest or storm god, who was incarnated from Izanagi’s nose and sent to govern the ocean. These three gods were known as “three noble gods”. Meanwhile, the token of their divine dominion over the plain of the high heaven was an iconic jade, gifted from the ancestral god himself (see Sect. 7.4). It can be seen from the Japanese mythological narration that jades embodies divinity. It originally belonged to deities and possessed a proper name like them. Although the book Kojiki can be traced back to the beginning of eighth century, it reflects a much more ancient jade myth. If one is to say that eyes and ears are essential organs in East Asian human body mythology, and that jade bearing the meaning of “vital essence” is a sacred object to communicate with gods, then “jade decorating ears” and “jade representing eyes” may also convey the implication that eyes and ears can communicate with the gods. The motivation behind the behaviours governing the wearing of jade earrings and eye ornaments leads to two conclusions: one is that jade was representative of essence and the gods; another is the ancient peoples of

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East Asia understood eyes and ears were organs to communicate with deities. Both of these conclusions are indispensable in understanding prehistory. Viewing jade as a material carrier or a materialized token, the mysterious conceptions of “essence, qi, and spirit” can be understood as specific and practical considerations embodied in material object instead of as abstract and unpredictable concepts. In East Asia, primitive peoples’ special worship for jade can, therefore, be deemed to be a long-standing and consistent cultural attitude, spanning from the unfading big tradition and existing into the small culture. It is assumed that the “jade representing eyes” found in the human skull unearthed in the Xinglongwa cultural site may have other explanations. If the tomb owner suffered eye disease and lost one of his eyes, the jade jue was potentially put in the eye socket to replace the bereft eye. However, it is not easy to verify such a hypothesis. Referring to cross-cultural materials may be helpful. An Irish legend goes that the Queen Meredo turned Kardhan’s children into witches and blinded their left eyes. Legends in island countries of the North Europe all narrate that witches were always blind in their left eyes. Since blindness is regarded as a symbol or a sign for the power of foresight, priests and immortals were all blind (Chevalier and Gheerbrant 1994, 1145). The blinding of the naked eye can allow its owner to achieve the sky eye or divine eye, able to see beyond the physical realm. Such evidence may be related the symbolic significance of “jade representing eyes”. The sky eye is one of the five eyes mentioned in Buddhism. It has another name—“eye with natural beauty” and has the ability see through the six realms of existence, the past, and the future. In ancient times, the peoples of India used to choose “eye agates” as an amulet to defend against the magic power of the “evil eye” (Kunz 1915, 314–315). This may carry similar principles and conceptions to other ancient beliefs. Now that it is known that the sun and moon were already regarded as eyes of the sky in prehistorical legendary age, eyes, the only shining organ of the human body that reflect light, might also have been represented by reflective jades. The implications of this association, that the eye was a vessel through which light could be directed much as jade could guide the divine light into the mortal world, are not difficult to make in light of this abundance of cultural evidence. Among the burial practices of the Neolithic Age, there were also other reasons for decorating eyes with other special materials. The book Inside the Neolithic Mind describes several living examples. For instance, at the ruins of Jericho and Besamun in the Near East, bitumen was used to sketch eyes, and seashells were found inlaid in the eye sockets of human skulls. The motivation behind such burials was to emphasize the role of vision in the state of death (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2005, 76). By making such a comparison, one can surmise that “jade representing eyes” as it emerges in the Xinglongwa and Hongshan cultures was by no means an isolated practice in East Asia. A clay figurine of a goddess of the Hongshan culture, unearthed in the Niuheliang Goddess Temple, uses grey jade as inlaid eyes. Referring again to the origin of Amaterasu, who came from the washing of Izanami’s eyes, one can see that jade and other artificial jades not only represent divinity, but also play a role in bestowing life force. Here, the conception of jade as vital essence and as the eyes storing that essence are, again, manifested simultaneously.

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The way in which humans have perceived the importance of eyes has changed drastically over the millennia. From mythological conceptions in which “seashells represent eyes” or “jade represents eyes” to our new understandings of the optical nerve systems that enable eyes to work, the key meaning and symbolism of the eyes remains unchanged—they are the enablers of vision of all kinds. “Inanna in the Underworld”, the oldest written Sumer-Akkadian story in the world, narrates that eyes and certain precious stones (lazurite) are able to control life and death. Inanna was the greatest queen in Sumerian myth. To ease her journey to the netherworld, she prepared seven sacred objects, including a lapis lazuli sceptre to be held in her hand, a small lapis lazuli block worn along her neck, and a glittering precious stone on her chest. Unfortunately, all these artifacts were taken one by one when passing through the seven gates of the netherworld. Here the precious stone obviously functions as the “gate pass card” in the transitional journey from life to death. Similarly, other legendary works of the Sumerians prove that the lapis lazuli and metal are tokens of Enlil, the Storm Lord. Ereshkigal, the queen of the Great Earth, lived in the lapis lazuli palace of the netherworld (Kramer 1961, 41). For goddesses in heaven or in the netherworld, lapis lazuli was a symbol of divine providence, heaven’s mandate and also their own holy status. Similar to the records in The Discourses of the States, which mentions that sacrificial jade objects and silk fabrics can connect the physical world with the spiritual, analogies about “above” and “below” were frequently cited in Sumerian literature too. From the “great above” she set her mind toward the “great below,” The goddess, from the “great above” she set her mind toward the “great below,” Inanna, from the “great above” she set her mind toward the “great below.” My lady abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, To the nether world she descended, Inanna abandoned heaven, abandoned earth, To the nether world she descended, Abandoned lordship, abandoned ladyship, To the nether world she descended. (Ibid., 88)

Inanna was put to death in the netherworld ruled by her sister Ereshkigal, where the seven judges fastened the eyes of death upon her (ibid., 92). She arose through the sprinkling of the water of life upon her corpse. In this legend, certain precious stones, as well as eyes, have the power to help achieve a transition between life and death. All these narrative motifs are rooted in common belief, resulting from the interaction between the mythological view of jade and the mythological conceptualization of vision. As is narrated in the book The Magic of Jewels and Charms: The Egyptians believed that the different kinds of precious stones were endowed with certain special talismanic properties, and these stones were combined in their necklaces in a way supposed to afford protection from all manner of malign influences. The beads were of various forms, sometimes round or oval, and at others, rectangular or oblong; besides the stones in general use, such as the emerald, carnelian, agate, lapis lazuli, amethyst, beryl, jasper and garnet, beads of gold, silver, glass, faience, and even of clay and straw, were employed. To complete the efficacy of the necklace, small images of the gods and of the

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sacred animals were added as pendants. Even on the mummies and mummy cases such ornaments are painted in imitation of necklaces or collars of precious stones, with flowers, etc., as pendants. (Kunz 1915, 316-317)

Compared with the ancient civilizations of West Asia and North Africa, did jade pendants unearthed in East Asia carry similar purposes—to pray for blessings or ward off evils? The answer is definitely yes. In this case, jade jue should not only be categorized as ornaments like earrings or eardrops, with all the modern connotations of aesthetic usage that these descriptors carry, but also as archetypal ritual jades. Such a transformation in the way one views such objects will lead to profound changes in the study of the origins of rituals and music culture in ancient China—from the ancient ritual books and classics to ritual instruments. Therefore, the research paradigm used to explore the origins of Chinese civilization should be steeped in the advances of the quadruple evidence method, since through it one can conduct integrated research, from textual analysis in the small tradition to cultural reconstruction in the big tradition, to achieve a greater picture of the whole. Comparative mythology can play a role as a catalyst in the combination of empirical research in archaeology and elucidatory research in the humanities.

9.4 Snake-Jue-Er: Myths of the Unity of Heaven and Man and the Roots of Chinese Identity (1)

The New-Found Snake-shaped Jade Earring of the Hongshan Culture

On March 22, 2012, an article entitled “A Rare Snake-shaped Earring Discovered at Tianjiagou” was published on Xinhuanet which earned wide attention from the global media. It was reported that, according to archaeological experts, a snakeshaped earring and other objects were unearthed from the tombs at the Hongshan cultural site at Tianjiagou in Liaoning Province, which further proved the relation between the Hongshan culture and the culture of the “Yellow Emperor”. Wang Laizhu, the leader of the excavation project, said that five pieces of fine jade were found in the No. 4 tomb at Tianjiagou, among which a snake-shaped earing was discovered for the first time. It was worn on the right ear of the tomb owner. According to the news, this earring is about the size of an adult’s index finger and middle finger together. With its greyish white color and smooth body, one can clearly see the head and eyes of the snake. Obviously, the bottom is a little rougher than the head. The picture of the earring (Fig. 9.6) was also published in the article, enabling modern people to observe the kind of zodiac-shaped funerary jade objects by our ancestors over 5000 years ago. For Chinese researchers in literary anthropology, the unveiling of such prehistorical snake-shaped jade earring can serve as an important fourth type of evidence. Its jade texture and zodiac markings reveal ample mythological and historical information, shedding light on the difficult question of what was meant by “Emperor Qi in

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Fig. 9.6 A snake-shaped earring discovered at Tianjiagou (photo by Xinhua News Agency)

the Xia Dynasty hangs snakes on his ears” mentioned in inherited literature. Another known snake-shaped jade of the Hongshan culture is called the “three-hole jade with double snake heads” and is exhibited at the Tianjin Municipality Art Museum. It is similar to the three-hole jade with double animal heads unearthed in No.2 tomb at Locality 16 of Niuheliang, but with snake heads instead. Yuan Wei believed that such three-hole jades were an instrument to communicate with deities, positing that they were placed on the sorcerer’s index finger, middle finger and the fourth finger (Yuan 2005, 355). This author holds that such three-hole jades with double snake heads are an imitation of the rainbow-shaped bridge that was believed to connect heaven and earth. As for their cultural function, the hypothesis that they were a sorcerer’s instrument is feasible. (2)

Unravelling the “Ershe” Mystery in The Classic of Mountains and Seas

There are altogether nine records of the myth of 珥蛇 (ershe, hanging snakes on the ear) in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, of which seven records mention “hanging two green snakes”, while the rest mention “hanging two yellow snakes”. Seven leading characters are described as hanging snakes on their ears, including Emperor Qi in the Xia Dynasty, the giant Kuafu (夸父), Butinghuyu (不廷胡余, the god with human face), Yanzi (弇兹,. the god with human face and bird body who hangs two green snakes on his ears), Yuqiang (禺强. the god with human face and bird body), Yuguo (禺虢, the god of the East Sea with human face and bird body), and Shebishi (奢比尸, the god of big ears with a human face and an animal body). In addition, Yuqiang and Shebishi are both described twice as wearing them, thus constituting all the nine myths. None of these seven leading characters were ordinary persons, since five of them were deities, while the last two were, respectively, an emperor and a giant. As narrated in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, ershe was a sacred archaic symbol that indicated supernatural divinity or the ability to communicate with the

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deities. If one just considers jade earrings as aesthetic decorations, one may overlook the sacred ceremonial context of the “hanging snakes on the ear”. In the minds of the ancient Chinese peoples, human beings existed between heaven and earth. Due to natural limitations, they could not fly freely into the sky like birds. However, dragons and snakes were imagined to possess the extraordinary power to ascend to heaven and dive into deep water. Similar to the behavior of treading snakes underfoot, holding snakes (see citation below) or riding dragons, “hanging snakes on ears” is symbolic of the intent or ability to fly back and forth between heaven and earth. Therefore, those who hang snakes on their ears often possessed the ability to tread snakes underfoot or ride dragons. Meanwhile, there are gods with a “human face and bird body”, instead of merely being common people. Having a “bird body” and “hanging snakes on one’s ears” carry corresponding symbolic meanings—the ability to traverse heaven and earth. “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: the North” tells the reader about Yuqiang: “In the middle of an island in North Sea there is a human face and a bird’s body. He hangs two green snakes on his ears and threads two red snakes underfoot”(Wang and Zhao 2010, 303–305). “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: the East” also describes the appearance of Yuguo: “On one of islands in the East Sea there is a god called Yuhao, who has a human face and a bird’s body. He hangs two yellow snakes on his ears and threads two yellow snakes underfoot” (ibid., 273). As is narrated in “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: the North”, “There is a man called Kuafu who has two yellow snakes hung from his ears and hold two yellow snakes in his hands” (ibid., 305). Neither a god nor an emperor, Kuafu is the only giant who can hang snakes on his ears and compete with the sun. Obviously, it is implied that he possesses the magical power to fly up to heaven. The above examples of hanging snakes on ears in The Classic of Mountains and Seas serve to help one interpret the cultural implications of the rare jade snake earrings recently unearthed in the Hongshan cultural site, and to provide valuable references for mythological analyses. These material relics can thus effectively have their cultural functions better understood. As a result of the cultural implications of the snake earrings, it is likely that a tomb owner who wears a jade snake earring on their right ear was a divine member of the clergy, such as a sorcerer or shaman. Their social status was no doubt a high one. Jade earrings are not only aesthetic decorations, but symbols of the wearer’s supernatural powers and social status. There are several pieces of evidence that support such a claim. Firstly, the inherited literature (the first type of evidence) The Classic of Mountains and Seas mentions the wu in Wuxianguo (巫咸国, Wuxian State) holding snakes in both hands (ibid., 225). Secondly, folklore can serve as the third type of evidence here. The Bimo (the shaman) in the Yi culture has the habit of wearing an earring on a single ear. Many indigenous sorcerers are characterized by their ear piercings or big earrings. Thirdly, one can look to the prehistorical sorcerer images that constitute the fourth type of evidence. The jade figurines unearthed from the Lingjiatan culture, made about 5000 years ago, all have clear earholes to indicate their status. Furthermore, the jade carved statue of a wizard’s head unearthed in a Shijiahe cultural site (dating back about 4000 years ago) in Tianmen, Hubei features

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big earrings on its earlobes. Archaeologists often define these figures with striking earrings as gods or shamans. Outside of China, there have also been found prehistorical god statues with prominent earrings. For example, a pottery mask was unearthed, belonging to the Karanovo VI culture (5000 BC), in Bulgaria. With a golden royal crown, the mask features five gold earrings on each ear. In addition, a similar ceramic mask (4500 BC) also features a large exaggerated helix, with six piercings on the right ear and five on the left (Gimbutas 1989, 206). A goddess statue made of gold pieces also belonging to the Karanovo VI culture displays a female’s private parts and eight ear piercings by means of row drilling, indicating the symbolic significance of earrings for the life goddess (ibid., 199). In the north of Poland, an anthropoid pottery urn (sixth century BC) was excavated that features two earrings on the left ear and three earrings on the right. On its body was also portrayed the image of a bird claw (ibid., 249). The shape of this prehistorical anthropoid urn indicates that the symbolism of the “bird body” and “hanging snakes on ears” emerged simultaneously. (3)

Green and Yellow: Colors related to Ershe Recorded in The Classic of Mountains and Seas

In mythology and traditional Chinese medicine, the head is considered to be the highest part of the human body, and as such acquired unique appellations as discussed in Chap. 9. Ancient folk beliefs regard ears as “heavenly pillars”, thus supporting the notion that wearing jade ornaments on the ear facilitated the connection between the human body’s micro-cosmos and the macro-cosmos. In terms of mythological analogy, jade was identified with heaven because of the similarity in color between jade and the sky (and thus heaven). Blue sky hangs over the yellow land. Green jade and yellow jade as symbols of the essence of heaven and earth became the preferred motifs in East Asian prehistorical jade production. The jade snake-shaped earrings unearthed in Tianjiagou are the color of “chicken bone white”, a coloration that results from calcification that occurs over thousands of years of being buried (generally over 2000–3000 years) in alkaline soil. What, then, was its original color? For professionals familiar with the jades in the Hongshan culture, this is not a difficult question to answer, since the raw material used to create jades in the Hongshan culture was local jade, with bluish green and yellow being the main colors. Based on the Hongshan jades collected from 12 museums in Chifeng in 2004 recorded in the book Hongshan Jades, edited by Yu Jianshe, one compared 25 jade jue (coloured photographs) from the Xinglongwa culture to Hongshan culture (Yu 2004, 45–54). Of these, 23 are bluish green or yellow. Why were green and yellow so preferred in jade jue production? Can this evidence aid in understanding the precise and vivid records of colors concerning snake-hanging in The Classic of Mountains and Seas? The colors of the snakes mentioned in The Classic of Mountains and Seas reflect prehistorical jade production before the spread of Hetian jade into the prehistoric civilizations of the Central Plain. As for jade production, which relied on the northern local jade, green and yellow colors were primarily used, and shared features with those jades used in the western part of Liaoning Province. This coincides with the two colors mentioned in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, and considering

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the text alongside this archaeological evidence may be regarded as a combination of the first and fourth types of evidence, so that one may pay high attention to the nature of The Classic of Mountains and Seas, specifically when asking: In what sense does this text deserve to be considered a literary or mythological book derived from the small tradition of writing? And in what sense can it become a historical or cultural treasure belonging to the prehistoric ritual tradition? A new concept called “mythistory”, recently advocated by literary anthropologists, can allow for more complete explanations and definitions. Importantly, these developments have allowed academics to seek the history buried in mythology. Tao Yuanming, in a poem written by him, mentions glancing over the Biography of King Mu and browsing pictures in The Classic of Mountains and Seas. This reveals that the version of the latter book as it existed in the Eastern Jin Dynasty contained pictures. Although the existing version is also accompanied with pictures, the original pictures that would have been portrayed in pre-Qin to Eastern Jin copies of the work are long lost. Today, what people can see are mostly illustrations added in the Ming and Qing Dynasties, which likely differ greatly from the ancient mythic images that preceded them. Therefore, excavated relics, especially those animal-shaped ancient and prehistorical relics, are precious resources when investigating and reconstructing the original content of The Classic of Mountains and Seas. (4)

The Fourth Type of Evidence for the Origin and Development of ershe Culture

The previously mentioned jade snake-shaped earring of the Hongshan culture was buried underground for almost 5000 years before being finally unearthed, and its rediscovery brought a significant degree of enlightenment to the study of prehistorical belief and mythological conception of jade culture in ancient China. Why did these ancient peoples have such odd practices as hanging snakes on their ears? Maybe the dragon and snake myths can give an answer. It is said that dragons and snakes belong to one family. The snake is a real creature, while the dragon is a mythical animal and can never be encountered. From their appearances, it may be recognized that the dragon’s body looks like a snake. The main difference between them lies in their heads: the archetype of the dragon’s body is a snake’s, but the dragon’s head may be derived from the head of a beast. As for the clay animal head discovered in the Goddess Temple of the Hongshan cultural site in Niuheliang, there are two speculations: one is that it is a bear’s head, and another is that it is a dragon’s head. Evidence for it being the former seems to be more plausible, since real bear skulls and clay bear claws have also been found in the temple (Ye 2007a). The name “jade pig-dragon” has also been corrected to “jade bear-dragon” by Guo Dashun, the discoverer of the artefact. When referring to the broader archaeological background of prehistorical Eurasia, one finds that both the snake and bear were the main symbols for belief in goddesses in the Neolithic Age. Meanwhile, snake goddesses and bear goddesses have been discussed respectively in Chaps. 14 and 15 of the book The Language of the Goddess, by Gimbutas. A common feature of both creatures is periodic hibernation, which is associated with the resurrection of supernatural power. Gimbutas’ book also provides images of the prehistorical art that represent the earliest snakelike images. The antler carving patterns of the Paleolithic Age, created 14,000 years ago

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in the European Lortet (Gimbutas 1989, 122) (twice the age of the jade earrings of the Hongshan culture), reveal the extent and richness of historic information contained in animalistic imagery of the big tradition. The following picture depicts a straight snake with its mouth open and its body carved with birds and plant foliage. Gimbutas believed that such a combination of images indicates that this instrument was used in the spring rituals to celebrate the new life of all living things. With the knowledge that the snake myth existed for at least 10,000 years, and through further analysis of East Asia’s ershe mythology as well as the shapes of cultural relics, one can roughly arrange the evolution of the ershe culture according to the fourth type of evidence—images of unearthed jade jue, dragon-snake-shaped earrings and ear ornaments. The Longshan culture in the north and the Shijiahe culture in the south, both of which existed later than the Hongshan culture, both had the custom of wearing dragon-snake-shaped earrings. The image of a god wearing earrings, with a human face and a snake body, was engraved on a jade gui of the Longshan culture, and is currently housed in the Taipei Palace Museum. Meanwhile, a dragon-snake-shaped jade jue of the Shijiahe culture, unearthed in the ridges of the Xiao’s House (Jingzhou Museum 2008, 96) further evidences the notion that the spread of ershe custom from the north to the south was no accident. Among the unearthed jades of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, dragon and snake patterns have emerged frequently. Dragon patterns on jade ornaments evolved into various common forms, such as “single dragon curling”, “double dragon heads with one body” (Fig. 9.7), and the “dragon’s body and the fish’s tail”. At the same time, the custom of creating and wearing gold ear ornaments (mainly as earrings), inherited Fig. 9.7 A Jade jue with double dragon-head pattern unearthed from the royal tomb of Guo State, Sanmenxia. Photographed at the Guo State Museum in 2011

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largely from the northern grassland cultures, gradually spread to the Central Plain. Such gold ornaments blended with the local jade earrings and developed into new gold-jade earrings, which finally replaced the ancient jade jue tradition and rendered ershe customs a mystery for future generations. (5)

Unity of Heaven and Man: Ershe and Origins of Jade Culture

The emergence of jade snake-shaped earrings was a ground-breaking development for the analysis of the mythological significance of the origin of jade jue. It also provides valuable evidence for researchers studying the mythological foundations of the cultural origins of jade jue in all of East Asia. The reason is very clear, since jade jue is known as the earliest form of the jade production in East Asia. It began in the Xinglongwa culture (8000 years ago), and shortly after the jade tradition of the Hongshan culture was also initiated. During the Xinglongwa cultural period, jade jue was considered to be the main jades, and no snake-shaped jade jue have been found dating back to this period. The mythological beliefs behind penannular jade jue remains a mystery yet to be resolved. The new evidence of the Hongshan culture indicates that jade jue is the original form of ershe, a simplification of the curved snake. If so, the beginning of the ershe custom recorded in The Classic of Mountains and Seas can be traced back to the Xinglongwa culture instead of Hongshan Culture (5000 or 6000 years ago). Background analysis of the dragon and snake myths indicates that just like the unearthed jade huang with their double dragon-head pattern, belonging to the Hongshan culture, the jade snake-shaped earrings of the Hongshan culture convey the mythological belief of communication between heaven and man and between deities and man by means of image narrative. This strongly evidences the existence of the mythological belief in the unity of heaven and man in the big tradition of the prehistoric period. Meanwhile, it helps to explain how these two forms of early jades (jue and huang), together with dragon and snake imagery, evolved into symbols of Chinese identity.

Chapter 10

Jade Myths and Chinese Identity

Chinese civilization, as the only surviving ancient civilization in the world, has thrived without interruption over thousands of years from the Stone Age (3 million4000 BC) to the present day. Although it has gone through political and military hardships, vicissitudes such as splits and integrations, and changes of dynasty, it has proven extremely tenacious in uniting a large population of many different ethnicities within one broad administrative system over the vast land of the East Asia. What is the secret of its everlasting cultural vitality? The long-established cultural centre, namely the cultural identity shared by multiple parties, should be a major factor. Nowadays, academia tends to follow the focal trend in cultural studies and call it “Chinese identity”. The academic perspective this term brings allows one to explore the principles in the formation and continuation of Chinese civilization. What is cultural identity? Selim Abou proposed: Cultural identity fundamentally refers to ethnicity. This characterizes a group whose members claim a common history or origin and a specific cultural heritage, no matter that the history or origin is often mythicized or that the cultural legacy is never totally homogeneous. The essential thing is that these common elements are lived by the concerned group as distinctive characteristics and perceived as such by others. (Abou 1977, 3)

Although he did not take many aspects, such as philology, politics, economy, religion and customs, into consideration, Abou grasped the key factor—some kind of mythicized history or common cultural legacy. When the mythicized cultural legacy is shared by a group of ethnicities, it is necessary to go beyond the boundary of a “single ethnicity” interpretation and instead interpret the ethnicity of cultural identity as a national one. Focusing on the national identity, this chapter, through the conceptual lens of the cultural legacy of jade myths, investigates the formation of Chinese civilization and analyses the centripetal and cohesive forces emerging from multi-cultural prehistory that resulted in a unified civilization in the Central Plain. It also interprets the mysterious structures that helped of the shift within Chinese civilization from “plurality” to “unity”, as well as the context in which this change occurred. © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_10

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10 Jade Myths and Chinese Identity

Max Weber, one of the founders of modern social science, drawing on the “science of the mind” of Wilhelm Dilthey and the “science of culture” of Heinrich Rickert, pointed out that social science could produce a “science of culture”. Unlike natural science, which seeks general rules for things, the basic feature of the science of culture is to seek specific cultural values and cultural phenomena and to interpret the “meaning” behind them, the social reality governed by the values of a given time or society. He believed that historians and social researchers need to be able to distinguish what is irrelevant from what is important, and have the “views” necessary for this distinction, namely they must understand how to connect real events, whether conscious or unconscious, with universal cultural values and then abstract the connections that make sense to us (Weber 1999, 32). The reminder of Weber could be a methodological guide for the academics of today researching the origins of Chinese civilization. Starting with the Chinese jade myths, a cultural phenomenon ignored by mainstream academia for a long time, this chapter probes into the core values that underpinned the formation of Chinese civilization, and explicates their role in building belief systems and conceptual links that drove the formation of a Chinese identity.

10.1 Introduction: From “Golden Bough” to “Jade Leaf” At the end of the nineteenth century, a magnum opus on anthropology was published. Its literary and cultural influences went far beyond the expectations of its author and publisher in the period that followed. Even the best-known poets and novelists of the twentieth century, such as T. S. Eliot, and James Joyce, were influenced considerably by this great work. It was The Golden Bough, written by the anthropologist James George Frazer. Why would he give his book such a literary title? Given that there are no golden branches in reality, what sources did this beautiful mythical association of metal and plant draw from? As mentioned in the first chapter of its first volume in the first edition of The Golden Bough (12 volumes): Within the sanctuary at Nemi grew a certain tree of which no branch might be broken. Only a runaway slave was allowed to break off, if he could, one of its boughs. Success in the attempt entitled him to fight the priest in single combat, and if he slew him he reigned in his stead with the title of King of the Wood (Rex Nemorensis). Tradition averred that the fateful branch was that Golden Bough which, at the Sibyl’s bidding, Aeneas plucked before he essayed the perilous journey to the world of the dead”. (Frazer 1955, 10)

In 1924, Frazer’s wife adapted his Golden Bough into a book of children’s stories titled The Leaves from the Golden Bough, passing on the time-honoured tradition of mythical allusion. In many Western societies, it is custom that a woman who walks under mistletoe branches hopes to receive a kiss. Drawing on this, the preface to Leaves from the Golden Bough begins with the question: when people wander or kiss under the mistletoe trees, how many of them know that these trees are “the gold bough” described by Virgil? (Frazer 1977, 1).

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Questions like this reflect the appetite that had emerged by the twentieth century for tracing the origins of Western culture. The allusion underlying the golden bough comes from the sixth volume of Aeneas, the most famous literary epic of ancient Rome. The myth about the earliest ancestors of the ancient Roman civilization and the golden bough has become a household subject in Western literature, thanks to the great poet Virgil’s literary works. As a mysterious magic treasure, the golden bough does not belong to the secular world, but to the Goddess of the Underworld. The golden bough has the ability to grow by itself after being plucked—the mythical allusion to the regeneration of life is clear. Besides, immortality, a fundamental subject in numerous prehistoric myths (Frazer 1922, 3–21), somewhat fittingly survived as a topic of great interest into the age of civilization in the form of literature. Immortality myths have been combined and associated with metal myths since the Bronze Age. Therefore, gold, as a rare metal that underwent large-scale exploitation with the advent of civilization, came to serve as a symbol for divinity and immortality. What is more, alchemy integrated the pursuit of immortality in prehistorical myths with the desire for gold, evolving into a lasting practical activity. A tree has a set life cycle, turning green in spring and yellow in autumn. However, the golden bough and golden leaf conceived in Roman myths surpass the boundary between life and death and serve as a magic source of light illuminating and leading the way to the Underworld. In The Aeneid the hero Aeneas went into the underworld to visit the spirit of his deceased father and picked off the golden bough under the guidance of the god. But gazing on the giant forest, he is sad within his heart and prays: “If only that golden bough might show itself to us upon some tree in this great wood; for in all things that had to do with you, Misenus, the priestess has foreseen only too truly.” No sooner was this said than from the sky twin doves descended, there, before his eyes, settling along the green grass. And the chief of heroes recognized his mother’s birds and prayed with gladness: “Be my guides if there is any passage, strike across the air to that grove where the rich bough overshadows the fertile ground. And you, my goddess mother, be true to me in my uncertainty.” As he said this, he stayed his steps. He watched for omens, for the way the birds would turn. Then, as they fed, they flew along as far as sight could follow. But when they have reached the jaws of foul Avernus, there they rise and swiftly glide along the liquid air; they settle, twins, on their desired treetop. The gleam of gold was different, flickering across the boughs. As in the winter’s cold, among the woods the mistletoe—no seed of where it grows—is green with new leaves, girding the tapering stems with yellow fruit: just so the gold leaves seemed against the dark-green ilex; so, in the gentle wind, the thin gold leaf was crackling. And at once Aeneas plucks it and, eager, breaks the hesitating bough and carries it into the Sibyl’s house. (Virgil 1961, 137-138)

The word “golden bough” is written as “aureus ramus” in Latin. The key to understanding this allusion is to pay close attention to the connection between gold and divinity in Greek and Roman myths. The following provide some examples. The Aeneid describes the Goddess Diana’s house as “under roofs of gold” (ibid., 159) at the beginning of its sixth volume; Zeus, the king of the gods in ancient Greece, transformed himself into a golden rain shower to meet with the Princess Danaide; The Theogony of Hesiod describes Hera, known as the queen of heaven in Greek religion, as “the goddess in golden shoes”. There are other gods too, like “Hebe in

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the golden crown” and “Phoebe in the golden crown” (Hesiod 1978, 111; 117). Thus, gold was originally a sacred object of the gods. From Virgil’s writing, the external features described of the golden bough, with golden leaves against ilex trees, include not only its visually golden brilliance, but also aural jingles—a description of its tinkling sound. Aeneas, the semi-divine hero of the epic, found the treasure guided by doves, messengers from the goddess. This detail shows that the golden bough was a sacred object rewarded by gods to the human world and was by no means obtained by average mortals acting alone. In addition to its role in the tale of the golden bough, the dove became an incarnation (Gaskell 1988, 229–230) of the sacred spirit in the Christian religion. In The New Testament: Gospel of John (2008, 158), John witnessed and said, “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven as a dove, and it remain on him”. Obviously, here a dove serves as a medium between the divine and man across various myths of the West. Accordingly, analysis of the link between the earliest Roman ancestors and these sacred objects helps to draw out the following narrative trajectory governed by mythological concepts: A king or a hero, as instructed by a mediator (a prophet) who conveys divine will, obtains sacred objects (treasures) symbolizing the divine will in order to accomplish undertakings mortals are usually unable to do. The motif of magic treasures is indispensable in the narrative literature of all cultures, whether it be a Golden Apple, a Golden Fleece, Aladdin’s lamp, a magic gourd with hidden secrets, a Sorcerer’s Stone, a wish-fulfilling tree, a magic ring, etc. Even in medieval times (221 BC-1840) in China, carved jade tablets commonly feature image narratives like “Hu (胡, non-Han peoples living North and Northwest of ancient China) people offering treasures”, entrusting with Hu messengers the task of bringing rare gifts. Magic treasures also appear in myth-narratives about heroes and sage kings in China’s ancient times. But what is strikingly different is that the magic treasures of early China were not made of gold, but jade. The reason for this ties in to the Jade Age (c. 6000–4000 BC), the period that occupied thousands of years in the development of Chinese civilization. Moreover, gold, as a rare material, appeared about 4000–3000 years ago (Li 2007, 26), while jade object production had existed twice as long as gold, that is, some 8000–7000 years ago (Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences & Centre for Chinese Archaeology and Art at the Chinese University of Hong Kong 2007, 232). The section below analyses cases of myth narratives in the small tradition in light of new knowledge about the big tradition. The first one is the myth about the Yellow Emperor sowing “jade flowers” from The Classic of Mountains and Seas, which is regarded as a strong contender for China’s own “jade boughs and jade leaves”. The Danshui River flows out of this mountain and runs to the west before it empties itself into the Jize Marsh. In the river there is a great deal of white jade. Jade grease gushes up from its source and churns around. Emperor Huangdi ate this jade grease and used it as a ritual offering. Jade grease creates dark jade. The jade grease that gushes up is used to irrigate the cinnabar trees. In five years, the cinnabar tree runs into the tree of five bright colors and five fragrant flavors. The Emperor Huangdi took some lustrous jade flowers from Mount Mishan and threw then on the southern slope of Mount Zhongshan. The superb gemstones

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Fig. 10.1 A jade huang with tiger heads unearthed from a Lingjiatan cultural site, dating back to 5300 years ago. Photographed at the Capital Museum of China

are exquisite. They are firm and the veins of color are fine and delicate. They are also thick and glossy, shining brightly with five colors shooting out to couple hardness with softness. The ghosts and spirits of the sky and the earth ate this jade and accept it as a ritual offering. The gentleman wears it to guard against misfortunes. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 43-45)

This myth narrative seems grand and magical, since it directly relates to the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of the Chinese civilization. Therefore, it contains the core values of Chinese civilization. Here the jade the Yellow Emperor sowed shares a mythical association with the “golden bough” in western myths: both are magic treasures. Jade has two functions: one is to be eaten by both deities and spirits from heaven and earth so as to enhance their supernatural power; the other is to be worn by gentlemen in the human world to guard against evil spirits and ill luck. Accordingly, the jades serve as a bridge linking heaven and man, and gods and man. The use of jades in this way in the story is of extraordinary significance, since it definitely traces the origin of jade worship and jade culture of the Chinese nation to the sacred acts of the Yellow Emperor (Fig. 10.1). As a result, jade as a sacred object bringing about “the unity of heaven and man” has become a literary theme favoured by scholars of all times. Guo Pu (276–324) annotated in The Classic of Mountains and Seas by quoting from Jade Tablet of the River Chart (He Tu Yu Ban, 河图玉版), “There is white jade grease in Mount Shaoshishan. Once humans use it, they become an immortal immediately”. In the narration, jade grease is white, reflecting the rarity of white jade. The word “use” can be understood in two ways: to eat or to wear. But here to eat is more proper. The astronomer Zhang Heng (78–139) in the Eastern Han Dynasty (25–220) compares jade grease to glossy ganoderma, the elixir vitae in Chinese medical myths. Tao Yuanming wrote in his poem “Read the Classic of Mountains and Seas IV”: Where in the world grows the scarlet tree? / On the southern slope of Mi Hill you can see. / Its yellow blooms and crimson fruits /Can serve as food and strengthen your life roots./ White jade is formed from the pearly flow / While gems emit a singular glow. / Of their worth I’m not the first to know. / The ancient kings admired them long ago. (Wang 2003, 177, slightly modified).

Tao Yuanming not only extolled the story of “the Yellow Emperor eating jade grease”, but also imagined it as a liquid condensed from white jade, stimulating later imagination in regards to liquid concoctions made from gems. The above works

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noting the Yellow Emperor eating jade each have as their core theme natural objects leading to immortal life. This idea, however, is more indebted to the prehistorical imagination about jade myths than it is to the creative minds of the litterateurs in antiquity. The description “white gems emit a singular glow” reveals its different shining minerals that give rise to the difference in the concepts of myths between Chinese and Western civilization: jade worship and gold worship respectively. The white color here indicates jade, not gold. The Greek and Roman writers were obsessed with brilliant gold (cf. Bernstein 2001) as much as the Chinese writers were with jade, jade grease and jade flowers. It is written in The Classic of Mountains and Seas that sowing jade flowers involved getting jade seeds on Mount Mishan and sowing these seeds on the southern slope of Mount Zhongshan. But the distance between Mount Mishan and Mount Zhongshan is 460 li. How the Yellow Emperor made this journey is still unknown in later generations. In addition, the creation of black jade from white jade grease seems miraculous, and might be associated with the Taiqi diagram of the universe (the circulation is shown by the black and white images). However, jade myths break up limitations within or between a variety of events that cannot possibly have taken place in reality, carving out a legendary world with its distinctive and self-contained style. By observing the elusive appearance of jade myths, it is safe to conclude that jade invariably stands for the gods, mysterious change and immortal life. Together, these connotations are enough to form a core value set for a culture. In the Waring States period, when The Classic of Mountains and Seas was written, gold had entered the Central Plain civilization from the western regions over a millennium prior (Ye 2008b). It is most commonly referenced in resource reports on mountains, rivers and products, where gold is seen as important as jade. 250 li further west is a mountain called Guishan which lies on the western coast and is bare of plants and trees but rich in jade. The Qishui River flows out of this mountain and runs to the west before it empties itself into the sea. In the river there are lots of colorful stones, gold and granular cinnabar. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 33) 170 li further west is a mountain called Shuli. On its top there are rich deposits of gold while at its foot there is a great deal of silver. Its trees are mostly Chinese hackberry trees and oaks while its birds are mostly parrots. The Chushui River flows out of this mountain and runs to the south before it empties itself into the Weishui River where there are lots of many white pearls. (Ibid., 35-37) 200 li to the west is a mountain called Longshou. On its southern slope there are rich deposits of gold while on its northern slope there is a great deal of iron. The Tiaoshui River flows out of this mountain and tuns to the southeast before it empties itself into the Jingshui River where there is a great deal of beautiful jade. (Ibid., 37) 250 li further west is a mountain called Zhongshou. On its top there is a great deal of tufu jade while at its foot there are lots of sandalwood trees, paper mulberry trees and rich deposits of gold. Its animals are mostly rhinoceros and female rhinoceros. (Ibid., 39)

In these reports equating gold with jade, gold, silver, copper and iron are all included, and their economic value in contemporaneous society is self-evident. None of them, however, could be compared to jade which appears as a magic treasure in the narratives about the earliest ancestor of Chinese civilization.

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Fig. 10.2 A jade huang of the Liangzhu culture, dating back to 4800 years ago. Photographed at the Capital Museum of China

Up to this point, this chapter has explored the mythological links and connections between the Western “golden bough” and the Eastern “jade leaf”. One might wish to ask: what about “the tree of life” in people’s mind? Is it like jade, evergreen in color and smooth and gentle to the touch? Or like gold, with shining with dazzling brilliance? It is plain to see that different cultures will give quite different answers. The cultural values embodied in jade myths have been demonstrated through the examples above. The value and significance of jade myths as ingrained in Chinese people’s mind will be increasingly clear when coupled with a great many Chinese idioms such as “preferring broken jade to complete tiles”, implying “it is better to die when life is a disgrace” and “jade objects and silk fabrics turn hostility into friendship” (Fig. 10.2).

10.2 Jade Treasures: A Mythological History of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties The second case study of jade myths is a mythistorical account about Yu the Great from The Book of Documents and The Records of the Historian. Yu the Great is the first hero credited with controlling the floods that inundated the Central Plain, and with founding the Xia Dynasty. Prior to Yu’s times, rulers in the eras of Yao and Shun had inherited the jade worship tradition from the Yellow Emperor. The records that refer to “calling in five jade-symbols of rank” and “finally returning their symbols to the various princes” reveal that ritual jades were symbols of state power (Ye 2012c). From Yao and Shun, to the rulers of the Xia Dynasty, every known emperor worshiped jade and took jade to be a sacred object or treasure. It is safe to say that for rulers in the Xia Dynasty, jade was a powerful symbol of royal honour and justice according to inherited literature. Yu presented the dark-coloured symbol of his rank, announced the completion of his work. (The Book of Documents: The Tribute of Yu) (Legge 2013, 13).) After this, the emperor (shun) bestowed on Yu a black-jade tablet, announcing to the world his successful accomplishments. (The Records of the Historian: Annals of Xia) (Sima, 1994, 32)

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Then King Gao Yang, gave orders to Yu in the Xuan Palace and Yu, holding the imperial jade order in hand, set forth to punish Youmiao. (Mozi: Condemnation of offensive warfare III, 墨子·非攻下) (Wang and Wang 2001, 161)

While it is broadly understood that Yu the Great obtained a magical jade treasure, variations of the myth have arisen over time. For instance, some say Yu was given a jade slip or a jade book by Emperor Fuxi. Although this version appeared slightly late compared to others, it still fits with the narrative archetypes of the heroic myth and epic era. That is, the hero, guided by a mediator who conveys the divine will, wins a sacred object (treasure) signifying the divine will, with which he completes an undertaking that ordinary human beings are incapable of. The mediators guiding Aeneas to the golden bough are the priestess and the dove angels, while guiding Yu to obtain the jade slip is Fuxi, a deity with a serpent’s body. The third case is from the jade myths that tell of “Qi (the son of Yu) of Xia Dynasty going up to heaven after getting jade huang”. Qi, who initiated the precedent of giving the throne to his son, likewise treats ritual jades as a symbol of supreme governance. But the difference is that Yu’s sacred ritual jade is described as jade gui, while Qi’s is jade huang. According to “The Classic of Regions Beyond the Seas: The West”: The wild land of Dale is a place where King Qi of the Xia Dynasty danced a dance called Jiudai. The king drove two dragons forward. Above him were three layers of clouds hanging above like a huge canopy. In his left hand, he grasped a feather screen; in his right hand he held a round jade ring. And a jade half-disc (huang) was hung around his waist. This land is located north of Mount Dayun. Some people say that the king danced in the wild land of Dayi. (Wang and Zhao 2012, 223. The words in the brackets are added.)

Why would a royal ruler be portrayed with a round jade ring held in his right hand and jade huang around his waist? As far as the big tradition of jade culture is concerned, the jade gui developed far later than the jade huang. In other words, by contrast with Yu’s symbol jade gui, Qi’s jade huang has more profound historical roots and its cultural connotation is naturally significant. In 2007, the No. 23 Tomb was discovered and excavated in the Lingjiatan cultural site in Hanshan County, Anhui Province. This discovery traces back to 5300 years ago, and using the evidence archaeologists have done well to paint a picture of its creation: a scene involving a dead tribal leader buried with over 300 jades, including 10 jade bracelets worn on each arm and a great deal of jade huang hung on their body. This scene makes it clear that the jade-wearing description of rulers in the Xia Dynasty in the Classic of Mountains and Seas is apparently based on far-reaching historical facts, and is by no means a mythical or literary fantasy. The tradition of leaders wearing jade as it appears 4000 years ago was inherited from the prehistorical jade-wearing customs of tribal leaders from 5000–6000 years ago. Compared with hundreds of jades unearthed in high-ranking tombs of the Liangzhu culture and Lingjiatan culture, the fact that Yu and Qi in the Xia Dynasty had only one or two jade objects as symbols, as is stated in inherited literature, seems to be indicative of a decline of jade culture from a prehistorical peak. The reason for this decline is that new sacred metals (bronzes) had gradually become prevalent,

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accompanied by the rise of state power. Accordingly, the jade-dominated big tradition inevitably shifted to the small tradition of valuing both precious metals and jade (Fig. 10.3). The mythological view behind the custom of ruler’s wearing jade relates to the professional needs of a wu king or priest king who was able to communicate with deities and heaven. Discussing the event of “Qi riding a dragon up to heaven”, different writers share their opinions in annotating The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Guo Pu explained that “According to Return to the Storehouse (Gui Cang, 归 藏, a divination book only preserved in fragments), ‘Qi of the Xia Dynasty practiced divination: to ride a dragon flying to heaven, which is an auspicious sign’. The next day Qi became a god”. Hao Yixing (1757–1825), a famous scholar in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), cited the Imperial Overview from the Taiping Reign (Tai Ping Yu Lan, 太平御览), an encyclopaedia from the Taiping reign, which quotes The Records of the Historian in its 82 volume that “Qi practiced divination to ascend to heaven. And then he had it explained by Gaoyao, a virtuous court official born at the age of Yao in the legend. The latter replied, ‘The divination is propitious so it must make sense that you could communicate with gods and would be an emperor to rule the country’”. The above records show that Qi had extraordinary power to ride a dragon to heaven. The third part also adds that Qi did this for the sake of communicating with deities. The narration about Qi’s ascent to heaven in The Classic of Mountains and Seas not only states that Qi rode a dragon, but also highlights in particular the mysterious function of ritual jades in this event: he held a round jade ring in his right hand and wore a jade huang around his waist. Here the narrative brings about the mythical significance of the birth of something, that is, the origin of ritual music and dance and their master Qi who could ride two dragons. Besides, jade rings and jade huang are a medium linking man and heaven, a role similar to a dragon’s in myth. Qi, meanwhile, who hanged two green snakes on his ears and rode two green dragons, went to heaven three times for the purpose of obtaining the “nine songs” and the “nine arguments” (Yuan 1980: 414). Ritual music and dance in the human world is said to have been acquired from heaven by Qi. According to The Bamboo Annals (Zhu Shu Ji Nian, 竹书纪年) (Fang and Wang 2005, 213), Qi held a ritual event in a special altar decorated with jade, “The Emperor Fig. 10.3 A jade huang of the Daxi culture, dating back to 6000 years ago. Photographed at the Chongqing China Three Gorges Museum in 2010

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Qi took the throne in Xiayi (夏邑, China’s ancient capital, in present-day Henan Province) in a guihai (癸亥) year, and treated feudal princes on Xuantai (璿台, the Altar for Son of Heaven)”. 璿台 is also written as 璇台 or 琁台. The denotation of 璿 or 璇 is jade. In the Xia Dynasty, therefore, the emperors’ ability to fly to heaven to communicate with the gods was clearly linked with the mysterious jades they held. Xuantai (jade altar) was originally the name of an altar for emperors in the Xia Dynasty. Emperors after the Shang and Zhou Dynasties inherited this tradition to a degree. Huangfu Mi (215–282), a scholar and historian in the Jin Dynasty (265– 420), in his Genealogical Annals of Emperors and Kings (Di Wang Shi Ji, 帝王 世纪) mentioned that “ (King Wu, 1085–1041 BC) ordered Duke Yuan to release prisoners who were ordinary people, and then return the pearl and jade to Xuantai”. The records about Xuantai are absent in literature about periods after Qi’s reign. Thereby the common mystical motifs like jade altars, jade huang, and jade rings in historical narratives about Qi of the Xia Dynasty, or like the motif of dragon-riding, must all mean that these mythological beliefs existed earlier than the Shang Dynasty. In other words, the motifs about sacred dragons and jade can be understood in the light of mythological views of the prehistoric big tradition. The fourth case study of jade myths takes a narrative about King Zhou, the last emperor of the Shang Dynasty, burning himself with jade. It is written in The Remaining Zhou Documents: King Zhou of the Shang Dynasty was defeated in the suburbs. At sunset on the New Year’s Eve (lunar calendar), King Zhou wore pieces of the Jade of Heavenly Wisdom (天智玉) around his body, then burned himself. People told King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty that 4,000 pieces of jade were burnt. Five days later, King Wu ordered thousands of people to look for them, only to find that the Jade of Heavenly Wisdom was intact but the other pieces were burnt in the fire. (Huang 2006, 203)

For the Zhou emperors who replaced the Shang emperors to govern the Central Plain, all the gems left over by the previous ruler could be seen as valid physical evidence of the transfer of the mandate of heaven and power. Therefore, it was necessary to collect them. After the narration of the self-immolation of King Zhou, The Remaining Zhou Documents narrates the story of how the incoming emperor of the Zhou Dynasty inherited the jades of his predecessor, that is, “A total of 100 million pieces of old jades from the Shang Dynasty were captured by King Wu, among which, the Jade of Heavenly Wisdom was regarded as a prominent treasure”. The staggering quantity of jade perplexed later generations, generating various explanations. Huang Huaixin, a modern historian, after reading different quotations and annotations, argued that because of some omissions a new and more accurate version of the story should go like this: “The Jade of Heavenly Wisdom captured was treated as treasure by King Wu. What’s more, he captured 14,000 pieces of fine jade and 180,000 jade pendants in total from the Shang Dynasty.” (ibid., 204). Whether it is more history or myth, the narrative from the book at least indicates that an abundance of treasures changed hands. Despite “100 million” being an exaggeration, more recent estimates suggest there were still nearly 200,000 jades (Yang 1992, 238) taken and placed in the royal treasure deposits of the Zhou Dynasty. Before being regarded as symbols of wealth and luxury, jades embodied a higher

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value, it represented divinity and the mandate of heaven. Thinking deeply from a cross-civilizational perspective, one may wonder why the historical records especially highlight the inheritance of a vast number of jades rather than gold, silver or bronze objects during the overthrow of the Shang. King Zhou of Shang himself burned all the jade except the Jade of Heavenly Wisdom. The view that jade stones can be smelted can also be found in the myth that Nüwa, the mythical creator goddess, smelted stones and repaired the sky with these stones. In a sense, the technique of smelting stones, a part of alchemy, developed into an important magic act in later Daoist beliefs and practice. Later, inner alchemy or neigong and outer alchemy or waigong were developed. The former refers to practicing qigong, a system of deep breathing exercises to prolong life and cultivate an immortal spiritual body, while the latter involves the preparation of chemical elixirs, made from cinnabar, realgar, and other substances. Eliade noted that people need to pay attention to the mythological views on smelting metal or alchemy and how they involve or blend material and spiritual aspects (Eliade 1958). In response to Eliade’s call, Yang Rubin (2008) attempted to analyse the archetypal meaning of metal among the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth). Equally, he emphasized the mythological association between alchemy and the immortal belief. The oracle bone inscriptions belonging to the second type of evidence reveal that in the mind of the Shang people, jade myths were not literary illusions, but true narratives that informed their beliefs and rituals. The archaeologist Wang Yuxin (1998) pointed out that in the oracle bone inscriptions, there are characters like 玉 (yu) meaning jade, and 珏 (jue), formed by two characters of 玉 standing side by side. Moreover, the character 弄 (nong) is written as a figure with jade held in their hands, and its corresponding physical evidence includes animal images and decorations unearthed from the Yin Ruins, such as the jade fish, jade birds, jade turtles and jade cicadas. Wang added that the character 宝 (bao) refers to a treasure, deriving from 玉 and 贝 (bei, treasure), again indicating the explicit belief among nobles of the Shang Dynasty that jade was a treasure. In addition, royal lords offered jade as sacrifices to gods. This jade ritual system inherited the prehistoric jade culture and established a traditional ritual system that developed from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the Han Dynasty, laying the foundations of Chinese ritual and music culture (Sun 2008). The fifth case study takes the myth that “Jiang Taigong caught a jade huang while fishing” in the Western Zhou Dynasty. The first volume of the Big tradition of the Book of Documents (Shang Shu Da Zhuan, 尚书大传) mentions that “Reaching Panxi River, King Wen of Zhou (1152–1056 BC) saw Lü Shang (known as Jiang Taigong, 1156–1017 BC) fishing, and then bowed to him. And Lü said, ‘I have caught a jade huang carved with these words ‘Ji Chang (namely King Wen of Zhou) received the mandate of heaven in need of Lü’s assistance to rule the country’. It is divine providence to meet you today.’”. Later, the literary allusion of “jade huang” is used to refer to the event of “Jiang Taigong assisting King Wen to govern the country”. Furthermore, Liu Yuxi (772–842), a writer and philosopher in the Tang Dynasty, wrote in one of his poems, “A metal ding is hung above the gate, and a jade huang is stored at home”. In addition, Sun Zhinwei (1620–1687), a poet in the Qing Dynasty (1644–1912), wrote in a verse, “Jiang Taigong felt happy when he caught

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the jade huang. When it is the right time, he will throw the fishing rod away to serve the interests of the common people”. These examples prove the popularity of this jade huang myth of Jiang Taigong in later literary writings. However, to learn more about the practical functions of the jades in the Zhou Dynasty, one must resort to the records contained in history books. The Book of Documents: The Metal Bound Coffer notes that the Duke of Zhou used ritual jades to worship ancestors and gods, and provides what can be seen as a sketch of the customs practiced then. Two years after the conquest of Shang, the king fell ill, and was quite disconsolate. The two (other great) dukes said, “let us reverently consult the tortoise-shell about the king”; but the duke of Zhou said, “You must not so distress our former kings”. He then took the business on himself, and reared three altars of earth on the same cleared space; and having made another altar on the south of these, and facing the north, he took there his own position. Having put a round symbol of jade (on each of the three altars), and holding in his hands of the lengthened symbol (of his own rank), he addressed the kings Tai, Ji, and Wen. The (grand) historiographer had written on tablets his prayer, which was to this effect: —“A. B., your great descendant, is suffering from a severe and violent disease; — if you three kings have in heaven the charge of (watching over) him, (Heaven’s) great son, let me Dan be a substitute for his person. I was lovingly obedient to my father; I am possessed of many abilities and arts as I, and is not so capable of serving spiritual beings. And moreover he was appointed in the hall of God to extend his aid all over the kingdom, so that he might establish your descendants in this lower earth. The people of the four quarters all stand in reverent awe of him. Oh! do not let that precious Heaven-conferred appointment fall to the ground, and (all the long line of) our former kings will also have one in whom they can ever rest at our sacrifices. I will now seek for your determination (in this matter) from the great tortoise-shell. If you grant me (my request), I will take these symbols and this mace, and return and wait for your orders. If you do not grant it, I will put them by.” The duke then divined with the three tortoise-shells, and all were favourable. He opened with a key the place where the (oracular) responses were kept, and looked at them, and they also were favourable. (Legge 2013, 205–207)

Knowing the divine will behind the jade huang conferred upon him by heaven, Jiang Taigong stayed emotional and mentally detached. The Duke of Zhou, meanwhile, bargained for blessings with the spirits of the ancestors of Zhou by giving abundant ritual jades as bribes. Although this scene, of man communicating with deities (ancestors), occurred 3000 years ago, with new understandings of the function of ancient jades one can clearly understand what is happening and why. The sixth case study focuses on a story of “King Mu of Zhou visiting the Yellow Emperor’s palace and obtaining jade boughs and jade leaves”. It is recorded in the second volume of The Biography of King Mu that “On the lucky day Xinyou (辛酉), the Son of Heaven—King Mu of Zhou—climbed Mount Kunlun to visit the palace of the Yellow Emperor”. Here the Yellow Emperor’s palace is located roughly in the same place that he ate jade grease and sowed jade flowers in the first case quoted from the Classic of Mountains and Seas. Such a location naturally inspires people to conceive of his palace as a richly decorated jade palace. Perhaps this palace is the so-called place where “the deities and spirits of the heaven and earth ate jade and accepted it as a ritual offering”. Moreover, King Mu of Zhou paid a visit to the Yellow Emperor’s palace after traveling thousands of miles. This whole journey is in some senses an allegorical return by the king to prehistorical jade culture. If

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one compares the event in which King Mu offered jade as sacrifices to the River God, with the Duke of Zhou’s use of jades as offerings, one can generally grasp the reverent and respectful attitudes that the kings of Zhou held when they offered jade to gods and ancestors. By analysing the jade myths presented in these solemn sacrificial occasions one can see that they are based in rich and deeply-held beliefs and concepts, instead of being borne of pure literature or storytelling. Returning to King Mu, one must consider, where did he obtain the most valuable jade brilliance (ying, 英) and jade leaves? As is recorded in the second volume of The Biography of King Mu: It is mild and windless in Mount Chongshan, where flowing streams are clear and drunk by birds and beasts. The former emperors called such a place a residence of immortals. Here King Mu obtained jade brilliance.

According to its annotations ying (英, brilliance) is the essence in jade. The Classic of Mountains and Seas explains, “Then the Yellow Emperor took some lustrous jade flowers from Mount Mishan and threw them on the southern slope of Mount Zhongshan. The superb gemstones are exquisite”(Wang and Zhao 2012, 45). Gui Fu (1987, 28) pointed out in the Commentary to the Book of Poetry, the growth of jade will experience three stages—rong (荣, flower), ying (英, brilliance) and hua (华, magnificence). Planted like crops and grown in water, jade flowers, jade brilliance, and jade trees represent the most genuine ideal for farmers. It is common for plants to undergo flourishing and withering cycles every year. When spring approaches the next year, they turn green once more. In Chongshan Mountain, however, jade trees and jade flowers became a symbol of eternal youth. The reason that jade enjoyed a lofty position in the eyes of ancient people is because it had become a symbol of eternal life since the Stone Age. Why and how did jade develop into an elixir of immortality? The healing qualities of jade have been praised for millennia. As implied in Huainanzi, “He is just like the jade produced in Mount Zhong. Although it was put in a charcoal fire for three days and nights in a row, there would be no change in its color and luster, for the purest De contained in it is the essence that exists between Heaven and Earth” (Zhai and Mu 2010, 81). Moreover, in the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen (1518–1593), a famous medical expert, recorded 14 effects of jade in his pharmacological encyclopaedia named the Guidelines and Details of Materia Medica (Ben Cao Gang Mu, 本草纲目) (1986, 626–629). These six case studies of jade myths cover a chronological span of roughly 2000 years, from the Yellow Emperor to sage kings in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Hence, the continuity and evolution of the jade mythological view can be seen to pass from the big tradition to the small tradition.

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10.3 Jade Treasures: The Social Integration of Object Worship and the Birth of Civilization If one is to inquire where the concept of magic treasures in literature comes from, the answer is certain to go beyond the scope of the literary into the religious domain. It is to delve into the root of why magic treasure is a treasure to begin with— it contains some supernatural, magic or divine power. Further, an object thought to possess supernatural divinity could be called a “fetish”. Using this designation, fetishes are various materials and sensory objects and arise even earlier than the abstract concepts of gods according to the French anthropologist Charles de Brosses (1709–1777). Concepts like “fetish” and “fetishism” became popular in the academic community. However, de Brosses was dissatisfied with the existing opinions on the origin of mythology and religion, and hoped to explain the mystery of mythology and unveil the principles behind Greek mythology by means of analysing the religious materials of non-Western savage tribes (Muller 1901, 58–59). The common model for the development of human history of religion, as put forward by de Brosses, can be shown as a three-stage model: Fetishism–polytheism–monotheism.

Regarding the objects of fetishism, De Brosses wrote: These two portions of heathen theology depend either on the worship of the celestial bodies, well known by the name of Sabeism, or on the probably not less ancient worship of certain terrestrial and material objects, called fetiche, among the African negroes (he meant to say, by those who visited the African negroes), and which for this reason I shall call Fetichisme. I ask permission to use this term habitually, and though in the proper signification it refers in particular to the religion of the negroes of Africa only, I give notice beforehand that I mean to use it with reference also to any other nation paying worship to animals, or to inanimate things which are changed into gods, even when these objects are less gods, in the proper sense of the word, than things endowed with a certain divine virtue, such as oracles, amulets, or protecting talismans. For it is certain that all these forms of thought have one and the same origin, which belongs to one general religion, formerly spread over the whole earth, which must be examined by itself, constituting, as it does, a separate class among the various religions of the heathen world. (Ibid., 60–61)

In The History of the State of Yue, where Fenghuzi, an expert at distinguishing and casting swords and hailing from Chu State during the Spring and Autumn Period, talked with King of Chu and judged that “Your jade is also a fetish”. Further, Xu Shen explains “靈” in Explaining Graphs and analysing Characters that this character means 巫 (wu, shaman) serving the deities with jade. It is derived from 玉 (jade) or 巫in meaning and follows 霝 (ling) in sound. In early Chinese culture the functions that jade possessed accords, in general terms, with the religious definition for a “fetish”. This author has coined the term “jade worship” to encapsulate the mythological views behind the jade rituals. This cognition helps one to understand why the Chinese values that underpinned jade worship are quite different from the Western “gold-worship” from the beginning, the sacred value of jade is native and spontaneous while that of gold is derived from the precious stones in the cultures

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that preceded it and somewhat imbued with the values of foreign cultures (including metallurgy technology and views of metal mythology). When Max Muller, the founder of comparative religion, wrote the Lectures on the Origin and Growth of Religion (1901), he devoted one chapter (Chap. 2) to discussing whether fetishism is a primitive form of religion. After reviewing the relevant research on fetishism published nearly one century after de Brosses, he summarized his findings into four points: (1)

(2)

(3) (4)

Since the meaning of the word “fetish” is not clear from its initial use and has been widely used by scholars, it encompasses nearly all the symbolic images and objects of religious worship. Among all nations with a long and ancient history, nearly everything under the category of fetishes has its own historic and psychological origins. There is no reason to exclude any nation from this general rule, or believe that fetish worship only occurred in those nations whose religious development is not yet well understood. There is no religion that is completely void of fetishism. No religion is merely a purely fetishistic religion.

Muller admitted to a degree of cross-cultural generality among fetishistic religions, but he disagreed that fetishism was the starting point or the original form of religion. Instead, he pointed out that researchers should first probe into the views of divine power that existed earlier than fetishes. Besides, a fetish is only a derivative form of this inclination to a divine power (ibid., 82). According to his viewpoint, it is necessary to further discuss how the concepts of gods or divine powers permeated in jade and gold. The sky is compared to jade due to their similar color. This explains why ancient people compared de to jade. What needs to be noted is that de had been a mythologized concept since the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties and later was changed into an ethical one after Confucian recreation. The shift from “jade deities” to “jade virtues” occurred when the concepts of ancient mythologies were transformed during the long transition from the big tradition to the small tradition. Although its conceptual orientation had evolved from a spiritual belief system to a means of signifying moral qualities, the essence of the jade virtues still has its roots within the concepts of mythology. Jade myths played a significant role in unifying Chinese people from different ethnic groups. How could such a massive social community be formed? The Japanese scholar Kurimoto Shinichiro (1997, 49–50) answered this question from the perspective of economic anthropology and recommended scholars look to Karl Polanyi’s three “patterns of integration”—reciprocity, redistribution and market exchange. Before the pre-Bronze Age (twenty-first century BC), jade objects played a major role in establishing cultural and ideological authority and unity within the Huaxia society. Trade took place when jade materials spread to the Central Plain from various regions, which presented the opportunity for the aforementioned patterns of social integration. In the Bronze Age (twenty-first-fifth century BC), the spatial allocation of new metal resources (gold, silver, copper, tin, lead, etc.) was added to the regional redistribution of old resources. The anthropologist Chang Kwang-chih assumed that

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each of the eight occasions in which the Shang Dynasty’s capital city was moved were linked to the search for new copper deposits. Moreover, The Biography of King Mu: Son of Heaven reveals that the economic relations established between King Mu of Zhou and the rulers of other regions during his travel to the west primarily depended on reciprocity and market exchange, namely, conferring jades and metals, and seeking jade materials. This shows that, in their pushes for economic and social integration, the rulers of the Central Plain and the surrounding tribes were essentially motivated by the demand to produce sacred treasures and luxury goods, as driven by mythological belief. Thus, Polanyi’s theory of “three patterns for social integration” helps to open up a new avenue for the study of Chinese identity, and a model of analysis in pursuing this field. That is, on the threshold of civilization, how jade production acted as a link integrating the Central Plain with neighbouring regions. This link is not only material (from jade prospection, exploitation, transportation and exchanges to processing), but also cultural and ideological (the dissemination and unification of jade myths). The combination of the material and ideological factors behind the demand for jade eventually forged the core values of a Chinese cultural grouping before the arrival of the Metal Age, namely, regarding jade as a hierophany, a treasure and a medium for communication between heaven and man (or between deities and man).

10.4 Mythological Genes of Chinese Identity If the social integration characterized by the widespread acceptance of jade myths, i.e. the worship of the same fetishes, disseminated a set of core values during the genesis of Chinese civilization, what role did the core values play in forming Chinese identity? The existing research on fetishes in analyses of comparative religion may lend clues. No, we cannot possibly distinguish too much, if we want not only to know, but to understand the ancient customs of savage nations. Sometimes a stock or a stone was worshiped, because it was a forsaken altar, or an ancient place of judgment; sometimes because it marked the place of a great battle or a murder, or the burial of a king; sometimes because it protected the sacred boundaries of clans or families. There are stones from which weapons can be made; there are stones on which weapons can be sharpened ; there are stones, like the jade found in Swiss lakes, that must have been brought as heirlooms from great distances; there are meteoric stones fallen from the sky. Are all these simply to be labelled fetishes, because, for very good but very different reasons, they were all treated with some kind of reverence by ancient and even by modern people? (Muller 1901, 102)

Muller hoped that researchers could seek conceptual reasons for why objects became fetishes. Such an exploration necessitates detailed analyses, utilizing comparative mythology. For example, the story of “Jade Huang of Xiahoushi” in The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming contains elements of the cultural memory of later generations about the Xia Dynasty and its sage kings (Fig. 10.4).

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Fig. 10.4 An imaginary scene in which jade huang goes up to heaven: lacquer painting on wooden coffin unearthed from No.1 tomb at Shazitang, Changsha City. Photographed at the Hunan Museum

By analysing the preceding six cases of jade myths, one can understand the ideological roles of mythology to a fuller extent. Here one is able to cite the statement made by the scholar of religions Frederick J. Streng in Understanding Religious Life (1985, 44), “What is myth and why is it so powerful?Myth is more than a story about supernatural beings. It is a story whose symbolic creative force orders a person’s existence into a meaningful world. It is a perspective that has ultimate value for those who live in its ordering power.” What Streng stressed is that the ideological role of myths creates a certain real order with ultimate value and significance within a specific cultural group, and thereby implicitly controls the views and behavior of every member of that community. These are usually the very core values that people search for, and what Weber wished to reach with social science, that is, associating real events—whether conscious or unconscious—with general cultural values by which the unique cultural roots of a given culture could be identified and then acknowledged. The above comparative studies demonstrate that the archetypal role that gold myths plays in Western civilization is roughly equal to the role jade myths plays in Chinese civilization. More specifically, in comparing Greek and Roman mythological themes which seek golden boughs and golden fleeces with Chinese ones (such as King Mu travelled far to visit the Palace of the Yellow Emperor and the jade abode of the Queen Mother of the West; Bian He offered kings raw jade he got in Mount Jingshan; King Zhao of Qin earnestly longed for the He Shi Bi; Qin Shi Huang created the Heirloom Seal of the Realm), different mythological and ideological values that formed in the initial stages of Chinese and Western civilizations begin to reveal themselves. As stated in the Social Construction of Reality by Peter Berger, an academic representative of the sociology of knowledge, “the basic contentions of the argument of this book are implicit in its title and sub-title, namely, that reality is socially constructed and that the sociology of knowledge must analyse the process in which this occurs” (Berger and Luckmann 1967, 13). That is to say that different myth systems construct different social realities:

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Streng provided a penetrating analysis and exposition of the view that myths could construct reality and transform social life. He reminds researchers to pay attention to the production mechanisms behind the cultural meaning of myths, and their use in ritual practices as symbols. The fundamental spiritual transformation is realized by means of sacred symbols, and its manifestation can be outlined in five stages: (1) (2) (3)

(4) (5)

The problematic in human existence: Human life…profane existence Ultimate reality: the original and eternal resource for happiness and order is the Sacred Realm Means to ultimate transformation: sacred power is released in existence (creation) through sacred words and actions, which are to be duplicated at special times and places by a sacred order of people (priests, priestesses) and which provided the models for daily living. Personal expression: …People learn meaningfulness, joy and hope through special manifestations of the true order of life known in sacred books, rituals…. Social expression: one’s life is integrated with others into a community that express the core of its members’ existence by regular repetition of solemn and awesome sacred words and gestures and by daily living in conformity with the ideal sacred order as preserved in the sacred stories and moral teaching. (Streng 1985, 44)

The ideology shown in jade myths includes the following forms: conceptual elements with jade signifying gods, celestial bodies or immortal life; ritual behaviours of wu in serving jade to gods and ancestral spirits; jade-worship or jade-offering legends and stories; the extensive meanings of jade as expressed in terms of personality ideals (jade virtues) and educational methods (to learn from each other by exchanging views, like jadestones are constantly cut and polished); social fashion (a gentleman must wear jade); linguistic customs like a name or title with jade or jades, such as唐圭璋 (Tang Guizhang, a renowned poetry scholar whose name contains jade gui and jade zhang); a large number of Chinese characters with 玉 (jade) as their radical; and a variety of idioms and proverbs featuring jade myths as the core value. Through cultural transmission and interaction, every aspect of the above not only constitutes the living reality of a royal state in the Central Plain, but enabled the vassal states and ethnic groups outside the Central Plain to identify with the royal state, hence forming the basic elements (Yang 2008) of Chinese identity thousands of years prior to Qin Shi Huang’s unification. This hypothesis is evidenced by a boom in jade production and a common ritual jade system featuring jade huang, bi or cong by the Dawenkou culture in the east, the Qijia culture in the west, the Hongshan culture in the north and the Lingjiatan, Liangzhu and Shijiahe cultures in the south. From the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, changes to the media of transmission of myths (from oral to written) accentuated the difference between the ideology of a civilized state and that of the word-of-mouth traditions of prehistoric tribal societies. With the aid of writing, myths previously passed on by means of oral storytelling and performances became classics and could be distributed to the general public more widely. Writing largely expanded the circulation and scope of myths in society,

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that is to say, the originally quite different cultures of vassal states were gradually integrated writing allowed shared cultural commonalities to be consolidated and unified across wide territories. For example, there are 124 Chinese characters with 玉 (jade) as their radical in Explaining Graphs and analysing Characters, among which many characters come from proper nouns for jade types in a wide range of places corresponding to the geographical distribution of 140 jade-producing mountains recorded in the Classic for Mountains and Seas. Inspired by Explaining Graphs and analysing Characters, Gu Yewang (519–581), a Chinese exegesis interpreter and historian from the Southern Dynasties (420–589), compiled a 30-volume work for new characters entitled Jade Book, a character dictionary whose entries are arranged according to character radicals. Scholars of later generations followed or used the name “Jade Book” to indicate all Chinese character dictionaries in a broad sense. All these records related to jade may be analysed and studied from the perspective of Chinese national identity. So far, research in this important area is lacking, especially from a mythological approach, as Streng has pointed out: “We discuss the importance of myths, rituals, and sacred language, which creates communities and gives them power to ward off the constant creeping disorder that appears as fear, unconcern for the original and deepest resource, and meaninglessness” (1985, 44).

10.5 Dragon-Rainbow-Huang: Myths of the Unity of Heaven and Man and the Roots of Chinese Identity Compared with Western civilization, one can identify five key points to consider when researching Chinese civilization through the analysis of jade cultures (Fig. 10.5). Firstly, studies on the origin of civilization are not only conducted for the sake of arranging an accurate chronology and putting various cultural inventions in order, but are more inclined to seek the core values accompanying the birth of the civilization, especially its unique cultural features. Jade myths, therefore, become an effective way to interpret the emergence of Chinese civilization. Secondly, the thousands-of-years-long history of jade myths can be proven by excavated prehistorical jades. This realization brought about a breakthrough in myth research that was previously limited to written texts. Myths and ancient artefacts complement one another and are worthy of being studied from the perspective of multidisciplinary participation and interaction, including insights from archaeology, the science of religion, and anthropology. Thirdly, the key relationship between myths and cultural identity lies in specific cultural elements which together constitute ideology. Digging into these “cultural genes”, the specific core values can be seized in the interactive process between material and concept, notably the identity factors which allow multiple cultures to be fused into one in the cultural construct that is Chinese civilization. Fourthly, in terms of the cultural and mythological origins of Mediterranean civilizations, there are a series of mythological views arising from gold-worship, gold

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having been conceived as a divine metal and golden treasures as magical in the Gold Age. Additionally, there have been attempts to elucidate the process by which core values were formed by combining the myths behind sacred objects with the formation of cultural identity. To be more precise, by studying unearthed precious cultural relics, modern scholars can group together shared cultural communities— e.g. “Mediterranean civilizations”—in the process crossing later-established national boundaries; similarly, “East Asian civilizations”, with Chinese civilization as its core and surrounding derivative civilizations as its supporting branches, has been reconstructed as a cultural group through research on prehistorical jades. Fifthly, by analysing the cultural “genes’ of the Chinese identity, five kinds of key mythological views can be summarized chronologically. (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Jade myths, viewing jade as symbolic of heaven and as a divine stone, are the roots of Chinese identity, driving the formation of its core values. The history of this tradition dates back 8000–7000 years, and is marked by the beginning of jade production. Mythological understandings of the unity of heaven and man based on the communication between heaven and man as facilitated by jade. This communication between heaven (or the gods) and man takes place by means of using jade or enacting ritual jades. It is from these beliefs that ritual and music culture originate. Dating back 7000–6000 years, this tradition starts with the appearance of jade huang, one of the six instruments stated in The Rites of Zhou, as a symbol. The jade huang, symbolizing a rainbow bridge or heavenly bridge, can be found in the Hemudu, Yangshao, Daxi, and Hongshan cultures, among others. Rainbow-dragon myths, featuring mythical animals like dragons, phoenixes, turtles and qilin as totems to worship, arose 6000–5000 years ago. For example, the jade huang simulating the rainbow bridge became associated with the imaginary dragon ascending to heaven in this period. Mythological conceptions of universal geography, characterized by the development of the concept of tianxia (天下, under the heaven) took shape 5000–4000 years ago. Sage or sage king myths represented by Yao, Shun and Yu appeared 5000– 4000 years ago. Their predecessors were understood to be mediators between gods and man represented by the human figures carved in jade. Ancestor myths or five-emperor myths with the Yellow Emperor as the leader were reconstructed after the Shang and Zhou Dynasties.

During the periods when The Classic of Mountains and Seas, The Book of Poetry and The Verse of Chu were written, the small tradition characterized by written narratives rose rapidly to prominence. The big tradition it is based on had a profound effect on these works, as is evident in their views about jade mythology. In terms of the big and small traditions, the phases of development and occurrence of prehistorical jade myths in China can be categorized roughly as three superimposed prehistoric cultural layers: the pre-Yangshao period (the worship of jade gods: jade jue and jade huang); the Yangshao period (the gestation period of ritual jade myths:

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Fig. 10.5 A jade huang with double dragon heads unearthed in a Hongshan culture sacrificial altar at Dongshanzui in Kezuo, Liaoning, dating back to 5000 years ago. Photographed at the Hunan Museum

jade yue, huang and bi); and the Longshan period (formation period of ritual jade myths: jade cong, zhang, and gui). The following section will take the material manifestation of the myth of unity between heaven and man, the imagination of three things in one, dragon-rainbowhuang, as an example to unveil the important spiritual heritage that preceded the origin of civilization. The dragons that appeared in pre-Qin documents are often featured going up to heaven and down into water, acting as a mediator or carrier between heaven or gods and man. Qu Yuan once asked in his poem “Questions to Heaven”, “Where are hornless dragons with bears on their backs, which themselves amuse?” (2006, 67). This question may be answered by citing the myth in which the Yellow Emperor, also named Youxiong, rode dragons to heaven. Here, with the help of dragons, human beings ascend to heaven to receive the divine will, the mandate of heaven, or immortality. The background to these mythological understandings lie in ancient beliefs: the communication between man and gods requires a sacred object serving as the medium. Further, sacred objects may be either ritual instruments or magical instruments (ritual jades and bronzes) made of jadestone or metal granted by heaven or nature as good materials, or by means of mythical creatures like dragons, phoenix, turtles or qilin. All of these may help the spirit medium on earth to complete the journey to heaven (Fig. 10.6). Next, as illustrated in the previous examples, Qi, the First Emperor of the Xia Dynasty, possessed ritual jades and the unusual power of riding dragons up to heaven in ancient myths. The Classics of Mountains and Seas also narrates, in particular, the scene in which Qi wore jade huang (Yuan 1980, 209). Undoubtedly, Qi is portrayed as the man who started, and took charge of, the tradition of Chinese rituals and the accompanying music and dance, as well as the tradition of riding dragons and wearing jade. With a reference to The Classic of Mountains and Sea, one can see that both jade rings and huang were considered sacred materials for bridging heaven and man. Qi ascended to heaven three times, each time using dragons as a vehicle.

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Fig. 10.6 A jade huang set of the Western Zhou Dynasty unearthed from the tomb of Marquis Jin. Photographed at the Shanxi Museum in 2010

Analysing these two narratives together, one may conclude a basic pattern of unity between heaven and man expressed in three relevant motifs: ascending to heaven—riding dragon—wearing jade huang.

Jade huang in the Western Zhou were considered one of the six jade ritual instruments, referred to in The Rites of Zhou. The Jade Huang of Xiahoushi is a most important type of jade object in Chinese history, witnessing the change of dynasties from Xia to the Shang, and from the Shang to the Zhou. When it was passed on to the Western Zhou, it was used as a reward to dukes, symbolizing power, and leaving it a popular topic for later politicians. As cited from The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming, in the fourth year of the Duke of Ding’s reign (509–495 BC), the Duke of Zhou conferred treasures on his sons and brothers, which they would bring to fiefs, and the Jade Huang of Xiahoushi and big flag were given to the Duke of Lu Kingdom, the son of the Duke of Zhou. There is no mention of the dragons Qi rode to heaven in records of periods after the Western Zhou. Moreover, the Duke of Lu was the only person who was conferred both Jade Huang of Xiahoushi and the big flag. As for the big flag, Du Yu annotated it as a flag with the image of interwoven dragons. What, then, is the secret behind jade huang and sacred dragons as jade ritual instruments? Merely relying on the inherited literature as the first type of evidence, it is difficult for researchers to achieve profound breakthroughs. However, the second type of evidence, based on the excavated ancient writings, not only helps to figure out the mythological identity shared by the dragon and jade huang, but also uncovers the image of rainbow as also shared by them as an imaginary archetype. Chen Mengjia, a modern archaeologist and poet, held the view in his book entitled A Summary of Oracle Inscriptions of the Yin Ruins that the character 虹 (hong, rainbow) resembles a dragon and a snake in shape on the basis of three styles of writing found in the oracle

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bone inscriptions. His view lends credibility to the ancient records that “Hong drinks water” in The Book of the Han: Prince Yan of Dan and “Hong has two heads and drinks water in mountain streams” in The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Moreover, oracle bone inscriptions record, “Hong drinks in rivers”, coinciding with the myths in the books. Yu Xingwu, a scientist of oracle bone inscriptions, pointed out that hong and jade huang look alike in shape. He also asserted jade huang of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties unearthed in recent centuries, with two ends carved into heads of dragon, snake or beast as shown in illustrated catalogues, matches the description that hong or rainbow has two heads in the historical records (1979, 5–6). The physical evidence that Yu Xingwu used depended primarily on photos of cultural relics created before the birth of Chinese civilization. The archaeological findings that have been discovered since reveal that the time-honoured traditions of the production and use of jade huang were by no means restricted to the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Nowadays it is increasingly common to take the unearthed objects as the fourth type of evidence and place them on China’s map as a means of tracing their cultural distribution in the archaeological record. Gradually, a semiotic narrative chain surfaced, twice as old as Chinese characters, by which the archetype for the mythological imagination of the dragon-rainbow-huang can be dated back 7000–6000 years. Jade huang and related mythological views of rainbows and dragons, at a time before ritual jade traditions represented by six jade instruments became prevalent, appeared in the Central Plain and gradually became recognized extensively in most parts of China. Afterwards, some 6000 years ago in the middle of the Yangshao cultural period, mythological beliefs in jade huang laid the foundation for a unifying Chinese identity. In other words, the key to seeking the transformation from pluralism to unity in Chinese civilization lies in finding the cultural “genes” unifying the prehistoric mythological beliefs and values of China. In exploring the preliterate age or even earlier, jade huang objects and their double-dragon-head shaped imitations can sufficiently serve as evidence for exploring the unification of mythological views. Among the cultural relics from the Yangshao culture exhibited in the Mianchi Museum in Henan Province are pieces of excavated black jade huang corresponding to “black huang” mentioned in books about rites. In addition, 26 jade objects and 75 turquoise objects from the early period of the Yangshao culture were unearthed at the Longgangsi site in Nanzhenxian County, Shaanxi Province, among which a big turquoise huang tends to attract people the most. The archaeologist Yang Yachang (1998, 208–215) described the turquoise huang as having a long and concave shape. It was placed under the neck of the deceased, demonstrating that it is a funerary ornament. It is 22 cm in length and is the largest or longest turquoise object found in a prehistorical site in Shaanxi. The other 74 examples of turquoise pendants are small, from 5 cm to less than 2 cm in length. In terms of both quantity and quality, jade huang stand out among a variety of jade and stone objects produced in the Yangshao culture. In the northern basins of the Yellow River and Liaohe River, and in southern basins of the Yangtze River or Pearl River, prehistoric beliefs were more or less unified into a view that associated jade as god and the rainbow as a dragon, a heavenly bridge

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connecting gods and man. These two types of mythological views converged in the shape of jade huang and became popularized. This homogenization of beliefs into a single sacred symbol was a prelude to a unified Chinese identity that would later consolidate. Among the jades of the Xinglongwa culture in the west Liaohe River Basin in the north, one can find the earliest example of a jade huang, dating back 8000 years. In the early ruins of the Neolithic Age at Kuahu Bridge on Hangzhou Bay in the south, two pieces of stone huang dating back 7300 years were discovered. In the Hemudu culture, jade huang were likewise discovered from about 7000 years ago. Subsequently, in the archaeological sites of the Majiabang, Beiyinyangying, Songze, Xuejiagang and Liangzhu cultures, and in the sites of the Daxi and Qujialing cultures at the upper reaches of Yangtze River, jade huang have been found as ornaments of high ranking people in large quantities. Furthermore, jade huang have been excavated in sites of both the Lingjiatan and Shijiahe cultures, in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River (Fig. 10.7). Among the jades produced across all prehistoric cultures, jade huang and jue were the most popular in China. Even before the eve of Chinese civilization about 4500 years ago, jade jue remained important in the Central Plain culture. A jade huang, close to legendary Jade Huang of Xiahoushi in age, was excavated from the Taosi site in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province (Fig. 10.8). An analysis of the features of jades from the Taosi culture shows that people at that time could tell true Fig. 10.7 A jade bi composed of four pieces of huang, unearthed at a Taosi site in Shanxi, dating back to 4000 years ago. Photographed at the Shanxi Museum

Fig. 10.8 A jade huang of the Taosi culture, dating back to 4000 years ago. Photographed at the Shanxi Museum

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jade from fake jade (jade-like stones), and often combined them in production. The products are varied in shape and function, from ritual jade instruments to tools and ornaments, but only one sort of jade object was not ever fake in its composition, the jade huang (Gao 2007). The famous princess consort named Fu Hao in the Shang Dynasty was buried with 75 pieces of jade huang in her tomb, around 3000 years ago. What is more, in the high-ranking tombs of the Guo Kingdom, which existed during the Western Zhou Dynasty and was found in Sanmenxia, and the Cemetery for the Marquis of the Jin Kingdom in Quwo County, exquisite sets of jade huang composed of seven jade pendants or five jade pendants were discovered one after another (Fig. 10.9). The above newly discovered data reflects the fact that the big tradition of jade culture created opportunities for the small tradition of Chinese characters, which eventually helped to unify China. Expressed precisely, the 8000-year big tradition laid the foundation for the small tradition that began 3000 years ago. About 8000 years ago, China was in the early period of the Neolithic Age, when its ancestors transitioned gradually from being hunter-gatherers to farming. By the middle of the Neolithic Age, people in the south generally corresponded with those in the north in terms of their beliefs in jade myths and traditions of jade-ware production. As time went on, the mythical symbology of the dragon-huang-rainbow integrated the beliefs of peoples living on both sides of the Yangtze and Yellow rivers into one community. Fig. 10.9 A set of jade huang composed of three jade pendants unearthed in Shaanxi. Photographed at the National Museum of China

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The big tradition not only provided a basis on which the small tradition built, but created myths and folk activities in different regions and among different groups, passed from generation to generation by word of mouth. The rainbow bridge going up to heaven and the rainbow transforming into a dragon-snake, huang or a beauty may thus be viewed as the third type of evidence, providing vivid references for the cross-cultural interpretations of the dragon-huang-rainbow mythological view.

Chapter 11

Youxiong: The Mythical Etymology of the Yellow Emperor

11.1 The Yellow Emperor and His Names The mythological analysis of jade huang in the previous chapter involved and referenced the name of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi, 黄帝). Scholars hold the view that Huangdi was named after jade huang 璜 (Xu 1981: 180) and thus can be understood as the “god of jade huang” (Xiao 1987). Aside from this lexical analysis, more direct evidence is required to support this claim. As for Emperor Qi of Xia, a jade huang was a sacred symbol connected with ascending to heaven, and for the Yellow Emperor, it symbolises the mythological belief of the unity of heaven and man through the metaphorical correspondence between the name “huang” 黄 and jade huang 璜. Joseph Campbell regarded all cultural heroes in world literature as different versions and depictions of the same cultural idea—“the hero with a thousand faces”. The Chinese have traditionally considered the Yellow Emperor as their ancestor and the Jade Emperor as the supreme deity. According to Chinese mythology regarding the unity of the heaven and human, is it possible that the Yellow Emperor and Jade Emperor are actually one hero of two different faces conceived of and differentiated by later generations? The written documents about the two emperors date back no further than 2000 years; but the non-written archaeological materials, especially newly excavated image narratives of the jade bear and jade huang, were created earlier than any Chinese ancient written classics, even earlier in fact than the oracle bone inscriptions. In this sense, prehistoric jade carvings, as a vehicle of mythological image narration, have become a significant subject of interest in the research of mythological beliefs in preliterate times. The important question that this chapter will deal with is the conceptual nature of the Chinese identity, and whether it owes to the shared mythology of a Jade belief system or to a common ancestry. To put it in another way, which one came earlier— identification with the mythology of the Jade belief system or with the lineage of Yan and the Yellow Emperor? It is out of concern for such matters, particularly the latter explanation, that Sima Qian wrote the first general history of China, hoping that the © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_11

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annals-biographies (Benji) starting from the Five Emperor Ancestry could mark the beginning of the national identity of the Han people. The widespread evidence offered by archaeological materials far surpasses the recognition of the Yellow Emperor as the common Chinese ancestor given by historians in the Western Han Dynasty. This then leads to the need to address questions such as how today’s scholars should deal with the relationship between these two kinds of cultural identifications; which is original and spontaneous, and which is constructed by later generations with the aim of encouraging political cohesion? Shen Songqiao, in his essay “The Myth of Yellow Emperor and the Construction of National Identity in the late Qing Dynasty” (1997), held that the notion of the Yellow Emperor being the ancestor of all Chinese people is the product of the national imagination in the late Qing Dynasty; the appearance of Yellow Emperor symbols is the result of the nation-modelling campaign inspired by the western “nation-state” model in recent times. The Yellow Emperor was an imaginary mythological figure until the emergence of “Yellow Emperor Mania” around the 1911 Revolution. But things have changed since this mania. Suddenly, the Chinese people claimed themselves to be the “descendants of the Yan and Yellow Emperors” or the “noble posterity of Xuanyuan”, and these names spread and were accepted widely by Chinese people. The Chinese nation is, indeed, no more than a community established on and around the basis of the Yellow Emperor as a common symbol. The purpose of Sima Qian writing the Annals of the Five Emperors was not so much to record the actual events in history as to serve the ideology of great unification under the Han Dynasty’s reign through employing “fictive genealogy”. Is the Yellow Emperor a real figure in the history? It is certain that this article is unable to answer this question, and I have no intention of discussing it. However, if we put aside the disputes among traditional historians, not rushing into the verification of historical facts but in the light of “collective memory” consider what those philosophers in the pre-Qin period said about Yellow Emperor as a set of historical memories created by people at that time to deal with political demands and strains on ethnic relations, perhaps a new angle can be developed with which to interpret this history. In other words, if we regard the records about the Yellow Emperor as the “text” or ideology that “represents” and governs social practice rather than the “document” that “reflects” historical truth, then the discourse about the Yellow Emperor in ancient times is still open to re-interpretation. (Shen 1997, 7)

It is of innovative significance that Shen Songjiao studied the production and development of discourses about the Yellow Emperor from the perspective of cultural memory. However, after devoting most of his paper to analysing the process of establishing the Yellow Emperor as a cultural symbol in modern times, he failed to delve deeply into the Yellow Emperor’s names of the pre-Qin period. Thus, the key issue was not addressed, namely why the acknowledged Chinese ancestor Yellow Emperor appeared with the name of Xuanyuan or Youxiong? In other words, is there any mythical logic that connects the Yellow Emperor, Xuanyuan and Youxiong? This chapter will explore the authenticity of what is known of the times of the Yellow Emperor using the quadruple-evidence method. In this regard, one will conduct a comparative mythological study of this conundrum in an attempt to provide a

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reasonable explanation from the perspective of the comparison between the names and the unearthed objects. Although it is claimed that the era of the Yellow Emperor recorded by the later generations date back 5000 years, academics are unable to establish any direct contact with the history and society of that time, since past research exploring this period depended largely on the comparison and analysis of many sorts of inherited literature, i.e. the first type of evidence. Now, with large quantities of cultural relics excavated from prehistorical archaeological sites (c. 3000 BC), the inherited and unearthed literature available for use, unearthed image and object narratives may be compared and integrated into analysis, thus distinguishing well-grounded names and legends of the Yellow Emperor from fanciful and fictive ones attributed by the later generations. For example, the legends of the Yellow Emperor casting ding and huge mirrors are clearly not in keeping with the history of Chinese metallurgy. According to archaeological findings, the bronze ding appeared in China less than 4000 years ago. Judging from the limitation of materials and technology available at that time, therefore, it was clearly impossible to manufacture metal objects like ding on a large scale during the era of the Yellow Emperor. The next section will interpret the mythological connotations of the name Xuanyuan, discussing whether its use developed later than the invention and use of the “vehicle”—after the times of the Yellow Emperor dating back 5000 years.

11.2 The Archetype of Xuanyuan: The Mythological Interpretation of the Unity of Heaven and Man The two Chinese characters 轩 (xuan) and 辕 (yuan) both indicate “vehicle” through their radical. The type of vehicle that might be associated with the Yellow Emperor’s name is, however, a key question. The section pertaining to the 车 (vehicle) radical in Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters makes clear that the vehicle is represented by the shaft of a cart. If the context of xuanyuan is only confined to earthly explanations, the archetype of its mythological imagination cannot be revealed. Looking up to the sky is of great help here. Originally xuanyuan was also the name of a constellation. The Xuanyuan constellation consisted of seventeen stars whose shape, taken together, looks like a dragon or a chariot, so it metaphorically refers to a vehicle that can travel right to heaven itself. Records of the Historian: Celestial Phenomena states that “Quan is the Xuanyuan constellation whose shape is like a yellow dragon. The big star in front represents the queen; the smaller ones beside are concubines. Xuanyuan symbolises authority. The seventeen stars of Xuanyuan stretch out like the body of a yellow dragon. The brightest one, known as the Regulus, represents the queen, while the lesser stars are the harems of concubines”. Zhang Shoujie added an explanatory note, “The seventh star of Xuanyuan is to the north of the Big Dipper. Xuanyuan, with its yellow-dragon shape, is the god of rain and thunder, who controls

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the celestial harem… and the change of the 24 solar terms1 ”. Therefore, xuanyuan refers to the sacred vehicle-shaped symbol of ascending to heaven, according to the observations of the ancients. However, it is inaccessible to ordinary people. Thus, it is written in The Verse of Chu: Far-off Journey that “Xuanyuan was too remote for me to aspire to; but I could follow Prince Qiao for my delight”. The former line states that it is impossible to shuttle freely between the earth and heaven as the gods do by means of their dragon-vehicles. This is the underlying boundary between gods and human that no ordinary man is able to step over. The fact that the constellation in the celestial myth was named “Xuanyuan” gives a clue to a new understanding of the “invention of the south-pointing cart” as it appears in the Yellow Emperor myth. The constellation has always been used by human beings as a means of determining orientation and the seasons. It is therefore easy to associate the Xuanyuan constellation with the south-pointing cart in the myth. In The Classic of Mountains and Seas, the cubic Xuanyuan platform also has the function of giving directions (Ye et al. 2004). Once xuanyuan is conceptualized as a kind of mythical concept, situated between human beings and the gods in heaven, its purpose and definition need not be confined to the real world. The Classic of Mountains and Seas describes mythical places like Xuanyuan Hill and the Xuanyuan Kingdom. Their imaginary mythical features are striking. Firstly, Xuanyuan Hill in “The Classic of the Western Mountains” is located west of Mount Kunlun, a famous mountain in the mythical universe, where every kind of scenery is depicted with a touch of divinity. 400 li to the southwest is a mountain called Kunlun. This is the God of Heaven’s dwelling place in the human world. Luwu, a god who has a tiger’s body, nine tails, a human face and a tiger’s paws, presides over this mountain. He is also in charge of the Nine Parts of the Sky and the God of Heaven’s zoo for the Seasons… (Wang and Zhao 2010, 49) 400 li west by water is a place called Liusha and 200 li further west is Mount Luomu. A god called Changcheng is born from the essence of Nine Virtues of the Sky and is in charge of this mountain. He looks like a man and has a leopard’s tail. On its top there is great deal of beautiful jade while at its foot there are many green stones, but no water. (Ibid., 49) 350 li further west is a mountain called Yushan. This is the dwelling place of Queen Mother of the West who looks like a human, but has a leopard’s tail and a tiger’s teeth. She is good at roaring and wears jade ornaments on her unkempt hair. She is in charge of the catastrophes from the sky and the Five Destructive Forces. (Ibid., 51) 480 li further west is a mountain called Xuanyuan Mound, which is bare of plants and trees. The Xunshui River flows out of this mountain and runs to the south before it empties itself into the Heishui River. In the river there is a great deal of granular cinnabar, azurite blue and red orpiment. (Ibid., 51)

To the east of the Xuanyuan Mound lay Mount Kunlun, Mount Luomu and Mount Yushan (Jade Mountain). These mountains were intimately connected to the divine heaven. Luwu was in charge of the Nine Parts of the Sky, Changcheng was in charge of the Nine Virtues of the Sky, and the Queen Mother of the West was in charge 1

Solar Terms is a calendar of twenty-four periods and climate to govern agricultural arrangements in ancient China and functions even now.

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of catastrophes from the sky. They each possessed divine powers in heaven. The Xuanyuan Mound was no exception. Guo Pu (Yuan 1980, 51) that Xuanyuan Mound was named after the Yellow Emperor’s dwelling. But there are no more details about it in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, except the description of Jishi Mountain 300 li west of Xuanyuan Mound: “There are no living creatures or plants that are not present on this mountain” (Wang and Zhao 2010, 51). Jishi Mountain was also considered to be the origin of the Yellow River, thus connecting the Yellow River, China’s mother river, with the Chinese ancestor Xuanyuan (the Yellow Emperor) and the Queen Mother of the West on Kunlun Mountain (the only imaginative guardian of the elixir of life in Chinese mythology), altogether forming a landscape of sacred places which are the cradles of Chinese civilization. The description of the Kingdom of Xuanyuan in “The Classic of the West” is as follows: The kingdom of Xuanyuan lies to the edge of Mount Qiongshan. The most short-lived people in this country are 800 years old. Its people all have a human face, a snake’s body, and a tail which is surrounded on their heads. Mount Qiongshan lies to its north. People here dare not shoot arrows in the direction of the west, for they are in awe of a mountain called Xuanyuan. Lying north of the kingdom of Xuanyuan, this mountain is square in shape. There are four snakes which are intertwined with each other. This is a wilderness called Zhuyao where the wonder bird is singing freely and the phoenix is dancing happily. When the phoenix lays eggs, people there eat them. When the sky sends down sweet dew, they drink it. His is the place where they can do whatever they like. All animals live together in flocks and herds. The place lies north of where the four snakes live. Its people often eat eggs of the phoenix in their two hands while these two birds stay ahead of them, guiding them forward. The dragon-fish lives high in its north. It looks like a leopard cat. Some people call it a giant shrimp. There are deities who ride on it to travel far and wide in Jiuzhou. Some people say that the turtle-fish lives north of the wilderness of zhuyao and that this fish looks like a carp. (Ibid., 227)

In The Classic of Mountains and Seas, “human-faced with a snake-body” is a customary phrase used to describe the gods. The reason why people in the Kingdom of Xuanyuan could enjoy such an honored appearance and immortality is that they were considered to be deities. To the north of the Xuanyuan Kingdom appeared Xuanyuan Mound, in a cubic shape. The description of “four snakes which are intertwined with each other” on Xuanyuan Mound as well as the entertaining picture of the “wonder bird” and phoenix singing and dancing vividly paint a mythical world in the mind of the reader or listener. The dragon-fish mentioned at the end is also a kind of mythical vehicle used by the deities, much like the Xuanyuan chariot. As a medium between earth and heaven, the dragon-fish had the same mythical function as the jade huang and the dragon-snake. In this way, the Yellow Emperor being named Xuanyuan implies his role as a divine medium, like the mythic mountain and dragon-fish. Next to the Xuanyuan Kingdom and the Dragon-fish Upland was the Baimin Kingdom, which was described in the classic as follows: “The kingdom of Baimin lies north of where the where the dragon-fish lives. Its people all have a white body and wear their hair loose. There is an animal called Chenghuang, which looks like a fox and has horns on its back. Whoever rides on it, he will be able to live a long life

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of 2000 years” (ibid., 227). According to Gao You’s annotation in Huainanzi, the deities in the Baimin Kingdom not only have a white body, but also long silver hair as if they were fairies. The unique means of transport used in the Baimin Kingdom was called the Chenghuang, which is in the shape of a fox, probably a “flying fox”. “The Classic of the Western Mountains” starts with a narration about the north of the Xuanyuan Kingdom, and then two divine images of the heaven-bound vehicle are introduced consecutively, which is consistent with the imagination that xuanyuan is a kind of vehicle that can travel up to heaven. In “The Classic of the Great Wilderness: the East”, Baimin is said to be the son of the Hong Emperor (Hao Yixing, a Qing dynasty scholar, believed the Hong Emperor is the Yellow Emperor) and the grandson of Emperor Jun. The heaven-bound vehicle mentioned again in this part is called “four birds”: tigers (虎), leopards (豹), black bears (熊) and brown bears (罴) (Yuan 1980, 347). The reason why these four animals are referred to as “four birds” lies in the mythological imagination of the time, and should not be viewed through the lens of modern biological and zoological classifications—these are heavenly tigers, heavenly leopards, heavenly black bears, and heavenly brown bears. By the time of the Han Dynasty, images of flying beasts with wings could frequently be found in the pictorial scenery of heaven sculptured onto stones. Moreover, from the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States Period to the Qin and Han Dynasties, the number of jades depicting heavenly tigers and flying bears are countless. Hence, it is not surprising that these winged animals with the ability to fly to heaven were called the “four birds”. Thus, beasts that can fly to heaven such as the above-mentioned carp-like dragon-fish, the fox-like chenghuang, the flying tiger, and the flying bear, can also be understood as vehicles to heaven, and thus the gods. Therefore, the two names of the Yellow Emperor—Youxiong and Xuanyuan—are unified in the mythological imagination. The narrative motifs relevant to the name Xuanyuan in the Records of the Historian: Celestial Phenomena and The Classic of Mountains and Seas may be summarized in the following Table 11.1. The above records generally encapsulate the significance of the name “Xuanyuan” in the myths about the unity of heaven and man, and how the relevant mystical creatures—dragon, snake, fish and bird—were understood to act as mediums for communicating between heaven and earth. The conclusion that can be drawn from the above discussion is that Xuanyuan is not a meaningless term, but is instead crucial to understanding Yellow Emperor’s name, rooted in the unity of heaven and man. Similarly, huang (黄, yellow) is a recurring character in the names of things related to Xuanyuan, such as chenghuang, the yellow bird, and the yellow-dragon shape, amongst others, producing a complex set of metaphorical relationships with jade huang (璜). In contrast, it is rather difficult to explicate the divine archetype behind the name Youxiong, another name of the Yellow Emperor, due to the lack of direct documentary evidence—the explanation that black bears and brown bears are two of the “four birds” is insufficient.

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Table 11.1 Narrative motifs relevant to the name Xuanyuan Name

Mythic function

Associated imagery

Symbolic meanings

Xuanyuan Constellation

The constellation resembling the heavenly chariot

Yellow-dragon shaped

The god of rain and thunder, who controls the celestial harem (Records of a Historian: Celestial Phenomena)

Xuanyuan Mound

The mound acting as Four snakes intertwined the heavenly chariot with one another

The Yellow Emperor’s power (“The Classic of Areas Overseas: the West”)

Xuanyuan Platform

The platform acting as the heavenly chariot

Three blue birds

The Yellow Emperor’s divinity (“The Classic of the Great Wilderness: the West”)

Xuanyuan Kingdom

The kingdom as the heavenly chariot

Human face with snake’s Longevity and body and a tail on the head auspiciousness (“The Classic of Areas Overseas: the West”)

Xuanyuan Mountain

The mountain acting The yellow bird: like the as the heavenly owl with a white head chariot

After eating it one can rid themself of jealousy. (“The Classic of The Northern Mountains”)

Dragon-fish

A means of transport Like the carp to heaven

Riding the clouds up to heaven (“The Classic of Areas Overseas: the West”)

Chenghuang

A means of transport Like the fox to heaven

Longevity (“The Classic of Areas Overseas: the West”)

11.3 The Second Type of Evidence: From Youxiong to Tianxiong Ever since Sima Qian wrote down “Youxiong” in the Records of a Historian, most Chinese people have generally accepted that Youxiong is a name of the Yellow Emperor without asking many questions as to the reason. If the divine sign of the Youxiong State was xiong (熊, the bear), one might compare it to the simplified Chinese character 国 (guo, kingdom), structured by玉 (jade) in the middle. This could be a manifestation of recognizing jade culture once again in the modern era, revealing a core value of Chinese culture. The image of the deity bear, preserving substantial cultural memories of the time when Sima Qian lived, was commonly depicted in the jade carvings and stone reliefs of the Han Dynasty. From then on, however, it gradually disappeared and finally faded from Chinese people’s minds. In 1980 a mysterious jade object, a three-hole jade with double bear heads, unearthed in Tomb 2 of Locality 16 at the Niuheliang site, intrigued the academic community. This

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evidence suggested a connection between the deity bear and jade myths. Discussions of ancient mythological beliefs rooted in physical evidence such as the deity bear figurines carved in jade are much more concrete than those referring only to the inherited literature. Vehicles appeared in the ancient cultures of West Asia about 5000 years ago, the late Neolithic age, but not in East Asia. Therefore, the origin of the name Xuanyuan, related in its meaning to vehicles, presupposes the actual use of vehicles. This means that the name Xuanyuan appeared later than the name Youxiong. Archaeological reports reveal that the earliest vehicle rut in China was found at the Erlitou site, Yanshi, Henan, and is about 3700 years old, while the unearthed bear skulls and clay sculptures in the Niuheliang Goddess Temple are 5500 years old. This comparison serves as evidence that the mythological imagination of the deity bear appeared in China much earlier than that of the sacred vehicle to heaven (xuanyuan). There is no need to rush to propose far-fetched theories based on insufficient evidence. In terms of the semi-mythical history of the Yellow Emperor, the popular approach is to narrow the scope of research to a specific regional culture. For instance, it is believed that the Yellow Emperor culturally belongs to the Yangshao culture of the Central Plain, the Longshan culture of the Central Plain or the Hongshan culture in the north. However, such simple answers must be taken with a pinch of salt, in that it may be preferable to gain an overall understanding with a wider scope than to a rush to either-or judgments. Of all the fresh materials, The Silk Book of Chu (Chu Bo Shu, 楚帛书), created in the Warring States Period and unearthed in Zidanku, Changshan, is the first example of written material that puts forward the concept of “tian/da xiong (天(大)熊, heavenly/big bear)” during the pre-Qin period, and this serves as a sufficient reference with which to investigate the origin of the Yellow Emperor’s names. The first sentence in Chapter One of The Silk Book of Chu is “It is said in ancient history there was Tianxiong or Daxiong, also known as Baoxi” (Rao 1993, 230– 240). Scholars believe that the above narrative is a creation myth believed at that time—a description after the appearance of Tianxiong (Baoxi or Fuxi) tells of him marrying Nüwa, who gave birth to everything including seasons. Why should Fuxi have such a mysterious name as “Tianxiong”? No answer can be found as to this in the existing or unearthed Chinese classics. The third type of evidence, drawing from folklore and ethnology, may however provide a means to answer this question through comparison. The Nihongi puts forth a way to explain this—adding the character人 (ren, man) after 天熊 (tianxiong) to compose a new phrase 天熊人 (tianxiongren, pronounced Amenokumahito in Japanese) (Kuroita, 1928, 30). In terms of the narrative plot the work is relaying, tianxiongren has a clear function in the mythical historical narration of the work—an intermediary appointed by Amaterasu to venture from the divine Takamagahara down to the human world. In terms of achieving communication between heaven and earth, the personified tianxiongren has a similar mythical significance and purpose to the jade huang in a dragon-snake shape and the xuanyuan in a dragon-vehicle shape. It is helpful at this point to examine when the image of

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the intermediary communicating heaven and earth originated in the mythological imagination, and what kind of materials could be used as evidence to find out. The Archaeology of Shamanism, compiled by the Swedish archaeologist Neil Price (2001), provides a clue to answering these questions. Shamanism is a religious belief that was prevalent in the northern regions of the Eurasia from the prehistoric age, and was characterized by the shaman’s ability to access hallucinations when being possessed by spirits. The main illusory narrative of Shamanism lies in traveling between heaven and earth and by achieving the same by means of animal intermediaries. Price’s book contains an article “Shamanism and the Iconography of Palaeo-Eskino Art” by Patricia D. Sutherland, which discusses the art of PalaeoEskimos, the first group to migrate from North Asia to the arctic regions in North America. The Palaeo-Eskimos first appeared between 4000 and 5000 years ago in Alaska, a little later than the Hongshan culture. The materials used in Palaeo-Eskimo art are mainly ivory, driftwood, antler, bone and occasionally soapstone. Now, nearly 1000 artistic works have been excavated by archaeologists, constituting the main body of the Neolithic art in the Arctic region. The bear, meanwhile, is the most important image in Shamanistic arts. The main function of the bear is to embody the concept of “life transformation” in Shamanism. The combination of man and bear was a major theme. “Representations of bears vary from naturalistic depictions of the entire animal, the head or the skull, to realistic portrayals of an animal in a “flying” posture with incised designs representing the skeleton, to extremely abstracted representations of this “flying” form” (Sutherland 2001, 138). Sutherland also analysed the Shamanistic theme represented by the sculptures of human-animal combinations: the transformation between humans and animals. This knowledge provides a background to prehistoric beliefs through examining the human-animal images as they appear in primitive artistic form. The mythical image of the feixiong (flying bear) shares exactly the premise as the idea of the tianxiong (heavenly bear).

11.4 Youxiong: Reconstructing the Chinese Creation Myths According to the first chapter of the New Testament: John, God is the Creator. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. (2008, 157)

The above extract may be regarded as a summation of Christian cosmogony, stemming from the creation myths of Genesis and Jehovah. Opinions differ concerning how similar cosmogonies were represented in China. Influenced by early sinology, western scholars once believed that creation myths and philosophical cosmogony were absent in China. In recent years, however, scholars of Chinese mythology have been seeking to prove that China boasts various creation myths, and that the

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cosmogony resulting from these myths is demonstrated in different fashions: Youxiong at the beginning, Taiyi (太一, Supreme One) producing water, and Taiji (太 极, Supreme Apex) generating two complementary forces, to name but a few. From the perspective of the interaction between the four types of evidence, this chapter attempts to analyse the relationship among different forms of cosmogony in China and to discuss the mythological role of Youxiong at the beginning, which has been overlooked and forgotten. It also attempts to examine the evolution of the mythological roots of Confucianism, and the elements that would constitute the foundation of Chinese ideological history. The mythological scene on a Han Dynasty stone relief depicts how Fuxi and Nüwa, with a human head and a body of snake, become entangled with each other by their tails. The dancing Youxiong is situated above the centre in the sky, and thus, this humanoid deity bear is a heavenly bear. The Han Dynasty Shenxiong-shaped pot excavated in Hua County, Shanxi Province (Fig. 11.1) shows a bear moulded into the shape of “sages clasping to primal unity”. These images relate to the mythological symbolism of Youxiong in a direct or indirect fashion. These may be counted as the fourth type of evidence in the discussion below. According to Christian theology, the expression “in the beginning, the Word was with God” signifies that before the creation of the world, all things on earth, as well as writing, were absent except the sayings of God. Therefore, Jehovah created human beings and the world with his words. Hence, it is due to Jehovah’s thoughts and by Fig. 11.1 A bear-shaped pottery pot of the Western Han Dynasty, unearthed from Hua County, Shanxi Province. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

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his order “let there be light”, that the transformation from darkness to light in the physical world was achieved. Based on this, modern day scholars from the Western world developed the notion of speech ontology, which proposes that “we come into being after we begin to talk”. Therefore, propositions like “I talk, therefore I am” were invented to replace the renowned phrase put forward by Descartes: “I think, therefore I am”. From this point, a value system grounded on orally-inherited cultural tradition was embraced by theologians, which sharply differed from the tradition of worshiping writing; thus, the mythological narrative was recognized as being deeply rooted in the oral tradition. Long-standing oral cultural traditions are bound to leave deep traces in the early history of written civilization. Some conventional expressions at the start of ancient Chinese books are used to introduce the content of the work. In these books, the oral tradition is demonstrated in two stereotyped ways: verbs indicating a speech and nouns signifying the original form of all things. Examples of the former are “yue ruo ji gu 曰若稽古” (It is said that in antiquity) in the Book of Yu and Xia (Yu Xia Shu, 虞夏书) of Books of Documents, which evolved into “wang ruo yue 王若 曰” (The king said) in inscriptions on ancient bronze objects and oracle bones as a formula to initiate a narrative, while the inheritance of the character 若 sheds light on the sacredness of speech uttered by the emperor, who was also a wu (shaman) capable of communicating with the deities (Ye 2009b). Also, the character 曰 (say) indicates a long-standing and still fresh oral context. There remain books beginning with nouns about the source of the world. For instance, there is “yi produces taiji 易有太极” in Book of Changes: The Great Treatise, “dayi大一 (or taiyi太一)” in Taiyi Produces Water (Tai Yi Sheng Shui, 太一生水), and “the clue of Tao” (道纪) and “There was something undefined and complete” (有物混成) in Lao Zi’s Dao De Jing. Actually, these forms of expression are directly inherited from the formulaic mythical narratives of ancient times. In the next part of this chapter, the opening of Qu Yuan’s poem “Questions to Heaven” will be analysed in order to discover how it is influenced by the creation myths passed on from mouth-to-mouth generations before its creation. This poem is generally deemed to be Qu Yuan’s original work in the history of literature. On closer observation, however, it is not difficult to find that the poem has its origins in the tradition of oral literature. It begins with 曰, to which Chen Benli, a scholar of the Qing Dynasty, annotated that the character 曰 (say) signifies the enlightenment of the ignorant (You 1982, 10). In addition, 曰clearly signals the intention of the poem, namely to educate people about Chinese civilization by virtue of creation myths. The following sentence reads: “Whoever has convey’d to us, Stories of the remotest past?”(Qu 2006, 59), which clearly indicates that what the poem is inquiring can be traced to remote past. As Wang Fuzhi commented, “In times of Yao and Shun, books of history appeared and in times of the Yellow Emperor, Chinese characters were invented by Cang Jie. The historical records of ancient times cannot be guaranteed to be true and complete since they are far away, not to mention the poor reliability of oral tradition” (You 1982, 10–11). It may be admitted, however, that ancient Chinese scholars made their living from their book knowledge; so it stands to reason that they should be sceptical about the capacity and durability

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of oral traditions. Nowadays, thanks to numerous field studies conducted by anthropologists on non-literate ethnicities in different continents, people are beginning to better understand the cultural foundations of the oral tradition that has lasted tens of thousands of years, and are convinced of the inheritance of culture existing before the invention of characters by Cang Jie. In addition, according to extant archaeological materials, there was no writing system in times of Yao and Shun and the Xia Dynasty except for a small number of carved markings, such as those inscribed on pottery. Therefore, Wang Fuzhi’s claim that “in times of Yao and Shun books of history appeared” is not grounded in reliable evidence. The most ancient and common form of oral tradition is the transmission of myths and legends, among which the type that describe the earliest beginnings of the world fall into the category of “creation myths”. In China, the researchers who are most interested in this kind of myth are those who study folk literature. It was, for example, due to the heated discussion regarding bamboo and silk documents triggered by the discovery of Taiyi Produces Water on the Guodian Chu bamboo slips that scholars studying the history of philosophy and thought began to pay greater attention to creation myths. Meanwhile, in western intellectual history, the concept of creation myths was inherited by later philosophers, who expanded their scope to encompass the broad concept “cosmogony”. People of ancient times, under the constant pressure of survival, showed little refined interest in the creation of the universe. Therefore, their inquiries into the formation of the world were certainly aimed at identifying evidence regarding their cultural origin and to construct common mythological beliefs so as to achieve a common cultural identity among their social groups. The attempt to “look for family roots” seemingly concerns the source of the universe, but its essence and function lies in the sacred construction of social ideology, including beliefs, history and royal pedigree. Hence, some creation myths, such as Genesis of the Old Testament and Japan’s first ancient book Kojiki, describing how the Creator created the world, point to the origin of human ancestors and of their own ethnic group. Other myths of creation, meanwhile, directly present evidence for cultural identity through the imperial pedigree from ancient times to their present. According to Apocrypha on the Book of Changes: Penetration into the Hexagram Qian (Yi Wei: Qian Zao Du, 易纬·乾凿度) (Shanghai Classics Publishing House 1994, 6), the Yellow Emperor said that Youxiong was deemed to be the most sacred among those ancient emperors and he initiated the formation of the universe by virtue of his extraordinary wisdom and power, derived from the sacred supernatural world. He understood the heart of heaven (heaven’s mandate) and created things out of his command. At first there was Taiyi. Then Taiji was formed, and Qian and Kun developed. Therefore, Youxiong is similar to Jehovah in Genesis of the Old Testament in the methods they used to create the world. However, not creating the world by means of speech distinguishes Youxiong from Jehovah, as does the idea proposed in the first chapter of Dao De Jing: “It was from the nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang. The name is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind” (Waley 1999b, 3). The stages in the creation initiated by Youxiong in the Penetration into the Hexagram Qian may be represented as follows:

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Youxiong 有熊 → Taiyi 太易 → Taiji 太极 → Qiankun乾坤. To learn from the inquisitiveness of Qu Yuan’s “Questions to Heaven”, the question of who Youxiong is immediately arises. Youxiong was the Yellow Emperor’s state name, according to Sima Qian’s Records of the Historian: Annals of the Five Emperors, while in Penetration into the Hexagram Qian Zheng Xuan considers Youxiong to be Fuxi, also named Paoxi or Cangya. Most researchers of Chinese myths are aware that Fuxi is also called “Huangxiong” (yellow bear), and it now appears that, for the Han people, “Youxiong” was the name for both Fuxi and the Yellow Emperor. But why is it that the two share the same name, while they are the first of the Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns respectively? According to the Penetration into the Hexagram Qian, Fuxi, who appeared in the Yellow Emperor’s oral account and lived prior to him, acquired the name Youxiong earlier than the latter, and given that the two have the same name, an inherited tribal connection or cultural identification between Youxiong and the Yellow Emperor clearly existed. Youxiong and Taiyi (太易) represent the same mythological cosmogony, portrayed in different ways. The former is a personification of this concept, presenting an analogy, and the latter presents the same concept in an abstract form. The former belongs to the age-old oral tradition of mythological narrative, while the latter represents the beginning of the non-mythical cosmology rooted in metaphysical reasoning that is found in written form, and philosophical discourses such as “Yi (易, change) producing Taiji”. By associating these two forms of cosmogony and inspecting the processes of creation they delineate, it is clear that Youxiong was regarded as the creator of the world. Hence, the significance of the holy name “Youxiong” merits a more in-depth exploration in terms of its philosophical implications. The Chinese character 有 in 有熊 (youxiong) not only denotes the common concept of “ownership” but indicates a sense of “existence” and “origin” from the perspective of cosmogony, corresponding to the creation myth “Youxiong at the beginning”. In other words, the ontology of “Youxiong” chimes with Laozi’s idea of “a unified entity”. Adopting “Youxiong” as the name of a clan, therefore, is like naming a clan as “Taiji” or “Taiyi”, which is not only a totem that stands for the clan’s ancestors but also a “certificate” of their sacred origin in the mythological narrative of history. It is said that a Youxiong State was established by a member of the Youxiong clan, which was recorded by Sima Qian in The Annals of the Five Emperors as follows: From The Huang-ti down to Shun and Yu they all had the same cognomen but adopted different designations for their states. With these they manifested the bright virtues (of the different rulers). For this reason, The Huang-ti was called Yu-hsiung (Youxiong), Emperor Chan-hsu was called Kao-yang. Emperor K’u was called Kao-hsn. Emperor Yao was Yao t’ang. 陶唐. Emperor Shun was Yu-yeu 有虞, and Emperor Yu was Hsia-hou夏后, but they had different nomens; he (Yu) had the cognomen Ssu. (Sima 1994, 17)

This line is likely to lead to the misunderstanding that the state of “Youxiong” was established by the Yellow Emperor. The annotations prove that the Yellow Emperor inherited the throne from his ancestors instead of establishing the state by himself.

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The Collected Analysis of Historian’s Records (Shi Ji Jie, 史记集解) quotes Qiao Zhou in saying that “The Yellow Emperor, the Emperor of Youxiong, is the son of Shaodian” (Takigawa 1986, 1), and Huangpu Mi once wrote that “Youxiong was located at Xinzheng, Henan”. Given that Qiao Zhou lived in the Three Kingdoms period and Huangpu Mi in the Jin Dynasty, it can be seen that the geographic location of the Youxiong State was clear even to the people of the Han and Jin era. This could be why Xinzheng was certified as the Yellow Emperor’s hometown by the State Councils of China in 2006. In the Han Dynasty, Ban Gu commented in Virtuous discussions of the White Tiger Hall: Title (Bai Hu Tong: Hao, 白虎通·号), “After the Yellow Emperor’s unification of the whole kingdom, he named himself Youxiong, which signified the greatest dao and de”. On closer observation of the original meaning of dao and de, one can find that dao indicates the source and vitality of the universe, while de signifies the vital energy that can be acquired by individuals. The thing or person who has “the greatest dao and de” is the driving force behind the formation of the world in the mythological narratives. In Daoist mythology the source of the universe is personified in the form of Hundun (浑沌, primitive chaos), who died after Shu, the emperor of South Sea representing time, and Hu, the emperor of North Sea representing space, made eyes, ears, nostrils and mouth for him. Meanwhile, the non-personified name of the source of all things is described as “something formless yet complete that existed before heaven and earth”. It is called dayi (great one) or taiyi (supreme one) in the Guodian Chu Slips and takes the form of “Hundun producing water” in the Yi people’s mythic epic Leeteyi (Zhu 1985, 94). This author has proposed this mythological motif refers to “the original water” (Ye 1992, 354–458). The metaphysical concept of Taiyi and the physical conceptualization of Daxiong (big bear) or Tianxiong (heavenly bear) should be combined so as to conduct further exploration, supplemented with archaeological materials. Turning to the Chinese character 熊 (xiong) in Youxiong, which is rich in historic meaning and was first written as 能 (neng). According to modern dictionaries, “neng” was originally “a legendary beast”, an explanation which can be traced back to the inherited literature. For instance, in Discourses of the States one finds the following statement: “Last night I dreamed about neng entering my room and I was so scared that I fainted. Is it an evil spirit?”, on which Wei Zhao commented “Neng is similar to xiong”. In addition, Liang Renfang in The Tales of the Marvellous (Shu Yi Ji, 述异记) wrote: “Gun was appointed by Yao to control the floods, but he was not competent and was killed by Yao on Mount Yushan. After he died, Gun transformed into Huangxiong (yellow bear) and rested in Yuquan. Today, when people came to the temple in the Kuaiji Mountain to pay tribute to Yu, they used the name Huangneng instead of Huangxiong. Afterwards, terrestrial animals were called xiong and those living in water were called neng”. The aquatic animal “neng” mentioned here refers to animals similar to turtles and fish named “tripodal turtles” in myths. Similar examples of the application of “neng” can be found in many ancient documents. To summarize, compared to the Chinese character 熊 that appeared later, 能 is a significant philosophical concept with rich connotations, symbolizing a giant terrestrial

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animal as a physical archetype, and in some cases even the aquatic animal tripodal turtle. Similarly, there may be a physical archetype in myths that corresponds to the abstract concepts of dayi or taiyi. This archetype appears to be the largest land carnivorous bear. The most direct and convincing evidence for can be seen through lines from Taiyi Produces Water recorded on the Guodian Chu slips (Liu 2003, 45–46). Taiyi is concealed in water and operates with the seasons. The process rolls on in cycles, in which taiyi is the Mother of all things. In the process of neng (yi) surplus and neng (yi) deficiency (being surplus and deficient now and then), Taiyi itself is the regularity which heaven cannot destroy, which earth cannot eliminate, and which yin and yang cannot form. As to this, wise men call it (dao)…

The phrase 能缺能盈 (neng deficiency and neng surplus) is explained by modern annotators as 一缺一盈 (yi deficiency and yi surplus), which would indicate that “neng” and “yi” are a pair of interchangeable words. Given that xiong (bear) derives from “neng”, “neng surplus and neng deficiency” can be understood as “xiong surplus and xiong deficiency”, and from the perspective of the mythological philosophy of the time of these lines being written, the fact that 熊 (xiong, bear) and 一 (yi, one) are interchangeable in pre-Qing writing deserves in-depth consideration. The idea “being surplus and deficient now and then” seems to stem from the fact that, as human beings had observed by this time, bears put on weight in the autumn to prepare for a long hibernation and lose weight in early spring. In bamboo documents of the Warring State Period, the character 能 (neng) is attached with a羽 (yu) on the top, and this variant of the character 熊 (xiong) is considered to be a mythic image, such as the “flying bear” and “eagle bear” in the ancient arts, examples of which can be found from excavated objects like the eagle-headed bear marble sculpture unearthed from No.1001 Tomb in the Yin Ruins at Houjiazhuang (Su 1984) and the flying bear-shaped crystal vase of the Western Han Dynasty used for fending off evil (Gu 2005). The expression “neng deficiency and neng surplus” (能缺能盈) or “yi deficiency and yi surplus” (一缺一盈) emphasizes how the bear’s annual cyclic activity is in line with changing seasons. From the perspective of mythological thinking, people worshiped bears because they were considered deities or immortals that could revive from death; meanwhile, humans sought to imitate the bear’s seasonal work and rest cycle, according to the principles of bionics. For instance, the ancestral state of the Chu people was called Xiongying (熊盈, bear surplus). Through the lines “I am the descendant of Zhuanxu” from Qu Yuan’s “Lisao”, it is known that the Chu people regarded Zhuanxu as their ancestor, the offspring of Youxiong, and the Yellow Emperor. Thus, it may be concluded that the state of Xiongying and the state of Youxiong are of the same origin. This in turn makes it easier to solve the question of why more than twenty emperors of Chu adopted names related to the bear. Those who have read The Classic of Mountains and Seas must feel it is natural to connect it to the myth of the bear mountains and lairs. It is said that bear caves close in winter and open in summer, in which time deities frequently appear, in

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accordance with the understanding that the deity bear dies during hibernation and revives in spring and summer in a cyclic manner. Also, the correspondence between “xiong” (bear) and “yi” (one) in these myths exposes the fact that as the source of all things in two different types of creation myths, “taiyi or dayi” and “daxiong or tianxiong” are almost synonymous. As thought developed from the concrete to the abstract, the creation myth of “Tianxiong at the beginning” may be prior to that of Taiyi producing water. It is said that the capital of the Youxiong state established by the Yellow Emperor was in Xinzheng, Henan Province, just as the record in Comprehensive Statutes: The Local Administration (Tong Dian: Zhou Jun Qi, 通典·州郡七) reads: “The State Youxiong, established by the Yellow Emperor, was founded on the Zhurong ruins where two rivers called Qin and You existed”. This passage indicates a relationship among the Yellow Emperor, Zhurong and Youxiong, which merits in-depth analysis. Chu people observed a fixed pattern of Laotong—Zhurong—Yuxiong (老童—祝 融—鬻熊) in offering sacrifices to the three ancestors, as shown in the texts on the bamboo slips of Chu unearthed in Baoshan, Wangshan and Xincai. The relationship that each of the three ancestors has with the Chinese creation myth can be ascertained by examining them on an individual basis. Firstly, it is obvious that Laotong was a typical mythological image in view of his identity and talent as the descendant of the Yellow Emperor and the son of Zhuanxu. According to “The Great Wilderness: the West” of The Classic of Mountains and Seas, Zhuanxu’s ability to return to life after death is recorded, which is strongly associated with the hibernation and awakening of bears. Although Laotong’s powers are not attested to in historical documents, it is not difficult to speculate on their nature through looking at the name “Laotong” (aged child), which indicates the ability to return to boyhood from old age, implying that Laotong can return to life after death. The rebirth of Zhuanxu is a mythological representation of bears awakening from hibernation, and Laotong’s power of restoring his youth is clearly representative of the same seasonal transformations seen in many forms of life—the land bears, aquatic fish and turtles, and the fish-snake amphibious animal seen in myths. There is more than one name for Zhurong, the descendant of Laotong, used in ancient books. Here are some examples. The Classic of Mountains and Seas states: “Zhuanxu gave birth to Laotong. Laotong gave birth to Chong and Li. The God of Heaven ordered Chong to hold up the sky and Li to press down the earth” (ibid., 295). In The Rites of Zhou it is recorded that “Zhuanxu’s son was called Li or Zhurong, who was worshipped as god of the kitchen.” So, it can be concluded that Chongli or Li and Zhurong are two names for the same person. According to Li Kai and Gu Tao’s research (2007), “Changqin长琴” of The Classic of Mountains and Seas, “Neixiong内熊” of Records of ritual matters by Dai the Elder (Da Dai Li Ji, 大戴 礼记), “Yuxiong鬻熊” of The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming and The Records of the Historian and “Chiyan媸酓” of the bamboo slips of Chu unearthed in Baoshan and Wangshan are actually all the same person. Among the three ancestors Laotong, Zhurong and Yuxiong, most scholars agree that Laotong had the ability to renew his youth, and that Yuxiong (鬻熊) is Xuexiong (穴熊), whose image was based on myths about bear caves (xue, 穴) closing in

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winter and opening in summer corresponding with the deity bear’s hibernation and re-awakening (Ye 2008e). The name Yuxiong is derived from Zhurong through a change in the latter’s pronunciation, an opinion first proposed by Jian Bozan in a Brief History of China and later by Bi Changpu, Wen Chongyi and Mitarai Masaru. For example, Mitarai Masaru (1975) held that Zhurong, Luzhong and Yuxiong are all merely phonetic variations. Wen Chongyi (1967, 9) pointed out that most of the Chu royal family were legendary figures, and the narratives about them are probably made up. Now, if one examines the genealogy of Chu from the perspective of “mythistory”, it seems clearer that it stems from creation myths featuring Tianxiong as the creator, and the myth in which Zhurong is the creator is nothing but another form of that same creation story. Therefore, if Fuxi corresponds to Youxiong (Tianxiong), then the transition from “Youxiong at the beginning” to “Yi produces Taiji” is a philosophical development. If the Yellow Emperor is Youxiong, then the genealogy considers the Yellow Emperor as the earliest ancestor. As is stated in Generational Records (Shi Ben, 世本): “The Yellow Emperor gave birth to Changyi. Changyi gave birth to Zhuanxu. Zhuanxu gave birth to Gun”. Referring to “Zhuanxu gave birth to Laotong, Laotong to Zhurong and Zhurong to Taizichangqin” in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, as the creator of the world, Fuxi, the Yellow Emperor and Zhuanxu can all be considered incarnations of Youxiong. It is interesting to note that Fuxi and the Yellow Emperor, as the heads of the Three Emperors and Five Sovereigns respectively, are both identified with the sacred name Youxiong. Since in The Records of the Historian Sima Qian only narrated the story in which the Yellow Emperor is the first ancestor of humanity, overlooking the narrative in which Fuxi is the creator, creation myths concerning the bear deity as the source of all things became almost unknown. But thanks to the remaining documents of The Book of Wei (Wei Shu, 魏书) and The Silk Book of Chu, the hidden relation between these two stories is presented and can be reconstructed. This author has analysed the clan pedigree of the Yellow Emperor as the archetype of creation myths and put forward a narrative type in which the sun is the creator. What now needs to be added is that the myth in which the sun is the creator and the myth that regards the deity bear as the creator actually correspond with each other metaphorically. The cycle of the bear’s hibernation and awakening is in line with that of the sun’s yearly path. From the perspective of mythological imagery, while the sun is born from dark chaos, the deity bear is actually the personified image of chaos, or perhaps even existed before chaos, the archetype of which can be found in the inherited literature Penetration into the Hexagram Qian and the excavated literature The Silk Book of Chu.

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11.5 The Second Type of Evidence: The Myth of Youxiong in the Silk Book of Chu Books like Penetration into the Hexagram Qian did not receive enough attention in a climate where the study of Confucian classics occupied the mainstream position. From 1949 onwards, researchers of mythology tended to overlook the creation myth of Youxiong recorded in such documents. It was not until the excavation of the silk books that the motif of Youxiong came to be considered seriously. Both from the State Chu in the Western Zhou Dynasty, the silk books excavated from Zidanku, Changsha, Hunan Province in the 1940s as well as bamboo slips from Guodian, Hubei Province in the 1990s verified the credibility and date of creation of the Penetration into the Hexagram Qian—it was likely from the pre-Qin period. First and foremost, the view of “Youxiong at the beginning” was supported by the opening sentence, “It is said in ancient history there is Tianxiong or Daxiong” in Sheet One in The Silk Book of Chu. Secondly, the sentence provides circumstantial evidence as to another name of Emperor Fuxi—Youxiong, presenting its source as the creation myth “in vogue” during pre-Qin period. Thirdly, the similarity between the of views of creation presented in Taiyi Produces Water, the discourse on the Guodian slips, and Penetration into the Hexagram Qian indicate that the source materials, choice of words and concepts explored in all draw from the beliefs of a common era, as pointed out by Xing Wen: If the meanings of taiji (太极) and taiyi (太一) were really not at odds with each other, the basic theoretical framework and materials of the two scripts, as it were, stem almost from the same origin, despite a different emphasis in the discourse of Penetration into the Hexagram Qian and Taiyi Produces Water. (Xing 2000, 222)

In terms of abstraction and theorization, Penetration into the Hexagram Qian is not as sophisticated as Taiyi Produces Water. Comparatively speaking, its narrative is closer to that of Sheet One in The Silk Book of Chu. People tend to think the newly excavated documents of Chu are about the people and their achievements in the State of Chu during Warring States Period. Actually, the Chu inherited the culture of the Shang Dynasty. Not having been rejected by the Confucian rationalism of the Central Plain, the early written documents of Chu contain not only information about Chu, but the ancient myths and mythological figures of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties, especially notable for its inclusion of rare cultural elements from before the Western Zhou Dynasty. This is a necessary conceptual background for one to examine the bamboo slips and silk book of Chu effectively. Some scholars such as Guo Moruo, Tong Shuye, Chen Mengjia and Xiao Bin held the view that as recorded in The Remaining Zhou Documents, the name of Yuxiong, the ancestor of Chu, can be traced back to the seventeen states of the Xiongying clan which revolted after King Wu overthrew the Shang Dynasty. The states of the Xiongying clan rose up against the reign of the Zhou Dynasty during the transitional period between the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, as they and the people of Shang belonged to the same ethnic group called Huaiyi, a minority from the Huai River Basin. The Xiongying clan was an ally of the Shang in the east. It was repressed by the

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Zhou people and forced to migrate southward to the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, which becomes the origin of the Chu culture (cf. Guo 1958; Tong 1983; Xiao 1990). With such a complex cultural background, it is not surprising that the records on some of the unearthed documents from Chu are different from those of inherited literature north of the Central Plain. The former contain some characters such as Nütian (female emperor) and 12 gods absent in the ancient classics. Since people are used to applying what they already know to solving something unknown, they simply equate Nütian with Nüwa. The real identity of Nütian will remain a mystery unless new evidence emerges. However, at present, there is no choice but to regard Nütian as Nüwa so as to adapt to the current framework of myths. Hereinafter, this author will reveal the motif of “Daxiong or Tianxiong” (the Big Bear or the Heavenly Bear), which plays a leading part in the creation story of Sheet One in The Silk Book of Chu, and he will explore its mythological connotations with reference to the special meaning of xiong (bear) in the names and the Chu people as analysed in the previous section. The text of “Sheet One” in The Silk Book of Chu (cf. Rao 1993; Chen 2005; Li 1985) can be divided into two main sections. The first part addresses the period from when Daxiong started to produce the universe to the time when the four seasons formed a year (cf. Gao 2007). The second part is about the establishment of the four directions, the sun and the moon, the nine regions, spatial dimensions and earths poles, as well as the cycle of day and night. The first part, which explains the emergence of the seasons, is apparently consistent with the text of Taiyi Produces Water in terms of its theme and structure. The Silk Book, like the mythological literature, tends to use more story-telling and personified narratives, while the Guodian Chu slips are more philosophical and abstract, in which the creation story does not involve a personified god, and the whole passage is led by the metaphysical concept—taiyi. Its archetype is hidden in the alternating change of xiongque (熊缺, bear deficiency) and xiongying (熊盈, bear surplus), which is the physiological change of the bear’s gaining or losing of weight in accordance with the seasons. In the text of Taiyi Produces Water, yi (one) can be used to replace xiong (bear), which makes sense both in terms of logic and grammar. But there is no adequate reason for such a replacement. The bear, the largest animal on land as far as the primitive ancestors were observed, already represented the life cycle in mythological thought. Both the myth of “Deities appear in bear caves which close in winter and open in summer” in The Classic of Mountains and Rivers and the idea that bears are hibernating animals in Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters provide helpful hints for the interpretation of the origins of the belief and idea in “Youxiong at the beginning”. When analyzing the theories of the nature of the universe in Greek philosophy, the Dutch archaeologist Henri Frankford (1949, 26), who focused on the creation myths of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, paved the way for research that traced the development from myth to philosophy. His approach was pragmatic, stating that in mythological thinking deities were used by the ancients to explain phenomenal occurrences by means of personification. The mythical explanations, over time becoming non-personification, eventually became philosophy.

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To take the three books as a whole, the transition from mythological story to theoretical deduction seems evident. The creation myth in The Silk Book of Chu is personified, while that in Penetration into the Hexagram Qian is half-personified and half-abstract, and the narrative about cosmology in Taiyi Produces Water is entirely non-personified. A myriad of descriptions of chaos are given in the introductory part of the Silk Book of Chu. Penetration into the Hexagram Qian retains images like the personified Youxiong, which represent physical archetypes of the abstract concepts that appear in the text like taiyi, taiji and qiankun. In contrast, Taiyi Produces Water abandons personified expressions in creation myths; reasoning, instead, takes its place, although words such as “heaven and earth”, “deities” and “sages” still remain. Moreover, the theory about the nature of the universe had been rendered as the basis of reasoning in philosophy about life. At the end of Taiyi Produces Water, practical tips to adapt to changes in life are also listed, like “It is the heavenly way to behave weakly” and “Achieving success while being safe and sound”. In the long process of additions and deletions, the mythological view of the creation myth—Youxiong at the beginning— became lost, and the value of unity of heaven and man in Confucianism and the Daoist outlook that life is an eternal process of change and transformation began to develop. Amid the contention of a hundred schools of thought in the Warring States Period, Confucianism and Daoism stood out in both their cooperation as well as competition. In stark contrast, “Daxiong” or “Youxiong”, the archetype of Dayi, had been wholly discarded and forgotten through the transformation of official ideology in the Han Dynasty. It only appeared in discussions of the pedigree of Emperor Fuxi and the Yellow Emperor, or as an inexplicable symbol in the codified system of honorific titles of emperors from ancient times. Through the brief comparison above, one can plainly see that there are no absence of metaphysical narratives relating to the creation myth, and no lack of metaphysical words that are popular within theories of the universe. Both profound and fundamental, the former seem to originate from the oral culture of the Xia and Shang Dynasties and perhaps to even earlier pre-historical ages; the latter, however, derives from the former and came into existence in the Warring States Period. Scholars prior to 1900 were denied access to the ideas of myth and philosophy, and showed a level of indifference to the Chinese spiritual heritage. Owing to the eastward transmission of Western sciences in the twentieth century, even scholars who had gained new perspectives on mythology and philosophy could still not reconcile the two disciplines, since they were limited in their approach by rigid subject departmentalism. This led to them ignoring the Youxiong creation myth. At the beginning of this century, scholars gradually realized certain correlations between the disciplines, as well as certain rules governing a causal relation between myth and philosophy, and there was a consequent boom in research into the bamboo slips of Chu. It is time to broaden horizons and to investigate all scripts, new or old, such as The Silk Book of Chu, Penetration into the Hexagram Qian, Taiyi Produces Water and The Book of Changes: Xi Ci through interdisciplinary research. They not only show a development from concrete myth to abstract philosophy, but exhibit the diversity and richness

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of the Chinese creation myth. They also shed light on certain metaphysical concepts like taiyi and taiji, which are very difficult to understand for later generations.

11.6 The Third Type of Evidence: Interpreting Xuanyuan, Youxiong, Tianxiong and Xuexiong The preceding section has explained the myth of Youxiong and the narrative of “xiong deficiency and xiong surplus” in Taiyi Produces Water with reference to myths about the seasonal cycles of bear hibernation. It is not hard to see that analysing the etymology of the word xiong is itself the best proof for demonstrating the symbolic status of bear as the origin and driving force of life in universe. The metaphysical extension of neng (able, 能) comes directly from its physical forebear xiong (熊, bear). The original meaning of the word neng is related to the bear’s hibernation in ancient mythological belief. The oral narration about Youxiong among the residents of Xiong Village (Neng Village) in Xinzheng, Henan Province, known as the hometown of the Yellow Emperor, reflects the correlation between zhongyang (中央, the centre), the Yellow Emperor and Youxiong (Jing, 2007). This author regards such oral cultural heritage, full of liveliness as it is, as the third type of evidence. According to the logic of Chinese myths—the unity of heaven and man, such earthly concepts as Zhongyang, the Yellow Emperor and Youxiong have their archetypes in the skies. From the perspective of myths regarding celestial phenomena, the following section will discuss the relationship between concepts such as dayi ( 大一), taiyi (太一) and taiyi (太乙) and the archetype for the pole star, as well as the analogical meaning of myths about the Big Dipper rotating around the pole star. The Big Dipper is also named “the Chariot of the Emperor” in ancient Chinese, as well as “the Great Bear” in the astrological myths of Babylon and ancient Greece. “The Chariot of the Emperor” in China and “the Great Bear” in the West, which seem to be accidentally correlated, actually contain some cultural secrets. In light of the Chinese metaphorical understanding of the night sky, in which the central unmoving star represents the heavenly emperor, around which lesser gods (stars) rotate, one can analyse the celestial myths related to the Yellow Emperor and the relevance between “Xuanyuan” and “Youxiong”, two other names of the Yellow Emperor, thereby demonstrating the nature of the relationship between the Chariot of the Emperor and Xuanyuan, and between Daxiong and the Great Bear. The celestial phenomenon whereby the pole star hangs fixedly in the centre with other stars rotating around it can be interpreted as showing the emperor enjoying central status. This is based on ancient peoples’ general experience of looking up at the stars in the sky, These kinds of mythological ideas held quite a lot of weight in primitive times, as can be proved by a metaphorical quote in Confucius’ The Analects of Confucius: Politics: “The Master said, ‘He who rules by moral force (de) is like the pole-star, which remains in its place while all the lesser stars do homage

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to it’”(Waley 1999a, 11). The pole star occupies the centre of the sky, with all lesser stars rotating around it. This is also true of virtuous rulers, since people are willing to pay allegiance to them. According to the mythological associations made by ancient peoples, the pole star was regarded as the Chariot of the Emperor of Heaven. A round trip lasted one year. Meanwhile, based on the rotation of the Chariot of the Emperor of Heaven, observers divided one year into the two halves of yin and yang, four seasons and twenty-four solar terms, as recorded in Huainanzi: Celestial patterns: “The God of Heaven casts the Four Tugs and lets Big Dipper circumrotate around them. Big Dipper passes by a Chen per month, and then returns to its original position. During the first month the Handle of Big Dipper points to Yin, and during the twelfth month, to Chou. It takes a year to finish the circumrotation, and then this process goes round and round” (Zhai and Mu 2010, 245). The concept taiyi (太一) or taiyi (太乙) correlates with dao or tao—the core idea of Daoism. This refers to the origin and nature of the universe. According to Zhuangzi: Under the Heaven, “They established their viewpoint of ‘original existence’ and ‘original non-existence’ and the core of their view is the ‘absolute Tao’” (Wang 1999, 588). It is said in The Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei that “Tao is the subtlest thing. No one can describe its shape or address it by name. If a name must be given, call it ‘Tai Yi’ (or the Great One)” (Lü 2005, 155). Also, the concept of taiyi implies a supreme god behind its philosophical ideas, as written in The Records of the Historian, “Taiyi is supreme among the gods”. According to Sima Zhen’s annotations, Tianyi and Taiyi are alternative names for the god of the North Pole, and the Big Dipper is the star of the emperor. According to the logic behind the unity of heaven and man, the Big Dipper was identified as the centre of the heavens, corresponding to the centre of the earth in the Central Plain— the location of the Mount Song among the Five Mountains. In terms of mythological geography, the Big Dipper corresponds to the Central Mountains of The Classic of Mountains and Seas. It is notable that bear mountains and lairs are located in the Central Mountains, which is consistent with the central position of the polar star up in the sky. It has been mentioned that the State of Youxiong is located in the Central Plain (today’s Henan Province). Today, residents in Xinzheng, Henan Province, believe that their locality is the birthplace of the Yellow Emperor (a member of the Youxiong clan). This author interviewed Professor Chen Jiangfeng, a senior researcher of Central Plain mythology, on October 17, 2009, and learned that the story of the “heavenly centre stone” had been quite prevalent among local residents, and that they had kept the “real stone”, a symbolic item passed down from ancient times. The stone traditionally marks the centre of the Central Plain, and thus symbolically corresponds with the Pole star, which sits at the centre of heaven. According to Chen (2005, 232), the ancient peoples of the Central Plain regarded the heavenly centre stone as a symbol to define the centre of the earth and its connection with heaven, as well as seeing it as a cultural item which embodied respect for the centre and the worship of heaven. The widespread belief and myths about the heavenly centre stone in the original land of the Youxiong State offer a general explanation for the events recorded in Rong Cheng Shi by which Yu (the founder of the Xia Dynasty)

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established the central bear flag, as well as the phenomenon by which the bear is always placed in central position in archaeological images. This helps to explain the various unsolved cultural phenomena in primitive times by which Xiong (bear) was honoured as sacred name, such as Youxiong, Daxiong, Xuexiong, Xiongyin and Xionghu. The third type of evidence helps uncover the hidden relationship between Xuanyuan and Youxiong—two names of the Yellow Emperor.

11.7 The Fourth Type of Evidence: Bear Chariot of Emperor Xuanyuan Since this author’s investigation of the bear totem myth in 2006 onwards, it has been noted that the mysteries surrounding some images of the bear have not yet been solved. In the book Bear Totem, this author proposes that the shape of the double beast (mostly bear-like) heads always appear in jade huang ritual instruments used in sacrifices to the North. The inspiration for their design could date back to the three-hole jade carvings with double beast heads unearthed at the Hongshan site (Ye 2007a). The specific nature of bears as mythic animals to the North remains unclear. Later, this author noticed that images of bears and red birds stand opposite one another on many cultural relics. In addition to the familiar four-deity system—eastern blue dragon, western white tiger, southern red bird and northern black tortoise, is there an example of a deity bear image from before the popularization of the “red bird in the north” image on cultural relics of the Han Dynasty? A pair of bronze objects unearthed from the tomb of Prince Liu Sheng of the Western Han Dynasty in Mancheng, Hebei Province, present a marvellous composition of a bear standing on a bird (Fig. 11.2). In contrast, a pedestal excavated at the Fig. 11.2 Bronzes in the shape of bear treading on a bird unearthed from a tomb of the Han Dynasty, Mancheng, Hebei Province. Photographed at the Hebei Museum

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site of the Guangming beverage factory in Jinghe industrial park, Shaanxi Province, demonstrates another unique composition: a tortoise with a bird perching on its back. In comparing the two images, it is clear that the deity bear and the tortoise hold a somewhat interchangeable role. That is to say that the bear once served as the symbol of the North before the worship of the red bird came into existence. But why would bears be the only beings to have such a connection with the North? This fact can largely be attributed to the myths of astronomy and astrology that existed at that time. The Big Dipper being called the Great Bear in Babylon and Greece was a result of nothing more than visual observations. Although there is no clear record of the Great Bear and Little Bear constellations in ancient Chinese astronomical concepts, it is likely that ancient peoples also made mythological analogies of what they saw. Figure 11.3 shows the deity bear placed in central position of the composition, with the Queen Mother of the West and the moon on the left, and the Duke of the East and the sun to its right. The deity bear is thus symbolically located in the position of the Big Dipper, also known as the star of the emperor. In ancient myths, the bear variably occupies both the central northern position, corresponding to the red bird. Yet the symbolism of the bear in the central position is not clear. Moreover, some Han Dynasty stone reliefs display the image of the deity bear and a cypress, which together are regarded as a symbol of vitality. As told in the Chu bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi (容成氏), Yu set up the system of five directional flags, in which the sun, moon, snake and bird represented the four directions of east, west, south and north respectively, surrounding and protecting the deity bear, represented in the central flag, like the stars rotating around the Big Dipper. Observing the celestial phenomena of the heavens thus helps to answer the question of how such imagery was formed. Figure 11.4 shows the model of the chariot of the emperor, represented by the Big Dipper in the stone relief of the Han Dynasty. The four stars at the head of the dipper symbolise the carriage of the chariot, while the three stars that form the handle represent the shafts. On the chariot sits the Emperor of the Central Heaven, who is surrounded by divine birds. Figure 11.5 displays the mysterious chariotshaped bronze excavated from the tomb of Qing Shi Huang’s ancestors in Lixian, Gansu Province. There is no appropriate explanation for its shape and usage. If it Fig. 11.3 A stone lintel relief of a Han Dynasty tomb unearthed at Dabaodang, Shenmu, Shaanxi Province. Photographed at the Yulin Museum

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Fig. 11.4 The image of the chariot of the emperor represented by the Big Dipper based on the stone relief carving of the Han Dynasty. Photographed at the Beijing Planetarium

Fig. 11.5 A chariot-shape bronze unearthed from the tombs of the ancestors of Qin Shi Huang in Lixian, Gansu Province, showing the relationship between the central deity bear and the four directions. Photographed at the Lixian Museum

is to be believed that the Qin people are the descendants of Zhuanxu, they must also be descendants of the Yellow Emperor. Li Xuanbo argued that the name of the Qin people should be interchangeable with “xiong”. Their ancestors were conferred the land of Qin for their contributions to horse-breeding on the western frontier. The bronze carriages used in ancient times, which were used as sacrificial vessels of symbolic significance in ancient myths, are different from the practical carriages excavated alongside the terracotta army of Qin Shi Huang. The bronze carriages surrounded by four birds and four tigers may symbolise the chariot of the emperor, while the deity bear in the top centre embodies the totemic memory of the ancestors Zhuanxu and the Yellow Emperor, both of the Youxiong clan.

11.8 The Fourth Type of Evidence: Mythological Interpretations of the Three-Hole Jade with Double Bear Heads of the Hongshan Culture Nothing more appropriately captures the mystical image of flying bear (or heavenly bear) and their ability to travel between heaven and earth than the three-hole jade designs with double bear heads of the Hongshan culture (Fig. 11.6). In Niuheliang

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Fig. 11.6 Three-hole jade with double bear heads of the Hongshan culture, photographed at the Liaoning Provincial Museum in 2009

Hongshan Cultural Relics and Jade Selections compiled by the Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, this jade image is called “three-hole jade with double beast heads” (1997, 54), with the caption below the picture: “Unearthed in the second tomb of Locality 16 of Niuheliang, it is a blueish white jade with three holes in the body and a hole at the bottom. The animal heads at both ends are carved in a realistic way. It has short round ears, rhombus eyes and round pouty lips. The image is more like a pig than a bear. This kind of object is not an isolated example in Hongshan tombs. Besides the holes, some have the tenons at the bottom, which are speculated to be the recombiners”. Quite a few similar three-hole jades have been unearthed from Hongshan cultural sites, including both double-beast-head and double-human-head ones. The former is called the “three-hole ornament with double bear heads” by Guo Dashun in Hongshan Culture (2005 144), “annulus with double beast heads” by Gu Fang (2006, 374), “three conjoined jade with double pig heads at ends” by Li Xinwei (2006, 350) and many other different names. The shape resembles a “three-arch shaped bridge”— a mythical bridge-like a rainbow that clearly played a role in connecting heaven and earth. Therefore, it is reasonable to suppose that the three-hole jades, more complicated in design to imitate the colorful mythical imagination, acted as symbols for traversing the earth, the heavens and the human world. The image of double bear heads symbolises Tianxiong’s divine power of being able to travel between heaven and earth. Every hole forms a ring standing for the rainbow bridge between heaven and earth on top, joining the hidden symmetrical bridge underneath. Unlike semi-circular jade huang, these mythical images find parallels in Indian myths—copper rings (bracelet) and copper bears. In The Way of the Masks, the mythologist Lévi-Strauss (1992, 99–100) gave a famous structural analysis of these pieces. By comparing three-hole jades of the Hongshan culture with Indian copper rings and bears, it can be found that though the materials used differ, the mythical thought and symbolism—the symbolic image—remain the same. Among the surviving Hongshan culture relics, bear-shaped jades are fewer than jade rings and bracelets, which might be the result of the limitation of sculpting techniques available at that time. Guo Dashun, Gu Fang and other scholars appraised the three-hole jade with double bear heads in terms of the process used in crafting it, acknowledging its uniqueness

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among all the jades—the bear heads are engraved with the most difficult round jade-carving technique. Jades of the Hongshan culture are rarely carved in this way, so it is obvious that Hongshan people valued and were familiar with the carvings of bears, reflecting the tradition of offering sacrifices to bears in their culture. Hongshan shamans put bear-dragon jade carvings on their clothes to increase their supernatural power through the deity bear’s resolution, courage and invincibility. (Gu 2006, 374)

It is acknowledged that the three-hole jade with double bear heads is a Shamanistic artifact. What, then, is its hidden specific meaning and purpose? Reconstructing the origins of mythological views is an effective way to interpret the images present on cultural relics. The third type of evidence provides vivid examples of mythical thoughts and how they are logically connected to images. The picture below, cited from The Way of the Masks (1992, 45), displays the mythical image on a hanging ornament used in Kwakiutl’s ritual, with a lifelike compound mask of double-headed snakes at both ends and the bear god in the middle. The two snakes appear like the bear god’s stretched forelegs and paws and the bear’s body appears as a connecting copper pillar, similar to totem pole, with a rainbow bridge above and a crow spreading its wings on both sides of the bridge. The mysterious connotations of the three-hole jade with double bear heads can be revealed by means of comparison. The combined use of ring and bear imagery should be interpreted as making clear that the creature depicted is a god from heaven rather than a beast in the forest. Or else, according to the nomenclature in the Silk Book of Chu and the Nihongi, it is directly called “Tianxiong”. Therefore, an elementary understanding of the mythical background of “Youxiong” worship in the time of the Yellow Emperor, dating to 5000 years ago, has been achieved. It is not hard to understand why the name Youxiong appeared before Xuanyuan. To summarize, the Yellow Emperor’s names Xuanyuan and Youxiong are reflected by three symbols, namely jade huang (heavenly bridge), heavenly vehicles (Xuanyuan) and the heavenly bear (Youxiong), together expressing a relatively unified mythical theme through three different mythical images—the unity of heaven and man through communication between humans and gods. In the household legend of the Yellow Emperor riding a dragon up to the heaven, the three mythical names are finally united in one narrative plot.

11.9 Is the Lion the Symbol of China? It is commonly known that the lion is a key feature of Chinese culture. Nowadays it is not surprising to see a pair of stone lions placed at the gates of temples, palaces, courts, government buildings and shops in China. From the stone and bronze lions found at the Imperial Palace and the Summer Palace in Beijing, to the stone lions at the gate of Haikou Confucius Temple in Hainan, it is obvious that this decorative tradition originated from ancient customs, and was not created in recent times. Yet the specific time of creation for this tradition remains unknown.

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Fig. 11.7 Heavenly bear motif of the Western Han Dynasty: A bronze chariot ornament unearthed from the Han tomb of the King of Jiangdu at Dayunshan, Xuyi County, Jiangsu Province. Photographed at the Nanjing Museum

The sociology of knowledge is an emerging discipline that teaches that knowledge is neither pure, nor objective. Any “knowledge” in any given society is artificially constructed within a specific ideological context. From the Black Sea and the Pamir Mountains and the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in Eurasia eastward to the Pacific coast, the lion, as a large land-based animal, has not existed since ancient times. Today, people acquire knowledge of lions mainly from the direct experience of seeing those that have been imported into zoos, or indirectly from the TV programs like Animal World, filmed in Africa. Why might the lion be the symbol of Chinese culture, given that lions do not live in the countries of central and east Asia, including China? Put another way, why would Chinese people acknowledge and revere something that does not exist in their own land as a cultural symbol? In East Asia, where do lions, both in reality and popular imagination, come from? At what time were they known, and in what way? The above question concerns the origin of culture, highlighting the importance of going back to the roots of Chinese civilization. Without understanding the relative cultural origins of nay given practice or symbol, one cannot tell indigenous traditions from those of foreign countries. In short, there has been no sign of lions among the artifacts of the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. From the Qin and Han Dynasties on, the lion appeared and became popular in Chinese civilization. When it comes to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the lion dance, a completely foreign cultural tradition originating in Persia, was wrongly assumed to be a native custom. It is not easy, therefore, for modern people to distinguish the native from the foreign when it comes to ancient traditions. As a result, this mistake has been left uncorrected. In order to reaffirm the symbols of Chinese cultural industry, one needs to restore the truth of the heavenly bear myth behind the Yellow Emperor’s clan name Youxiong, and to re-establish the deity bear as an iconic symbol of Chinese civilization (Fig. 11.7).

Chapter 12

Conferring Rui: The Mythistory of Yao and Shun

12.1 Is the Legend of Yao and Shun True? The expression “Confucius handed down the doctrines of Yao and Shun, as if they had been his ancestors, and elegantly displayed the regulations of Wen and Wu taking them as his model” (Legge 1893, 427) is a brief summary of the deep veneration for ancient sage kings held by Confucius and the Confucian School. However, thanks to Sima Qian, who added narratives about the Yan Emperor and Yellow Emperor based on oral folktales when compiling The Records of the Historian, it is now known that ancient history did not start with Yao and Shun. Without his efforts, the household saying “descendants of Yan and Yellow Emperors” in China would likely instead have been “descendants of Yao and Shun Emperors” correspondingly. According to The Book of Changes: Xi Ci II: “After Shennong, namely Yan Emperor, passed away, Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun succeeded one after another” (Fu 2008, 411). The historical periods of Yao and Shun were later than those of the Yan Emperor (Shennong) and the Yellow Emperor, also called Xuanyuan. Yao, also named Taotangshi, was an ancient ruler in legend; Shun, named Youyushi, was another ruler living in the same era as Yao. Both Yao and Shun were sage kings, but the way they ascended to the throne was quite different. Yao succeeded to the throne from his elder brother, who had ruled the state badly. As written in The Records of the Historian: Annals of the Five Mythical Emperors: “Emperor Ku died, and Zhi reigned in his stead. Zhi reigned badly and died, and his brother ‘the highly meritorious one’ reigned under the title of Emperor Yao” (Sima 1994, 6). Shun, born into a poor family, was given the throne, which became an everlasting and popular story in the political history of ancient China. Emperor Yao not only governed the state well, so that people lived healthily and peacefully, but set a strong precedent for passing the throne to men of virtue. In the view of the later Confucianists, Yao’s abdication to Shun set a supreme example of ideal politics.

© Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_12

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“Yao” written in simplified Chinese is “尧”, and in traditional Chinese is “堯”. Nowadays, people cannot tell its meaning from the character. This character did not initially stand for a surname, but was a holy epithet. This is included in the section of “Radical of tu (土)” of Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters, and interpreted as “high”. Later, Duan Yucai annotates it as “supremacy”. Ban Gu in the Virtuous Discussions of the White Tiger Hall expressed a similar thought—that the traditional form of the character symbolises the master of all saints and leader of all kings. In the Book of Changes, the Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun were respected equally by people, and their reigns were counted as ideal ages of peace and prosperity in ancient times. As has been recorded in The Zhou Book of Change, “Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun designed clothes into upper and lower parts for people to wear and ruled the land in peace” (Fu 2008, 413). They were later celebrated as sage kings by people from the Zhou Dynasty. The esteemed name of “Yao” could refer to any wise king or saint. Zhuangzi: Xu Wugui also mentions, “Suppose there is no fixed standard for right and wrong. If everyone says that he is right, then all the people in the world can be said to be like King Yao, can’t they?” (Wang 1999, 417). These lines enjoyed great popularity among contemporary Chinese people. Yao and Shun have become a leading model in politics and Chinese civilization. The specifics of a culture can best be expressed through its heritage in language. Hence, the memory of the peaceful and prosperous times of Yao and Shun so cherished by Chinese people were transformed into some common compound words in ancient Chinese. These words include yaotian (尧天, heaven in Yao’s times), yaotian shunri (尧天舜日, the heaven in Yao’s times and the sun in Shun’s) and yaofeng ( 尧封, Yao heaping earth for an altar). As illustrated in The Analects of Confucius: The Grand Earl, “The Master said, ‘Greatest, as lord and ruler, was Yao. Sublime, indeed, was he. ‘There is no greatness like the greatness of Heaven,’ yet Yao could copy it” (Waley 1999a, 85). People in later generations created the phrase yaotian to eulogize an emperors’ morality and the peaceful and prosperous ages they ruled. Legend has it that Yao ordered Shun to conduct an inspection of the whole state. Shun divided the state into twelve provinces and built altars on twelve hills across the twelve provinces. As recorded in The Book of Documents: The Canon of Emperor Shun, “He instituted division (of the land) into twelve provinces, raising altars upon twelve hills in them. He (also) deepened the rivers” (Legge 2013, 15). This is where the word yaofeng, namely “Yao heaping earth for an altar”, comes from, and is related to the demarcation of China’s territory. Sometimes, this word is used with yugong (禹 贡) or yudian (禹甸) together, referring to the territory in a broad sense. That certain terms for spatial regions named after Yao, Shun and Yu exist reflects the fact that these three kings of antiquity have become deep-rooted symbols in people’s memories over time. As described in Mengzi, “Mencius talked to him about the theory that men are born good, always citing the sages Yao and Shun as good examples” (Zhao 1999, 103). According to The Book of Rites: The Great Learning, “Yao and Shun led on the kingdom with benevolence and the people followed them” (Legge 1893: 371). Thus, it can be interpreted that the stories of the benevolent Yao and Shun spread from generation to generation by word of mouth.

12.1 Is the Legend of Yao and Shun True?

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Fig. 12.1 The Yao Temple in Xiangfen County, Shanxi Province. Photographed in 2007

In folk culture, the best physical marker of popular memory of the times of Yao and Shun are the existing buildings such as the Yao Temple in Xiangfen County in Shanxi Province (Fig. 12.1) and the nearby Mausoleum of Yao. The local people believe that the mausoleum is located in Guo Village, 70 km away from the northeast of Linfen County. In front of the mausoleum stands an ancestral temple. The temple is said to have been founded in the Tang Dynasty. As a result of numerous renovations from the Yuan Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty it has been well preserved up to the present. As to its historical location, the records in the inherited literature vary. For example, it is said that the mausoleum was located at the border of Heze in Shandong Province and Puxian County (in today’s Henan Province). But after consulting relevant records of “the capital city of Yao being in Pingyang, namely Linfen” in Records of a Historian: Annals of the Five Emperors and The Annotations on the Waterway Classic (Shui Jing Zhu, 水经注), nowadays scholars speculate that the mausoleum should really be located in Shanxi Province. Based on The Records of the Historian: Emperors’ Relatives, among the palace buildings in the Han Dynasty, there was a memorial gate related to the myth of Yao’s birth, called “The Gate of Yao’s Mother”, at the Gouyi Palace where the Emperor Zhao of the Han Dynasty was born. Gouyi Palace was the palace where an imperial concubine named “Lady Gouyi” lived. More details about this gate, recorded in The Book of Han: Emperors’ Relatives, are shown as, “Gouyi gave birth to her son (the Emperor Zhao) after fourteen months of pregnancy. The Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty said, ‘I heard that Yao’s mother brought Yao into the world after fourteen-month pregnancy, so did Gouyi’. Then he called it Gate of Yao’s Mother”. The analogy that the Emperor Wu compared Gouyi to Yao’s mother based on their shared pregnancy months provides a good example from which one can look for a narrative archetype in earlier myths. As well as being spatial markers, people in later ages also used terms containing 尧to mark time, like yaonian (尧年, the years Yao ruled). The legend goes that the years Yao reigned were mostly peaceful and stable, so “yaonian” in particular

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represents a flourishing and peaceful time. A legend about Yao’s longevity says that he lived 160 years. Therefore, yaonian also symbolises longevity. In addition, yaonian shunri (尧年舜日, the ages of Yao and Shun) is also cited as an idiom to signify the flourishing of given ages. The term was passed down over generations in literature and folklore, becoming a permanent quote for Chinese people throughout the ages to demonstrate feelings of nostalgia for better times. Gu Yanwu (1613–1682), a thinker and linguist in the Ming Dynasty, stated in Narratives of Ancient Times (Shu Gu, 述古), “Although I want to do good to the public and share responsibility with the emperor, I am not granted the chance to do that, because I do not live in the days of Yao and Shun who would allow it”. Such a sighing can easily be associated with the words of The Analects of Confucius: The Grand Earl, “The Master said, “Sublime were Shun and Yu! All that is under Heaven was theirs, yet they remained aloof from it” (Waley 1999a, 85). In the ancient Chinese tradition, the worship of sage kings was accompanied by various myth narratives, among which the story of yaoming (尧蓂) is a good example. Ming was a kind of auspicious grass growing in front of the steps of the Emperor Yao’s palace. This story describes the magic power of Yao’s enlightened and prosperous era as being a product of elevated imagination derived from the plant in the myth. According to The Current Edition of The Bamboo Annals in the Warring States Period, every month ming bears a pod on the first day, then 15 pods on the fifteenth day. And pods begin to fall at the sixteenth day, with one pod falling per day until all falls out (Wang 2005, 208). This record relates the life cycle of the plant with the moon’s cycle, which was believed without a shadow of doubt by people at that time. By the early 1990s, modern scholars under the influence of Western academic trends, which had recently found their way to the East, tended to question the traditional stories of early Chinese history. Under the leadership of Gu Jiegang and Hu Shi, the Movement of Debates on Ancient History was launched, flaunting a scientific and empirical view of history. During this movement, they made use of myths and legends in Western literature to reinterpret the genealogy of ancient China, relentlessly criticizing and deconstructing the supposed eras of the Yan Emperor, Yellow Emperor, Yao, Shun and Yu. They maintained that the history of the sage kings was made up or imagined by people in later times, and their reigns should be considered as “pseudohistory” due to a lack of solid evidence. On January 28, 1921, Hu Shi wrote a letter to Gu Jiegang. He spoke highly of Gu’s work, and stated his view on national history: Now we should shorten the study of ancient history by 2,000 or 3,000 years and start from The Book of Poetry. When epigraphy and archaeology have become well developed in the future, we can gradually extend ancient history once more to before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty by means of unearthed relics. As for the historical data after the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, we must evaluate it strictly and stick to the principle “rather to doubt and lose than to believe and lose”. (Gu 1982, 22-23).

Following this, sticking to the guiding principles of Hu Shi, Gu Jiegang reviewed the relationships among Yao, Shun and Yu on the basis of The Book of Poetry. He discovered that Yu appeared several times but Yao and Shun never did. In addition,

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his findings were repeated in his analysis of “The Canon of Emperor Yao” and “The Counsels of Great Gao-yao”, which are included in The Book of Documents but were published later. Therefore, he proposed that Yao and Shun stories were fabricated. From the perspective of the School of Doubting Antiquity, the relationships among Yao, Shun, and Yu were invented by scholars in the Warring States Period, aiming to publicize and even popularize the notion of honourable abdication. Consequently, the Eastern Zhou Dynasty was set as a turning point to determine the authenticity of the ancient history. Thus, only 2500 years of “real” history was left, which is close to the time when Chinese characters became popularized after being monopolized by state power for so long. Some 90 years later, the atmosphere of historical scepticism created by the School of Doubting Antiquity in modern times had not faded away, largely because the authenticity of the legendary historical records describing the era of Yao and Shun were still unconfirmed. However, the introduction of the concept of “mythistory” brings a new solution to interpreting this longstanding conundrum. Since the discovery of written records about Yao and Shun, it has been impossible to judge the authenticity of accounts about them. However, today’s scholars have an advantage over the ancients because they have sufficient physical evidence to find out what is possible and what is not in the legends. The sections below, based on the objects excavated in the Central Plain from 4000 years ago, will explore the important events in the legend of Yao and Shun and confirm the possibility of their authenticity.

12.2 Conferring Rui: History or Myth The Canon of Emperor Yao, the first chapter in The Book of Documents, recounts an event described therein of “calling in (all) the five jade-symbols (辑五瑞)” and “finally returning their symbols to the various princes (班瑞于群后)” in the inauguration ceremony. Questions can be raised here: if there were jade symbols, what shapes or patterns they would be? How can people prove that the ancient history of Yao and Shun is not entirely made up by people in later generations? The texts are as below: Shun wished to decline in favour of some one more virtuous, and not to consent to be (Yao’s) successor. On the first day of the first month, (however), he received (Yao’s) retirement (from his duties) in the temple of the Accomplished Ancestor. He examined the pearl-adorned tuning sphere, with its transverse tube of jade, and reduced to a harmonious system (the movements) of the Seven Directions. Thereafter, he sacrificed specially, but with the ordinary forms, to God; scarified with reverent purity to the Six Honoured Ones; offered their appropriate sacrifices to the hills and rivers; and extended his worship to the host of spirits. He called in (all) the five jade-symbols of rank; and when the month was over, he gave daily audience to (the president of) the Four Mountains, and all the Pastors, (finally) returning their symbols to the various princes.

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In the second month of the year he made a tour of inspection eastwards, as far as Dai-zong, where he presented a burnt-offering to Heaven, and sacrificed in order to the hills and rivers. Thereafter he gave audience to the princes of the east. He set in accord their seasons and months, and regulated the days; he made uniform the standard-tubes, with the measures of length and of capacity, and the steelyards; he regulated the five (classes of) ceremonies, with (the various) articles of introduction — the five symbols of jade, the three kinds of silk, the two living (animals) and the one dead one. As to the five instruments of rank, when all was over, he returned them. In the fifth month he made a similar tour southwards, as far as the mountain of the south, where he observed the same ceremonies as at Dai. In the eighth month he made a tour westwards, as far as the mountain of the west, where he did as before. In the eleventh month he made a tour northwards, as far as the mountain of the north, where he observed the same ceremonies as in the west. He (then) returned (to the capital), went to (the temple of) the Cultivated Ancestor, and sacrificed a single bull. In five years there was one tour of inspection, and there were four appearances of the princes at court. They gave a report (of the government) in words, which was clearly tested by their works. They received chariots and robes according to their merits. He instituted division (of the land) into twelve provinces, raising altars upon twelve hills in them. he (also) deepened the rivers. (Legge 2013, 11-13)

The above describes the Emperor Shun’s takeover of the throne from Emperor Yao; he offered sacrifices to gods, gave audience to princes from each of the four directions and conferred five symbols of jade to them, and made an inspection tour around the state. Regarding the phrase of 辑五瑞 (ji wu rui), The Erya Glossary: Elegant and Archaic Sayings (Er Ya: Shi Yan, 尔雅·释言) explains that “辑(ji), to collect”, and “ji” refers to collecting and gathering”. 瑞 (rui), is not recorded in the inscriptions on ancient bronze objects, but Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters: Radical of Yu (玉) notes that “瑞 (rui) is regarded as a token or a symbol, deriving from玉 (yu, jade) and 端 (duan, one end)”. As for the phrase 班瑞 (ban rui), The Explanation of Words and Characters: Radical of Yu illustrates that 班 (ban), a verb, to cut jade rui (rui yu, 瑞玉) into two parts, derives from刀 (dao, a knife) and 珏 (jue, two pieces of jade put together). “Ban” retains the same character pattern as the inscription on the bronze vessels, which originally stood for cutting jade into two parts with a knife, but now extends in meaning to also mean “confer”, “grant” and “award”. 瑞 (rui) is regarded as a symbol or a token, deriving from玉 (yu, jade) and 端 (duan, one end)”. Ban Gu, a Confucianist in the Han Dynasty, once explained the origin of jade gui’s function, “When princes pass away, how do they return jade gui to the Son of Heaven? Princes hold jade gui as symbols, now they die, so their sons hold the jade and mourn for three years. After that, they return the jade to the imperial court because their mission has changed”. This explanation is the same as that given in the Virtuous Discussions of the White Tiger Hall. The purpose of the so-called ji wurui and banrui was to gather and confer jade symbols. Such conduct shows that the relationship between the royal power and the local ruler, decentralized from the central authority, had been established. Power had shifted away from the central authority and into the hands of local rulers. Moreover, ritual jades distributed and accepted between the rulers and princes represented the holders’ common belief in a set of accompanying myths.

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In inherited literature, rui is generally associated with auspicious signs of sage kings in the mandate of heaven. As is recorded in the Mozi: Condemnation of offensive warfare III: The King Gao Yang, gave orders to Yu in the Xuan Palace and Yu, holding the imperial jade order in hand, set forth to punish Youmiao. ……Then Heaven gave the command to Tang in the Biao Palace, ordering him to receive the mandate of Heaven as the moral conduct in the Xia Dynasty had fallen into chaos. ……One day, a red bird landed at the altar on Mount Qi of Zhou, holding in its beak a piece of jade on which the following words were inscribed: ‘Heaven orders King Wen of Zhou to over throw the Shang Dynasty and take over all its territory’”. (Wang and Wang 2006, 161)

Here two points need to be noted, one is the relationship between the imperial jade order (ruiling, 瑞令) and the mandate of heaven; the other is imperial jade order and 珪, a combination of 玉 (jade) and圭 (gui). These points will now be discussed further. As is mentioned in Wang Chong’s Discourses Weighed in the Balance (Lun Heng, 论衡), “A king is a man endowed with riches and honour. So when he goes out, he can always see something auspicious. This kind of phenomenon is called rui”. “Rui” is an object with auspicious signs delivering heaven’s mandate or divinity, so its symbolic significance must be familiar to its giver and taker. In this circumstance, a system of rules based on the symbolic potency of jade is likely to be established. In other words, only when the prehistoric jade culture, built on jade myths, develops to a certain extent can the system of jade tokens or symbols be set up, so as to construct the first royal power system of Huaxia in the Central Plain. The symbolic significance of jade necessarily precedes its use as a token in practical political management. According to The Reinterpretation on the Book of Documents (Shang Shu Jiao Shi Yi Lun, 尚书校释译论), the ancient commentators gave five different explanations to “five instruments”. They are (1) Theory of five jade symbols (Theory of gui and bi), (2) Theory of using them as gifts, (3) Theory of five jades, (4) Theory of five jade ritual instruments, (5) Theory of five jade symbols, five jades, and five ritual instruments rolled into one. The fifth explanation was supported by Cheng Yi, a neoConfucianist in the Song Dynasty, “In terms of material they are jade (yu); in nature they are jade tokens or symbols (rui); in shape they are instruments (qi)”. In addition, Lin Zhiqi wrote in his Comprehensive Explanation for the Book of Documents (Shang Shu Quan Jie, 尚书全解), “Some call them five jade symbols; some call them five jades; and some call them five instruments. In fact, the different words stand for the same objects, just because official historians used different terms”. Gu Jiegang and Liu Qihua, two disciples from the School of Doubting Antiquity, claim: “Such a small question was argued about by scribes through lengthy and tedious articles for thousands of years, which doesn’t make sense but instead causes unnecessary disputes. In fact, what we need to know is that The Canon of Emperor Yao includes an article regarding ritual instruments” (Gu and Liu 2005, 146). From the perspective of new knowledge based on the fourth type of evidence, analysis of the “five instruments” is not unnecessary, but in fact very important. The reason for so many different theories being purported by ancient scholars is that they lacked enough evidence. But nowadays, according to the clues provided by ritual jades

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discovered from excavations, reconstructing the development of ritual jades from the five instruments in The Book of Documents to the six instruments noted in The Rites of Zhou has been put back on the agenda and has achieved initial success (Chen 1994). More attention should be paid to the reasons why a jade tablet was a sacred symbol, able to connect the central and local rulers. The answer must lie in the divinity it embodied or carried. Only when the king and the princes have a common belief in the myths of jade worship could a relationship of power among the symbol-holders be established. In other words, a king, as the state’s supreme ruler and organizer, was sure his authority and governance has been transmitted to local governments only when he granted the ritual jades. The reverse is also true: only when princes show their ritual jades as symbols conferred by their ruler can their legal identity to administer the local governments, and their ultimate divine right to rule, be proved. The projects undertaken during the reign of Emperor Shu to make uniform the standard-tubes, the measures of length and capacity, and the scales, and the regulating the five kinds of ceremonies and five jades demonstrate the importance of this primitive model of great unification. These standardization of these measures occurred 2000 years earlier than the standardization of Chinese characters and of carriages’ wheels implemented by Qin Shi Huang. These events should be regarded as the first attempt at creating a uniform symbolism of power and rule in the Huaxia cultural community and in the history of the Asian continent, which is of great significance. Ritual jades became increasingly important in constructing early Chinese identity, since they served as sacred objects for a long time in prehistorical East Asian societies. The jade belief system played a unifying role equal to a “national religion” in promoting the Huaxia identity. If one were to call the belief in jade myths “jade religion”, it would be in reference to its role as a cohesive agent in the formation Chinese identity. The ritual jades embodying the mythological view of jade religion were the main material symbol of this belief system. The mystical number “five”, representing four directions plus one unity, evidently played a key role in influencing myths in the early ritual system, as shown in the terms like five ceremonies, five jade symbols and five jades. The evolution of the mythological conceptualization of the universe as composed of five directions—east, west, north, south and middle (wu fang, 五方)—to a view that saw it as composed of four directions (east, west, north, south) plus upside and downside (liu he, 六合)—exerted a great influence on the change of the ritual jade system from “five instruments” to “six instruments” (Ye and Tian 1996).

12.3 Rui in Literature and in Archaeological Discoveries The so-called rui (瑞, jade symbol) in banrui (班瑞, conferring jade tokens/symbols) bears close relations to ritual jades. Jade rui refers, in particular, to jade tokens bestowed upon dukes, princes or local governors by the Son of Heaven as signifiers of their nobility. But which kind of ritual jade could this have been? The inherited

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literature and excavated texts all point to gui and bi, with greater emphasis given to gui. The Canon of Shun in the Collection of Annotation to The Book of Documents (Shu Ji Zhuan: Shun Dian, 书集传·舜典) written by Cai Shen mentions “(finally) returning their symbols to the various princes” so as to maintain the world order”. The Records of the Historian· Annals of the Five Mythical Emperors cites the above words, while Pei Yin’s Collected Analysis of Historian’s Record quoting Ma Rong, states, “Five jade symbols were respectively held by gong (公, dukes), hou (侯, marquis), bo (伯, earls), zi (子, viscounts), and nan (男, barons) as ritual jade tokens.” It is written in The Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial Rules for Imperial Audiences (Yi Li: Xian Li, 仪礼·觐礼) “When presented at court, one needs to take along jade rui with silken cord”, and Zheng Xuan explains in greater detail “a king was entitled to zhengui (镇圭, gui of the zhen type), dukes to huangui (桓圭, gui of the huan type), marquis to xingui (信圭, gui of the xin type), earls to gonggui (躬圭, gui of the gong type), viscounts to gubi (谷璧, bi of the gu type) and barons to pubi (蒲璧, bi of the pu type).” Han Confucians regarded these ritual jades as gui and bi according to the classification of “liurui (六瑞, six jade-symbols of rank)” mentioned in The Rites of Zhou. Furthermore, these jade symbols were identified as signifiers of rank based on their size and quality recorded in the Artificers’ Record (Kao Gong Ji, 考工记). Annotations given by Wei Zhao to The Discourse of the States specify that rui means six jade symbols. The king was entitled to zhengui of 2 cun1 in length, dukes to the huangui of 9 cun in length, marquises to xingui of 7 cun in length, earls to gonggui of 6 cun in length, viscounts to gubi and barons to pubi, both of 5 cun in length. As recorded in The Book of Rites, “The princes set great store by the tortoise, and consider their jade-tokens as the insignia of their rank” (Legge 1885a, 397). Mozi narrates that sacred heaven itself bestowed the ruiling (瑞令, imperial jade order), namely “the jade that a red bird is holding in its mouth”, upon King Wen of the Zhou Dynasty, and the jade is gui. Traces of such a tradition can also be found in The Records of the Historian: Annals of Zhou: King Hsiang thus conferred upon Duke Wen of Chin a jade tablet, sacrificial wines, a bow and arrows, and the status of Hegemon. He bestowed on Chin the land at Ho-nei. (Sima 1994, 7)

All of this seems to prove that jade gui (jade tablet) served as a symbol of status and rank and was used in ritual ceremonies like the offering of sacrifices to heaven, immortals, and ancestors—none of this was never just a myth. What are the physical features of these different types of gui? The current archaeological findings fail to provide enough evidence to make sweeping assessments. However, these discoveries can still offer some insights. For example, the flat-shaped jade object, scripted with the characters of guiming (圭命) and unearthed from the site of Houma Sacrificial Oaths and the site of Wenxian Sacrificial Oaths may be one type of jade gui, namely, the sharp-end jade gui. By far the earliest example of 1

The cun (寸) is a traditional Chinese unit of length, which has varied considerably over time but now has a standardized length of about 3.33 cm.

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Fig. 12.2 A jade gui of the Taosi culture, dating back to 4500 years ago. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing in 2010

a jade gui of this type has been discovered at the Taosi site, probably a cultural site of the Pingyang as recorded in literature (Fig. 12.2). The jade tablet of Qin Yin’s Prayers for His Disease, with prayers of “jiegui (介圭)” may be another type of jade gui, namely, the square plate-shaped flat-end jade gui. Similar archaeological artifacts may feature different shapes and structures, including triangular sharp-end, flat-end or round-end, which may be derived from their image analogy archetypes that were altered to fulfil different functions. In the Shang Dynasty, the jade ge (戈, jade dagger-axe) may have held the same function as the jade gui. Therefore, many scholars argue that jade gui may have developed, or derived, from the jade ge (Xia 1983). The common sharp-end jade gui was particularly popular in the Western Zhou and Eastern Zhou Dynasties, but most of these pieces are smaller ones, under 10 cm, while less than 10 pieces are longer than 20 cm. Those sharp-head jade gui were found to lie beside the head or on the stomach of the tomb owner or on their coffin, symbolizing their rank and status. Jade ge above 20 cm in length can mainly be found at the high-ranking tombs of princes or their wives. For example, larger jade ge were only discovered in the tomb of Marquis Jin and his wife in Tianma-Qucun: 58.5 cm in length in M8:126; 22 cm in length in M92:17; 36.2 cm in length in M93:60; 56 cm in length in M63:114 (Sun et al. 1994). After the middle of Spring and Autumn Period, jade ge was gradually replaced by jade gui. In the midst of the Warring States Period, jade-burial customs stopped abruptly in the Qin Dynasty, while such customs continued in Central Plain at that time (Liang 2005).

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What was the situation dating back to the period of Emperors Yu, Shun and Yao? The following lines “When Yu assembled the States on mount of T’oo, there are 10,000 States whose princes bore their symbols of jade and offerings of silk” mentioned in The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming: 7th Year of Duke Ai of Lu (Legge 2011, 814) correspond to the descriptions given in The Canon of Shun. At least, according to unearthed objects and myths of gui, jade-holding has been traced back to the period of Yu in the Xia Dynasty, more specifically to the period of the Longshan culture. The successful flood control overseen by Yu is shown by the narrative “Yu was presented the dark-coloured symbol of his rank, and announced the completion of his work”, which can be found in classics like The Records of the Historian: the Annals of Xia, The Book of Documents: The Tribute of Yu and The Book of Documents: Zhonghou. Divining words about a heaven-bestowed black jade tablet in The Book of Documents were cited in the Volume 82 of the Imperial Overview from the Taiping Reign: “After opening Longmen (dragon gate) and dredging the accumulated stones, Yu discovered a dark-coloured jade gui with engraved inscriptions: Immersed in virtues, yanxi (延喜) jade was conferred by heaven” (Cheng 2004, 318325). According to the literature, central rule of the Xia Dynasty lay in the west of Henan and in the south of Shanxi today. Jade items created in and around the Xia Dynasty, including the yue, ge, qi, gui, zhang and multi-holed jade knives, were unearthed in the middle and advanced phases of the Taosi site, Xiangfen, of Shanxi Province and in the second to fourth phases of the Erlitou site in Yanshi of Henan Province. Of all these objects, two pieces of flat-end jade gui were unearthed from the Erlitou site, while sharp-end jade gui, jade ring, jade cong and jade yue were all discovered at the Taosi site. The painted rod (similar to an ancient Chinese sundial) and the Observatory Site found in IIM22 may support the hypothesis that even in 4300 BC, gnomon measurement had been applied in observing time and monarchical ritual system (Li and Sun 2010).

12.4 The Rationale for Conferring Jade Symbols To prove the rationale behind the conferring of jade symbols in the era of Emperor Shun, it would be beneficial to first confirm that the material evidence corresponds to such an era. That is to say, in the era in which Yao and Shun purportedly lived, is it plausible that rulers had enough raw materials, and advanced enough processing techniques, for sustained jade production. In other words, 4000 years ago, was ancient China capable of producing large quantities of ritual jades as national official tokens? Archaeological discoveries leave little doubt. From 4000 years ago, large amounts of ritual jades were produced by the Hongshan culture in the north, the Liangzhu culture in the south, the Qijia culture in the west and the Dawenkou culture in the east of China. Although prehistoric jades from the Central Plain may not be as abundant as from other cultures, recent findings suggest they had ample supply (Fig. 12.3). The new challenge is to consider how other surrounding prehistoric cultures influenced the jade culture of the Central Plain and finally were integrated into the broader

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Fig. 12.3 A jade cong of the Taosi culture. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

Central Plain civilization. The answers to these questions lead one to the origins of the formation of ritual systems in the Chinese civilization. Another field trip aimed at exploring ritual jade culture in the prehistoric Central Plain began on June 2, 2011. This author arrived at Yuncheng in the south of Shanxi Province after driving across the Yellow River and Zhongtiao Mountains on June 4. In the Memorial Park of Emperor Shun located on the outskirts of Yuncheng, the newly unearthed jades at the site of Potou Qingliang Temple in Ruicheng were preserved in the Yanhu District Museum. These prehistoric jades are of great importance, since they belonged to the second phase of the Miaodigou culture, in the late period of the Yangshao culture (4990–4600 years ago), earlier than the Longshan Culture (The Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 2010, 519). It was even thousands of years earlier than 2100 BC when Yu the Great founded the Xia Dynasty. A large quantity of ritual jades discovered in the second phase of the Miaodigou culture reveals that early state governments emerged in the Central Plain in the era of Emperors Yao and Shun. They collected ritual jades from different tribes as unified tokens of supreme sovereignty and then distributed them to local administrators. These unearthed jade objects point to the possibility of constructing a central government with jade symbols as key to maintained cohesion. There is a prevailing view in current academia that the legendary era of Yao and Shun was roughly contemporaneous to the Longshan culture. If this were to be the case, one might conclude that the mass production and use of ritual jades in the second phase of the Miaodigou culture in Ruicheng should be considered as cultural phenomena that occurred prior to the era of Yao and Shun. As described in The Book of Documents, the public event of calling in the five jade symbols and returning the five jade symbols indicate that ritual jades were used by the living in conducting both sacrificial rites and for administrative purposes. However, jades unearthed from the Qingliang Temple are mostly funerary objects, serving as sacred tokens to help souls enter heaven. Nevertheless, the mythological reasoning behind the so-called “jade burial” and the five jade symbols in governance belong to the same prehistoric jade belief iconography, namely, seeing fine jade as symbols of immortality and eternity. Jade bi and jade yuan feature dominantly among the ritual jades from the second phase of the Miaodigou culture exhibited in Yanhu District Museum in the Shun Emperor Mausoleum in Yuncheng. They are similar to jades of the Qijia culture in

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their production style and form. Measuring by historical periods, it may be that these were the primal source of jades of the Qijia culture. In November 2003, Potou Jades was published as a supplement to the journal World of Antiquity, which unveiled 83 collected jades in coloured photographs. The preface and postscript written by editors Li Baiqin and Zhang Huixiang explain that the jades shown in the book are not archaeological excavations, but findings by local farmers. It was between the spring and summer in 1986 when Qi Tianyi and his two brothers discovered some jades in their own yard when building their cave dwelling. According to Qi, “These jades were dug out with human remains. Some were put on the stomach, some overlaid together, and some attached to the wrist.” (Li and Zhang 2003, 5). The book Potou Jades speculates that the jades in Ruicheng may belong to the late phase of the Longshan culture according to their appearance. Later, in the preface to the third volume—“Shanxi Volume” in The Complete Collection of Jades Unearthed in China published in 2005, it is verified that the jades found in Ruicheng belongs to the second phase of the Miaodigou culture: The graveyard of the Qingliang Temple, located in Ruicheng County, was regarded as a large Neolithic cemetery discovered in recent years. Almost 300 tombs of different levels have been sorted out, all of which belong to the late second phase of the Miaodigou culture, bearing close relations to the early phase of the Taosi site in Linfen Basin. Most of the unearthed objects in the graveyard were jade objects. The number of burial jades varied from 1 to 12 pieces with major distinctions in texture, shape and structure. They were put on the head, arm, lower abdomen, or other parts of the deceased. There are not many different types. Most are jade bi, jade rings, stone knives, jade yue, jade cong, stone axes, and small jade ornaments. At least some burial objects fall into the category of ritual instruments. (Gu 2005, 1).

In the book The Complete Collection of Jades Unearthed in China, altogether 11 pieces of jades of the second phase of the Miaodigou culture were collected in the Shanxi volume. Their fundamental difference to the Potou jades is that these 11 pieces are archaeological excavations respectively from ten tombs, among which 2 were unearthed from the 146th tomb. One is a rare hexagonal jade object, indicating a complicated production technique. Its functions are unknown, as are the mythological concepts behind it. The other is a jade cong, which was made of grey jade with black spots. The central hole of this jade cong was made by a tubing drill. Its production style is also very similar to the jades of the Qijia culture. Jade cong and jade bi or jade yuan are among the six jade instruments listed in the Zhou Dynasty. Although the jade yue is also listed among the six, it actually belongs to the predecessor, or archetype, group of jade gui. In general, most prehistoric jades discovered in Ruicheng are burial jades, but they possess the main features of ritual jade culture in the Central Plain, with circular and ring-shaped jade bi and jade yuan (瑗, ring) as primary types, and jade cong and jade yue as supplementary ones. Most jades unearthed from the Yangshao culture at the Xipo site in Lingbao and from the Taosi culture are jade yue, which show significant differences to those unearthed in Ruicheng. Currently, questions arise. What is the relationship between jade cong unearthed in Ruicheng and those unearthed in the Liangzhu culture? Which came first? And did jade culture in south cast its influence on the Central Plain, or vice versa?

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Since one can trace the Liangzhu culture back to 3300–2250 BC, close to the second phase of the Miaodigou culture (2900 BC), and since the amount of jade cong produced in the Liangzhu culture was more than that produced in the Central Plain across all types of ritual jades, many scholars prefer to believe that jade cong originated in the south and then spread to the Central Plain and other places. The newly unearthed jade cong at the Potou Site in Ruicheng sparked new discussions about the route by which it spread. This reconsideration is of great significance. According to literature about “calling in five jade symbols” and “regulating five ceremonies” in the era of Yao and Shun, it was possible for ritual jades of different types and colors to be gathered by the central authority from different places. Archaeological objects provide clues that jade gui were likely derived from jade yue and jade knives (3000 BC), while jade huang and jade hu may have originated from the Lingjiatan culture in the south (3300 BC), and jade zhang from the Dawenkou and Longshan cultures (about 2800 BC to 2000 BC), even spreading to Canton and Vietnam. One question about the ritual jade system and its importance to the origins of Chinese civilization also needs to be resolved. What were the driving forces that led the tradition of jade culture to spread across and converge in the middle reaches of the Yellow River from surrounding areas, and to ultimately contribute to the formation of Central Plain civilization? The northern slope of Zhongtiao Mountain, only one mountain away from the Potou site in Ruicheng, is renowned for its salt lake resources, having received wide attention since the prehistorical period. The economic demand for the transportation of salt resources to other places opened great passages for cultural exchange. The city was also given a well-known name— Yuncheng, which means “a city for transportation”. Salt is a necessity for daily life, while ritual jades symbolise luxurious tokens of spiritual worship. They respectively represent economic foundation and superstructure, and became essential factors for the interactions between the Central Plain and its surrounding areas. The Yanhu (salt lake) District Museum in Yuncheng, in order to prove the essential role that salt resources and external trade played in the birth of early civilizations, exhibited various legendary records and local documents created between the eras of the Yan Emperor, the Yellow Emperor and Chiyou and the era of Emperors Yao, Shun and Yu. Those documents are precious supplementary materials for researchers who are acquainted with official history documents. The picture (Fig. 12.4) in an enlarged image from an ancient book that interprets the event of “returning their symbols to the various princes” recorded in The Book of Documents, vividly showing that jade tablets as symbols of both central and local political power. If one refers to ethnological materials, which are easier to understand, the credential system of conferring jade symbols can be proved by the third type of evidence. The Truku group in Taiwan, having no written history, was officially recognized as a distinct aboriginal group in 2004 based on their oral myths and associated ceremonies. The Taiyal group held a separation oath ceremony to indicate the dispersion and integration of their own population with relevant tokens. Such tokens originated from origin myths of their tribes. During the separation oath ceremony, the tribe’s chief lead all tribe members to swear an oath to heaven and then delivered public statements to encourage and instruct their members:

12.4 The Rationale for Conferring Jade Symbols

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Fig. 12.4 A picture of “returning their symbols to the various princes”. Photographed at the Yanhu District Museum in Yuncheng County in 2011

Look at the place we’re living now / With more and more people in our tribe / It’s not suitable for us all / Following the teachings of our deceased ancestors / We come here to take our oaths. / We will engrave our oaths today in our deep hearts / From now on / We will start separation from the explosion of this rock / Allow me to present you a piece of cloth and a stick / Wish all winds, thistles and thorns will stay away from you / Wish you a smooth journey forward / No matter where you are / Please do not live your life listlessly / Do not become fallen leaves / Wish you all shine like bright stars / And win praises and respects from people around you. (Hitay 2003, 63-65)

A legend of the Taiyal group in Taiwan tells that human beings were born when a huge rock split open in Dabajian Mountain. The crowd was scattered in all directions and grew. The cultural function of “a piece of cloth and a stick” is just like that of the jade symbols used by Emperor Shun. In addition, by swearing to heaven the oath has a legal nature. In later days, if someone betrays his oath, he will suffer the horrible punishment—“immortals and human beings all can put him to death”. Tokens thus have symbolic meaning and held legal binding power, since in the mind of the myth’s believers, these specific tokens represent the mandate of heaven and the will of divine spirits. In Chinese history, the ancient saying of “jade objects and silk fabrics turn hostility into friendship” inherited from the Zhou Dynasty should also be interpreted from the perspective of the oath of alliance made between groups. Jade objects and silk fabrics not only have economic value, but also carry religious and mythological significance.

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As the third type of evidence, ethnographical materials have referential significance in interpreting mythological history in ancient texts. Ritual jades, as sacred symbols that emerged in prehistorical period, are different from the walking sticks made of stones or bamboo wood used by the aborigines of Taiwan, since the former requires such special and rare material to be made—jade. According to The Classic of Mountains and Seas: the Classic of the Central Mountains, the south bank of the middle reaches of the Yellow River, instead of the north bank, is the perfect place for jade production. Jade used by the Zhongtiaoshan Mountain culture was probably not indigenous material, but the result of external trade. Since the twenty-first century, continuous archaeological excavations in Xipo of Lingbo City in Henan Province can ultimately prove that the funerary tradition of burial jades featuring in high-ranking tombs was popularized on the south bank of Yellow River, the junction between Henan, Shanxi, and Shaanxi, in the middle phase of the Yangshao culture. Such a discovery supplements the findings of several small jade objects discovered in Yangshao Village, which is quite helpful to understand the development process of ritual jade culture in the Central Plain. As the case stands now, ritual jades unearthed in tombs of the Yangshao culture at the Xipo site along the Yellow River are regarded as the earliest mass production of jade ever known in the Central Plain. The jade material used in the Yangshao culture features local jade varieties in mixed colors of dark green and black. Why do the jade collections unearthed in the middle phase of the Yangshao culture at the Xipo site consist mostly of jade yue? (Fig. 12.5) According to some scholars, jade yue are the archetype from which jade gui and jade zhang derive. It originated from practical stone axes and jade axes, the most frequently used tools for cutting and hunting in the long Stone Age. Later, jade yue evolved into weapons of war, and further became tokens of power when leading military expeditions and doling out punishment. Finally, they served as symbols of military power and royal authority in ancient China. Considering that jade yue are commonly discovered in Yangshao, Taosi and Longshan cultural sites, this type of jade is very likely to have been a major symbol in early states.

Fig. 12.5 A jade yue 钺of the Yangshao culture unearthed at the Xipo site in Lingbao, dating back to 5300 years ago. Photographed at the Henan Museum

Part III

Mythological History of the Xia, Shang, Zhou, and Qin Dynasties

Chapter 13

Yu’s Central Bear Flag

13.1 Jade Narrative and the Mythistory of Xia A key difficulty in exploring the origins of Chinese civilization lies in verifying the history of the Xia Dynasty. Studies of the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties by modern Chinese scholars have gone through two stages of development: one of doubt and one of interpretation. In the first, the old histories written about times before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty were deemed to be fabricated by later generations—myths and legends rather than authentic history. The core assumption of the second, however, is that these histories are in essence credible but require supporting evidence to separate truth from later invention. Today the common approach is to undertake a comprehensive study of both newly excavated ancient artifacts and the records contained in the inherited literature. Since the start of the “Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project”, the study of Shang and Zhou Dynasties has entered a new stage. But because no written records date back to Xia, study of the Xia Dynasty has made little progress. Chinese learning has traditionally relied on inherited literature. Without these written records, scholars inevitably feel powerless and frustrated. Developments in anthropology and archaeology show that one can overcome the lack of written documents by means of carefully utilizing material culture in order to study and even reconstruct lost cultures. The study of material culture in anthropology encourages attention to the concept of “object narratives”, which can shed light on the study of the history of the Xia. Yet without written records, it might still prove difficult to understand Xia Culture. If the unearthed jade narrative is treated as the core of the exploration, could this at least create a basis which may lead to further useful findings? The answer to this question is that without any historical records from the period, it is not realistic to attempt a systematic chronological reconstruction of the era’s history. But one can compensate by adjusting the research objective—instead of seeking to create an accurate account of Xia history, one can instead seek Xia “mythistory”. By focusing on the important mythological beliefs and symbols of worship revealed by cultural relics from the Xia period, and drawing on evidence © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_13

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from similar objects from the Neolithic Age before Xia and in Shang and Zhou after Xia, one may find connections and reconstruct a relatively complete outline of the development of the Central Plain civilization in 2000 BC. Even so, this of course may run the risk of instead avoiding the real issue by simply replacing “history” with “mythistory”. This alone does not seem to be a fruitful process. Newer developments in post-modern historiography have abandoned the old concept of “scientific history” in favour of a new understanding of “mythistory”. Like the history of the Xia, the history of the Boxer Rebellion in the later Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) is permeated with elements of myth (Cohen 2000). History starts with myths, and it develops with myths. Considering this offers a new way of understanding of Chinese history today. “Mythistory” is a new term. It has three purposes in its academic application. The first is to abandon the narrow view of history as a purely objective record of facts, and to recognize the true nature of the historical narrative as a historical subject built on and around common prehistoric beliefs. The second is to restore the historical information latent in myth narratives, no longer regarding them merely as literary invention or fiction. The third is to reconstruct a history fractured by the demarcation between myth and history by integrating the big tradition of object and image narratives and the small tradition of text narratives into an organic whole, thereby transcending the limits of current understandings of pre-textual history by offering a comprehensive view of the development of culture and civilization in a continuous and holistic manner. In exploring the history of the big tradition, it would be inappropriate to seek a precise chronology of specific events, as is often sought from the written history of small tradition. Instead, one should aim to reconstruct the context of mythological beliefs and the codes of cultural signification as a cornerstone and gateway to the written history of the small tradition. From the perspective of the big tradition, this author is not concerned with the temporarily unresolved question of whether Xia was the first dynasty in Chinese history. Instead, this author explores the practical questions: what was the nature of the Central Plain civilization at the beginning of the Xia Dynasty? Where did it come from? How did it develop? The first chapter of the authoritative book The Cambridge Ancient History of China: from the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, by former Harvard anthropology professor Kwang Chih Chang, is entitled “China on the Eve of the Historical Period”. It adopts the general view of Western scholarship that the Xia Dynasty was not a historical period, but was situated at the dawn of the historical period. After reviewing the records of kingdoms, dynasties and events in the Annals of Xia, Chang asks whether these alone can prove that the Xia Dynasty really existed at the beginning of Chinese history? (Loewe and Shaughnessy 1999, 72). He doubted the authenticity of the history and the Xia Dynasty provided by these documents. Gu Jiegang also critically questioned the authenticity of these accounts of the Xia. Accordingly in the 1920s, influenced by Western historiography, his school proposed a thesis of falsification. Their first target was Yu, the legendary founder of the Xia Dynasty. They succeeded in revealing the mythical nature of the hypothetical historical figure.

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Then, some scholars went further and believed that the whole Xia Dynasty was simply invented. The sinologist Sarah Allan argued in her book The Shape of the Turtle (1991) that the Xia was a myth created by the people of Shang and recognized as history by the people of Zhou. Allan’s analysis was conducted from the perspective of pure mythology, a methodological narrative derived from structuralist binary opposition. Her view can be regarded as a mythological reconstruction of Fu Sinian’s hypothesis of China’s historical origins—“East Yi West Xia theory” (yi xia dong xi shuo, 夷夏东西说). At the Xia Culture International Symposium held at the University of California at Los Angeles in 1990, there was a heated debate between scholars from China’s mainland and Taiwan, and Western and Soviet scholars over whether the Xia Dynasty was real or legendary. Chinese scholars believed the authenticity of The Annals of Xia on the grounds that the Shang Dynasty genealogy recorded in The Annals of Yin was confirmed by unearthed oracle bone inscriptions. Thus, the contents of the former must also be credible. Non-Chinese scholars generally challenged this logic. There also exists conflict of opinion as to whether the archaeological discoveries of the Erlitou culture belong to the Xia culture. As the empirical verification of the Xia appears problematic, the concept of “mythistory” offers a shortcut and enables one to navigate around unnecessary disputes. Did myths exist before written documents appeared in the Chinese tradition? Chinese scholars who introduced the academic concept of “mythology” from the West initially denied this, because they did not value sources other than the myths they could find in inherited literature like The Classic of Mountains and Seas and The Verse of Chu. But the new tradition of anthropology and archaeology gives a definite answer: a large number of myths can be interpreted and reconstructed from surviving prehistoric image and object narratives. As discussed in Chapter One of this book, the American archaeologist Gimbutas’s The Living Goddess (2001) and British mythologist Armstrong’s A Short History of Myth (2005) are excellent examples of extending the study of myths to the Stone Age. As a reference, the first key element in the formation of the unique characteristics of Chinese mythology is jade. Records of the Xia Dynasty primarily date from after the Zhou Dynasty; written material before the Western Zhou Dynasty is rare. However, sources of jade myths and myths of the sages can be traced back to more ancient material sources than texts. Laozi once said that the sage carries jade underneath his dress. The Dao De Jing clearly highlights the semiotic correspondence between sages and sacred objects. This makes it possible for today’s generations to discover the common mythological origins of both Confucianism and Daoism, that is, the world of “sages”. Confucius did not talk about “extraordinary things, superhuman power, chaos/disorder or metaphysics”, but admired “the sage”. His disciples believed that Confucius himself was born a sage. Even noblemen, let alone sages, were all closely associated with jade objects. The ancient sages were inevitably worshipers and owners of jades. The rulers of the Xia Dynasty—Yao and Shun, Yu, Tang—represent the Confucian ideal genealogy of sage-king myths. Historians would like to see them as historical figures, but are unable to situate them precisely in time or place. Now

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they are regarded as mythic historical figures, because what they have in common is their intimate association with jade myths. Archaeological evidence shows that jades were the unique burial objects of kings in the Hongshan, Liangzhu, and Qijia cultures which predated the Yao, Shun and Yu. This proves that the ancient sacred nature of jades alluded to in ancient writings is true. Using the third type of evidence (oral culture, folk custom, etiquette, etc.) of ethnographical materials, one can see sages for what they actually were, the medium between gods, immortals and men. Then, through the fourth type of evidence (archaeological artifacts and sacred objects such as religious and ritual implements) one can look for the prehistoric archetype of Chinese sage myths and identify social leaders in the Hongshan and Liangzhu cultures, with ritual jades as their symbols. Drawing on intuitive visual imagery and auditory perception, one can understand the 6000-year tradition of the worship of sages and outline the course of mythological heritage from prehistory to the Xia, Shang and Zhou civilizations. The Hexi corridor was a significant passageway of the Silk Road. Whilst the use of the term “Jade Gate” instead of “Silk Gate” might seem problematic in this regard, the reason is simple. The dangerous route was opened two or three thousand years before the first trade of silk along this way, it was originally used for the import of Hetian jade. As is written in Shizi (尸子), “It is so difficult to seek gold. You need to cross three rivers and five lakes before reaching the foot of the sacred Kunlun Mountains. Thousands of people go there, but only hundreds return”. Similarly, the pre-Qin classics record that very few people arrived at the Kunlun Mountains. For example, “No one but Yi climbed to the top of Kunlun Mountains” is recorded in The Classic of Mountains and Seas. Apparently ordinary people could not hope to make it. So why did Yi羿, the great hero of Chinese myths, go to Kunlun? He sought the elixir of immortality. And if one then asks: what were the components of the elixir controlled by Queen Mother of the West? The most credible answer is certainly the material that Chinese people have worshiped for seven or eight thousand years—jade. Recently unearthed jades confirm that the Jade Road was in operation 2000 years before the Silk Road. The transportation of Kunlun Mountains jade to the Central Plain has a history of 4000 years. This is an effective starting point to explore the construction of the culture of Xia. One can re-examine history through the jade narrative. A very notable point in the literature is that Yu of Xia succeeded thanks to jade, while Jie of Xia failed because of jade. Archaeological findings provide historical clues about jade culture that one can use to study the history of Xia. The Jade Age began nearly 4000 years before the Xia Dynasty; the tradition of ritual jades continued to develop after Xia during the Shang and Zhou eras; and jade carving reached a peak in the Western Han Dynasty and the Warring States Period. One may infer from this that the Xia Dynasty was a period in which jade myths occupied a dominant position in contemporaneous ideology. To confirm the scope and capital of the Xia culture, one must refer to the indicators of the ritual jade system in the transition from the prehistoric period to civilization. More specifically, investigating the evolution of fairly developed ritual jade systems like huang, jue, yue, bi, gui, qiong, and zhang before the Xia Dynasty enables one

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to verify the national rituals of the Xia Dynasty. The fact that neither jade nor metal was found in the first phase of the Erlitou culture, it seems, does not support the fact that the Erlitou relic site was the capital of Xia. As was discussed in Chap. 9, according to inherited literature the success of the kings of Xia depended on a mystic black jade. A similar narrative can be found in Mozi: Condemnation of offensive warfare III: “Yu headed the troops in person to suppress the You Miao clans with a jade token from heaven. There was lightning and thunder. A god with a human face and a bird’s body stood by respectfully holding a jade” (Sun 1986, 135). In the era when the king’s power emanated from heaven, those in possession of sacred jade were able to rule the world. The jade gui as a token from heaven was placed, by the god with a human face and a bird’s body, in the hands of Yu. This is mythological evidence of how the Xia Dynasty envisioned its reign over the world. The Records of the Historian: Annals of Yin recount that Jie of the Xia Dynasty was defeated by Tang of the Shang Dynasty at the battle of Mingtiao. It documents the act of taking jade treasures following the victory. Tang became the first ruler of the Shang Dynasty and established a new Central Plain empire. The history book does not record the other treasures he inherited from Xia, but it specifically mentions the jades. This is enough to indicate the remarkable prominence and prosperity of the jade culture in Xia. Is there any basis for Sima Qian’s accounts in his The Records of the Historian? Other documents speak of the nine ding (tripod cauldron) cast by Yu. One might infer that other major ritual bronzes were produced during the centuries-long history of Xia. Why did Sima Qian not mention them? Ancient scholars probably had doubts, but were bound by the limits of written texts. Now with the help of archaeological artifacts, the answer has been clarified. Yu was incapable of casting nine ding. If ding did exist, they must have been made of pottery rather than bronze. This is because the Erlitou culture belonged to the late Xia Dynasty. Only a few small plain bronze jue (爵, an ancient three-legged wine vessel) have been excavated from that era. The early Xia Dynasty did not have the technology nor the material to cast ding. In other words, the Xia Dynasty had not yet fully entered the Bronze Age; it was in transition from the Jade Age to the Bronze Age. Its major ritual instruments were without doubt made of jade. From the above analysis one may say that Sima Qian demonstrated his unique talents in identifying and screening historical materials. The whereabouts of ding cast by Yu or Qi of Xia is narrated in Mozi: Gengzhu narrates: “Later the Lord of Xia lost them and they were kept by the Lord of Yin. When the Lord of Yin lost them, they were kept by the Lord of Zhou. The nine cooking vessels had been kept in the three countries for several hundred years”(Wang and Wang 2006, 417). This reveals the continuity of ritual systems over the three generations of Xia, Shang and Zhou. Archaeological excavations have unearthed very few bronzes from the Yu period of Xia and only a few small bronzes from the Jie period of Xia. Nor were many bronze objects of Xia found among the excavated objects of Zhou. By contrast, the unearthed jades are in line with the three-generation inheritance concept. Many jades excavated from the West Zhou and East Zhou Dynasties

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are identified as being passed down from Shang and the New Bronze Age or even from the Hongshan culture. If Xia really existed, the royal class must have possessed a great number of jade treasures. According to the ancient bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi, “Jie of Xia did not listen to the teachings of his predecessors. He attacked the Mount Min Clan and took two beauties Yan and Wan as wives. To please them, he built jade palaces, jade pavilions and jade doors in the north of the country”. Jie’s demise might be attributed to a fanatic worship of jade, because he conducted extensive punitive expeditions to obtain a great amount of jade so as to transform his palaces into a jade fairyland like the sacred Kunlun Mountains. This can be seen as a history of subjugation developed by later writers within the context of jade myths (See the detailed analysis in Chap. 15). In summary, these clues about the jade narrative allow one to revisit history and to identify and verify its contents by comparing written records with archaeological finds. Hitherto, the study of myths focused on the analysis of literary texts alone. Future research will go beyond the written texts to study material culture or object narrative, i.e. “the fourth type of evidence”. Culture, in this broader sense, will become the “text”. The relationship between literature and culture as text is akin to the relationship between the mother and the child. The significance of the integration of mythistory lies in viewing the big tradition and its transformation into the small tradition as a continuous process. By relying only on literary research, one cannot discover what occurred before the emergence of written documents. The formulae are 1 : Inherited literature = the small tradition of writing = the signifier The fourth type of evidence = the big tradition behind literature = the signified

13.2 The First Type of Evidence: The Transformation of Gun, Yu and Qi into Bears Starting with the bear transformation myth regarding Gun, Yu and Qi, the three ancestral rulers of the Xia Dynasty, and then incorporating the second, third and fourth types of evidence to bring greater context and clarity, this chapter aims to recover the lost ancient cultural memory behind this myth and to explain how cultural anthropology can help solve a difficult problem in history by reconstructing the longlost “bear totem” faith, thus helping to understand the mystery of why the Yellow Emperor was called Youxiong. The first type of evidence refers to the inherited literature, in which the story of Gun, Yu and Qi transforming into bears was recorded and handed down. In myths 1

Saussure defines a sign as being composed of a signifier (form or image), and the signified (idea or concept).

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written in ancient Chinese, the theme of the metamorphosis of a human into a bear started with Gun, the ancestor king of the Xia Dynasty, and continued with Yu, the son of Gun, and Yi, the king of a later period of the dynasty. This theme can also be found in the legends and fictions of later dynasties. Following are a few representative examples. (1)

Gun’s transformation into a bear

Gun (鲧), also known as “Hyun”, was a legendary chief in ancient times and the father of Yu, the founder of the Xia Dynasty. Gun was killed by Shun on Mount Yu because the former’s nine years of efforts to block floods with dikes proved futile. As recorded in The Book of Documents: on Flood: “I have heard that in old times Gun dammed up the inundating water (Legge 2013, 187)”. Records of his transformation into a bear after death are found in many ancient classics. When Yao put Gun to death on Mount Yu, his spirit transformed into a yellow bear, which entered into the abyss of Yu. Then he was worshipped by the Xia people, and the three dynasties offered sacrifice to him. (The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming: The Seventh Year of Duke Zhao) To the south, there is a river where the father of King Dayu was transformed to a bear, and there are many snails and spiral shells. (The Classic of Mountains and Seas: The Classic of the Central Mountains) (Wang and Zhao 2010, 617) Yao ordered Gun to control the flood, but Gun failed. So Yao had Gun killed at Mount Yu, who was transformed into a yellow bear. (The Tales of the Marvellous)

The above legends of Gun, recorded in ancient books from various periods all tell of Gun’s transformation into a yellow bear on Mount Yu, although the annotations in these books make no clear references to who really killed him. The narratives indicate that this legend dates from the pre-Qin period. There is another legend by which Gun was transformed into a yellow dragon, annotated in The Classic of Mountains and Seas by Guo Pu citing from “On Divination”: “Gun’s corpse remained intact for three years, and he was transformed into a yellow dragon after being cut with a sharp sword”. The legend of Gun’s transformation into a yellow bear or a yellow dragon emphasizes Gun’s self-regeneration, or “metaplasia”, a resurrection after death through transformation. As symbols of resurrection, the concept of the dragon and the bear are a mythological heritage from the prehistoric Stone Age. Transformation into a bear or a dragon can also be understood as a symbolic expression of mythological parthenogenesis. The transformation is actually a metaphor for Gun’s having offspring of his own. The following narrative is similar to the myth of Gun’s transformation into a dragon in “On Divination”. Three years after Gun was killed, his body still showed no sign of putrefaction, and when it was cut open with a wu sword, out bounced the boy Yu. (Complete Prose of High Antiquity, the Three Dynasties, Qin, Han, Three Kingdoms, and Six Dynasties Periods, Quan Shang Gu San Dai Qin Han San Guo Liu Chao Wen, 全上古三代秦汉三国六朝文, Volume 15)

Yu, the son of Gun, was born of his father’s corpse, supporting the view that the legends of his transformation into a bear or a dragon metaphorically refer to the

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father’s single-sex reproduction of offspring, not dissimilar to the Greek myth of Athena’s birth from the head of her father Zeus. Symbolically, Gun’s transformation into a bear means that Yu was born as the incarnation of a bear (or a dragon), which sheds light on the mythology of Yu’s transformation into a bear in inherited literature. What could be the implication of the transformation of both father and son into bears? (2)

Yu’s transformation into a bear

Yu, the son of Gun, was the founding ruler of the Xia Dynasty, the first dynasty in Chinese history, and the great hero who controlled floods by regulating rivers in Chinese mythology. There are two narratives recording his transformation into a bear: Yu was married to a girl of the Tushan clan when he was in charge of flood control, and he changed into a bear to dig a passage through the Xuanyuan Mountain. While bringing her hard-working husband food, the Tushan girl beheld her husband’s ursine aspect and fled in shame. Pursued by Yu, she turned into a stone on one of the slopes of Mount Song. (Citations from Suichaozi 随巢子in An Interpretation of History, Yi shi, 绎史, Volume 12) (Ma 2002, 158) Yu channelled the flood by transforming into a bear to open up a passage through Xuanyuan Mountain. Not to frighten her, he told his wife, Lady Tushan: “Bring me food when you hear the sound of the drum.” Unfortunately he jumped on a stone and hit the drum by mistake. His wife came and saw Yu in the form of a bear, so she left in shame. (Citations from Huainanzi in Interpretations of the Poem ‘Tianwen’) (You 1982, 178)

These myths would be hard to comprehend if one did not know the context of both Gun’s and Yu’s transformation into bears. However, drawing on the totem theory of cultural anthropology and comparative religion, it is easy to trace the origin of the transformation motif—the belief in the bear totem. According to this belief, if someone is born of one kind of animal, he is transformed into that animal after death. In the face of danger or crisis, transforming into a totem animal is a way of obtaining supernatural powers. The two aspects of the totem belief are exemplified by Gun’s transformation into a bear at death and Yu’s transformation into a bear while opening the passage through a mountain. The genealogy of the ancestor kings of the Xia Dynasty offers clues to understanding the bear totem belief system. According to The Classic of Mountains and Seas: the Classic of Areas within the Seas “Emperor Huangdi gave birth to Luoming. Luoming gave birth to White Horse. White Horse is Gun” (Wang and Zhao 2010, 319). This indicates that both Gun and Yu were the grandson and great-grandson of the Yellow Emperor. The Yellow Emperor was also known as Youxiong, which suggests that his offspring were lineal descendants of the totem bear and that the transformation of Gun and Yu into bears was no accident. Evidence can also be found in The Book of Rite (Li Ji, 礼记) that people of the Xia Dynasty worshipped the Yellow Emperor as their ancestor, and offered sacrifices to Gun and Yu (Zhu 1996, 690). This supports the view that people of the Xia Dynasty regarded themselves as descendants of the Yellow Emperor and that the motif of the transformation of Gun and Yu into bears originated from the bear totem association of the Yellow Emperor.

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Yi’s transformation into a bear

There is another protagonist in the mythology of bear transformation among the kings of the Xia Dynasty: the heroic archer Yi. In Qu Yuan’s poem “Questions to Heaven”, two questions remain unresolved and aroused endless debate among later interpreters. How did he cross the rocky mountain when he was exiled to the west and how did he survive after he was transformed into a yellow bear? The difficulty in understanding these two questions lies in the identification of “he”, the transformed, and the species of the yellow bear. As for the identification of the transformer, there were two answers, namely, Gun (鲧) and Yi (羿). And for the identification of the species, there were also two answers, namely, a terrestrial bear and an aquatic threelegged turtle. As Gun and Yu were heroes known for their flood control, if they were regarded as the transformers, the idea that the yellow animal was an aquatic threelegged turtle is very convincing, However, judging from the context in “Questions to Heaven”, the person that transformed into the yellow bear would not be Gun, but Yi, who was looking for the elixir of immortality in cosmic mountains. The transformation of Yi into a bear embodied a primitive metamorphosis ceremony of resurrection, which is closely related to the function of sorcerers or shamans. With the background of bear transformation mythology, it would be easy to answer the question raised by rationalists about the connection between “transforming into a bear” and “the resurrection of Yi by wu (shaman)”. This author proposes to explain the transformation of Yi into a bear from the perspective of “the ritual of death and resurrection” in the book Heroes and the Sun. Anthropologically, the metamorphosis of Yi was a symbolic expression of a “ceremonial change of identity”, which aimed to let Yi, unclean and corrupted by the world, die “symbolically” and be “resurrected” through the ritual of sorcery in a fresh, cleansed state. (Ye 1991, 136)

It should be pointed out that failure to understand the symbolic meaning of the bear as a goddess in the prehistoric Stone Age leads to the disagreement over the interpretation of the subjects. Like the animal archetype “lizard” in The Book of Changes, and the toads and rabbits in moon myths, the bear, as a hibernating animal, is also the symbol of resurrection in the mythological thinking of primitive peoples. Such symbolism originated in the late Paleolithic Age and stemmed from a belief in the reincarnation of the goddess, with various animals coming to symbolically represent the different reincarnated forms of the goddess (Gimbutas 1991). Since the prehistoric Neolithic Age, idols and symbolic forms of various animalgoddesses have been found in European and Asian cultural relics, most reflecting the image of a cyclical metamorphosis or change. Among these, for example, are the moon, which waxes and wanes, snakes and lizards, which cast off old skin to revive, frogs and toads, which experience cyclical physical variations, and the antlers of deer and oxen, which metabolize with the seasonal shifts (Gimbutas 1989, 113– 119). The reason that a large beast like a bear can also symbolically represent the regeneration goddess and become a mythological archetype of resurrection lies in the fact that bears hibernate. This hibernation is very similar to that of frogs and cicadas in the cyclical characteristic of physiological changes, which happens to be

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annual. The ancient Chinese attached a mythical nature to the understanding of the cyclical changes of animals exemplified in The Classic of Mountains and Seas: 150 li further east is a mountain called Xiongshan. There is a cave where bears live. A god-human constantly comes out of it. In summer the cave is open; in winter it is closed. If it opens in winter, there will be war. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 185)

Worthy of note is that the opening and closing of the bear cave is consistent with the seasonal shifts of summer and winter, which is in accordance with the hibernation of bears. The phenomenon of the bear entering and leaving the cave was recorded as “a god-human constantly comes out of it” in the above text, which suggests that the bear was considered as a divine being that can resurrect itself. Under the general rule of religious myths of the Neolithic Age, almost all deities with regenerative characteristics were regarded as goddesses or mother goddesses. It was the primitive empirical observation that it was the maternal body rather than the paternal body that alone reproduced the offspring. (4)

Bear Heritage (to be birthed from a bear, not to be confused with transformation into a bear): the birth of Qi and the origin of its name

The opening of the bear’s cave in early summer suggests the birth of a new life. The name of Qi (启, open), the son of Yu, implies his deified birth out of a bear, or someone strongly associated with the bear spirit. Qi of the Xia Dynasty was also named as “Kai (开, open)” in The Classic of Mountains and Seas and Mozi. “Kai” and “Qi” are synonymous, with the implication of the myth of the opening and closing of the bear cave in summer and winter, respectively, being shared by both. Ms. Tu Shan, the mother of Qi, played a direct role in the bear cave’s opening and the birth of new life. When she turned into a stone, she was pregnant. When Yu demanded his son, the stone split asunder and delivered Qi. The birth mythology of the son, the father, and the grandfather (Qi, Yu and Gun), represents a chain of interconnecting narrative plots. Yu was born out of the bosom of his stone mother; Qi, the son of Yu, was also born out of his stone mother; Gun, the father of Yu, had the power to change into a bear and so did Yu. The mother of Yu changed into a stone and so did the mother of Qi. Over three generations, four characters played a part in the transformation of humans into bears, or in the strong spiritual association of humans with bears by means of their birth, in these mythological narratives. From the above discussion, it can be seen that the mythology of human beings born of stone is a symbolic expression of the periodic changes of hibernating animals. Primitive people observed bears entering stone caves to hibernate and imagined humans transforming into bears and stones, which suggested metaphorically the ending or closing of a life cycle. Bears emerging from caves after the hibernation signify the beginning of a new life cycle, which is understood mythologically as regeneration after death and resurrection. Mythologically, hibernation was understood as having the power of metamorphosis. As the largest hibernating animal, the bear was worshiped as a divinity with supernatural powers. The explanation behind the transformation of Gun into a bear in

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Ren Fang’s The Tales of the Marvellous illustrates this fantastical image of seasonal metamorphosis: “The bear, the spirit of the snake, turned into a pheasant in winter and back into a snake in summer”. This provides a good answer to the question why the three different animals—bear, snake and bird—appear at the same time on the five flags of Yu in the Xia Dynasty.

13.3 The Second Type of Evidence: Yu’s Central Bear Flag The second type of evidence refers to newly unearthed written materials not found in the inherited literature. In Chu bamboo books of Warring States Period preserved in the Shanghai Museum and published in 2002, Parts 17–34 of Rong Cheng Shi recount unheard of legends about Yu. During his three-year reign, Yu governed well and ushered in an era of peace and prosperity, caring for peoples’ needs under ideal conditions. Residents were happy and foreigners were attracted. States throughout the land were all willing to pay tribute. In order to distinguish these states, Yu began to establish directional flags. The sun flag symbolised the East, moon the West, snake the South, bear the Centre, birds the North. Yu then started to practice thrift by dressing and dining modestly. (Ma 2002, 262-277)

The legend “Yu ruled ten thousand states” had already been recorded in the ancient books from later periods. But the specific details of the reign were still unclear. The short account in Rong Cheng Shi is a vivid and specific interpretation of the legend. It is also this account that highlights the reason why Yu, the founder of the first dynasty, could win the support of the people: he was a model of virtue. Today one would say that Yu was an ancient model of governing by virtue and thrift. Yu’s five directional flags are the most impressive part of the narrative. To centralize his authority, Yu used flags as symbols to command states. The five flags demonstrate that people of different ethnic groups desired to be governed by Yu and willingly came to pay tribute. The five flags were clearly intended to distinguish the different ethnic groups and dispel the public’s confusion. Establishing a flag symbol system constituted a major event in the development of communication in China. The name for China (中国, country at the centre) is based on the archetypical experience of identifying the relationship between the four directions—north, south, west and east—and the centre. The ancient character of 中 (centre) was a flagpole, above which is a banner symbolizing the centre of sacrificial ceremony surrounded by crowds. The connotation of the character is “central space”. Without the support of the people from the four directions, there would be no central ruling authority. In other words, the relationship between the centre and the four directions is causal and interdependent. This seems to raise a chicken-and-egg problem: which came first, the centre or the four directions? Fortunately, a ready-made answer can be found in a narrative in The Records of the Historian: Annals of Zhou. It concerns the king of the Zhou Dynasty and his establishing of the capital. It tells that states first came from all directions to pay tribute, so it became necessary to find a “centre” at equal distance from all.

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King Ch’ng stayed at 豊, and had the Duke of Shao revive construction of Lo city, as King Wu intended. The Duke of Chou again consulted the oracle and [went there] to inspect. Finally, when they finished construction, he put the Nine Tripods there. He said, “This is the center of the world. When people from the four quarters pay tribute, the distance will be equal for them”. So he wrote “Shao-kao” 召诰 (The Admonition for (the) duke of shao) and the “Lo-kao” 洛诰 (The Admonition Concerning Lo.) (Sima 1994, 65)

The “country in the centre” approach satisfies the requirement that those paying tribute from four directions will travel roughly the same distance. It can be concluded that determining the centre of the world was an important premise for the central government to achieve diplomatic equality and a harmonious society. The ideology of Chinese central governments emphasizes the “political geography view” of five directional spaces embodied in the model of five mountains and four seas in The Classic of Mountains and Seas and the “wufu” (five costumes) tribute system recorded in Tribute of Yu, which has its origins in the five directions symbol system established by the Xia Dynasty. To trace its roots, one needs to mention the legend that the emperor invented the “south-pointing cart” as a kind of mechanical compass, which explains the popular name “Xuanyuan” (vehicle) found in a book of the River Chart (He Tu Ji Yao Gou, 河图稽耀钩). The Yellow Emperor was born with one hundred foxes gathering together. There was a twelve-foot long earthworm. As a child, he enjoyed practicing martial arts and excelled in fighting. He asked Fenghou, the chancellor, “What are the imperial flags?” Fenghou answered: “Let me tell you. There are five flags. The Blue Dragon flag symbolises the east, the Red Bird flag the south, the White Tiger flag the west, the Black Tortoise flag the north, and the Yellow Dragon flag the centre.”

Later archaeological finds confirm that the ancient system of four mythical creatures was established in the era of the Yellow Emperor, with the blue dragon, the white tiger, the red bird and the black tortoise representing the four cardinal directions. The central yellow dragon must have replaced the central yellow bear. Looking to ancient myths that identify the bear with the dragon, one can infer that the myths of the Yellow Emperor’s transformation into a yellow dragon and Gun’s changing into a yellow bear are both based on the same concept, i.e. resurrection (Fig. 13.1). The integrative power symbolised by the five flags of Yu and the other kings must be examined from the perspective of anthropology. Flags and banners were important primordial forms of media. As Liu Xiang’s Garden of Persuasions: Pointing at War (Shuo Yuan: Zhi Wu, 说苑·指武) quoted The Art of War of Jiang Taigong: (Tai Gong Bing Fa, 太公兵法) “Using different flags can ensure order”. This indicates a specific function of flags, a function which continued into the Qing Dynasty, with their eight flag system. The closely related totem function of flags is evident from the etymology of the character for flag (qi, 旗) from the Great Chinese Dictionary: The ancient flags had bear and tiger images. As written in The Rites of Zhou, “Bear and tiger images are painted on flags. And Shidu makes flags”. Zheng Xuan explains: “Shidu is the official in charge of six townships and six counties. Those who can paint bears or tigers will get paid. Bears and tigers symbolise valour and vigour, which can frighten away enemies.”

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Fig. 13.1 A jade ornament of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty depicting the riding of a dragon to heaven unearthed from the Xiongjiazhong Tomb in Jingzhou, Hubei. Photographed at the Jingzhou Museum

The given purpose of frightening away enemies with bear and tiger images may be too superficial. These two fierce animals represent a profound totem (ancestral spirit) worship tradition. Chu states, during the transition from the Shang to the Zhou Dynasty, were often called “Tiger states” or “Bear states”. Their 25 generations of rulers used “bear” in their state titles. As the ancient tradition of bear and tiger flags had profound prehistoric religious and mythological significance, the use of such flags by those states was logical. Moreover, these animal symbols in flags would be passed down over 4000 or 5000 years, from Yu’s central bear flag to the dragon flag, dragon robe, dragon throne and dragon bed of the Qing emperors. As for the question of which came first, the bear or the dragon, there is other evidence to consider. The genealogy provided in the Annals of Chu by Sima Qian tells states that the ancestors of the Chu State, also the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, came from “bear caves”. The unearthed Chu bamboo books in Baoshan depict religious rites 能祷 (nengdao). The Chinese character 能 (neng) is the original form of 熊 (xiong, bear). The religious rites of the Chu state correspond to its earlier title “Bear State”. The reason why the bear was used as a symbol in the central flag is clear from the story of Yu setting flags recorded in Chu bamboo books. The origins of flags as classifiers are closely connected to their function within the framework of ancestral spirit worship.

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Many scholars, from Fraser to Durkheim, have spoken at length on the theme of “flag as totem”. As the contemporary anthropologist José Antonio Jauregui pointed out: One of the fundamental features of a totem is that it must be unique, and different from any other totems. Durkheim has accurately observed that a primitive tribe or clan worships a specific animal so as to distinguish itself from the other tribes or clans. In the same way, every modern state has its own flag, whose colors, lines and emblems distinguish it from others. As the symbol of a country, the flag becomes an object of belief. State flags are displayed high on official places and buildings and this height is a symbol of prestige and perfection in many cultures. (Jauregui 2004, 219)

One can say that the clan name Youxiong of the Yellow Emperor 5000 years ago and the central bear flag of Yu 4000 years ago follow a continuous line of anthropological development, from animal totem to flag totem. The emperor legends originate in the oral narratives that Sima Qian collected from folklore. The unearthed Chu bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi contains a long-lost image narrative in the account of Yu setting five flags. From the perspective of anthropology, the combination of these two sources places both the totem memory of Youxiong in the oral narrative of ancient peoples and the bear flag of the Xia Dynasty into a holistic cultural context. From the Yellow Emperor to Yu and from the Xia Dynasty to the Chu State, the continuous heritage of the bear-deity symbol from the prehistoric era is evident. A systematic analysis of the bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi not only allows one to better understand the legend of Yu, but also enhances the credibility of the Yellow Emperor legends. During the Xia era ruled by Yu, the derogatory terms for people in the four directions bordering ancient China, invented in the context of Huaxia centralism, e.g. man (蛮), yi (夷), rong (戎) and di (狄), did not yet exist. However, the symbol system of five directional flags including the two celestial bodies (sun and moon), and three animals (snakes, birds, and bears) points to an early form of the “four barbarians” view of the neighbouring states. For example, the snake symbolises the south, which corresponds to etymological rules for the proper names for the south such as man (蛮), shu (蜀) and min (闽), which view snakes as long worms. There is a worm (虫) component in each name. The dragon, which does not exist in reality, is a composite of the bear on the ground, the bird in the sky, and amphibians in water. The features of a bear’s head, a snake’s body and an owl’s claws can still be clearly seen in later images of the divine dragon, which can fly in the sky, swim in water and walk on land. The metamorphosis of the bear, snake and bird in The Tales of the Marvellous helps explain the origins of the dragon’s abilities. The Yellow Emperor’s name, Youxiong, the myth motif of Gun and his son transforming into a bear, and the bear titles of 25 Chu states reveal elements of the ancient totem heritage and culture which was almost lost in transition to agricultural civilization. Thus, one has reason to suspect that the original sacred symbol of Chinese civilization was a real beast, the bear, rather than a fictive creature, the dragon (Fig. 13.2). While this proposition may surprise many, research into ancient history must be based on facts, ascertaining the interconnected clues from various materials

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Fig. 13.2 The heavenly bear motif depicted on a gilt-bronze wine vessel of the Western Han Dynasty unearthed in Youyu County, Shanxi. Photographed at the Shanxi Museum

and details. From Yu establishing the five directional flags one can infer that the bear represented the sacred centre in the Xia Dynasty. This symbol lasted for over 2000 years, and is even preserved in the stone reliefs of the Han Dynasty. On a newly discovered stone relief of the Eastern Han Dynasty in Dabaodang in Shaanxi Province there are bear-god images between the sun, the king of the East, and the moon, the Queen Mother of the West (Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology and Cultural Relics Management Committee of Yulin City 2003, 68). The central position of the dancing bear-god in this imagined immortal world suggests that the bear-god may have been more important than the king of the East and the Queen Mother of the West in mythological belief. The bear-god images commonly found on stone reliefs in Nangyang, Xuchang, Xuzhou and Linqin are not the original inventions of Han artists, but are inherited from the central bear-god totem culture that had existed since the Yellow Emperor. After the Han Dynasty, images of the bear totem gradually disappeared, and the profound totem ideas rooted in prehistoric society were slowly forgotten as China became an agricultural civilization. The jade bear carvings handed down over generations still retain elements of the cultural memory of the prehistoric big tradition.

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13.4 The Third and Fourth Types of Evidence: Bear Totem Cultural Memory The third type of evidence is that of referential materials other than inherited literature and unearthed literature, and includes oral narratives, rituals and folklore as well as cross-cultural ethnographic materials. The bear totem belief is still popular in many hunting communities in northeast China. Viewed as a living fossil, looking to these cultures helps to restore and illuminate the history of bear totems from the “Youxiong State” (4000–5000 years ago) to the Xia Dynasty. Legend has it that Gun (the father of Yu) was also known as Count of Chong. It is generally believed that Chong can be used interchangeably with Song, as Gun was once the tribal leader near the Song Mountain. According to field research in 2007, tales concerning Gun and Yu spread over the Central Plain from Dengfeng to Yuzhou in Henan Province. The memorial stone dedicated to Qimu (Qi’s mother and Yu’s wife), to which Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty paid homage, still exists on the Song Mountain in Dengfeng, along with the Qimu tower, Yu’s caves and a host of accompanying folk narratives. The ethnic memory manifested through folk culture centres around the core myths of Gun and his son Yu taming the flood. The graphic story of Yu transforming into a bear is vividly illustrated in Yu’s temple in Yuzhou (Fig. 13.3). The carved stones of the Han Dynasty in the Qimu tower in Dengfeng also bear Yu’s stone relief from 2000 years ago. The combination of ancient and modern folk myths fully reveals the antiquity of stories about Gun and Yu changing into a bear, which complement the written documents. Some detailed oral myths also relate the birth of Yu. For example, “Yu the Great was born in the Fig. 13.3 A picture of Yu transforming into a bear. Photographed at the Yu Temple in Yuzhou in 2007

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Bear Cave Mountain, 75 kms to the east of Yu Mountain (Song Mountain), now the west of Juci Mountain, north of Jishui River” (Zhao 1998; Guo 2005, 277–278). This fully integrates the myths of “bear mountain and caves” with Yu’s birth in the inherited literature, demonstrating the relationship between rulers of the Xia Dynasty and the bear deity. Near Dengzhou and Yuzhou is Xinzheng, said to be the hometown of the Yellow Emperor. He was also referred to as Youxiong and he founded the Youxiong state. The ancient peoples did not know why. Now, by applying modern cultural anthropology, one can see this as further evidence of the Yellow Emperor’s tribes worshiping the bear totem. There is a village called Xiongzhuang (熊庄, Bear Village) in the Yellow Emperor’s hometown. Later, the name was changed to Nengzhuang (能庄) for aesthetic reasons. The locals erected a bear paw-shaped ding in the memorial square, illustrating the lingering memory of the bear totem’s popularity in the Central Plain. Modern archaeologists look to the third type of evidence to verify archaeological finds, trying to discover traces of Xia culture in the central region. They claimed that “the Song Mountain in Henan is the cradle of the Xia Dynasty at the time of the establishment of the Xia states. According to legend, Yu lived in Yangcheng (now Dengfeng), Qi in Yangdi (now Yuzhou) and Taikang in Zhenxun (now Gongyi or Yanshi) around the Song Mountain. Therefore, the Henan Longshan culture (the third phase of Wangwan culture) in the Song Mountain and the Erlitou culture are the major subjects to explore if one is to trace the earliest possible time in which the Xia culture could have existed. The research aims to establish a more detailed archaeological chronology by dividing the Longshan culture into different historical stages and using Carbon-14 dating to determine the age. It attempts to explore the relationship between the Henan Longshan culture and the Erlitou culture, so as to identify Xia culture at its earliest period” (Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 2004). This view seems rather biased, laden with preconceptions; but the combination of historical documents and archaeological findings is so far the most effective means of studying ancient history. Explorations of Wangchenggang in Dengfeng, Wadian in Yuzhou and the Erlitou culture in Yanshi as well as their long-standing relationship with the Longshan culture of Henan offers by far the most important clues to understanding the Xia culture. If one can break the shackles of Central Plain culture centrality, connect the Taosi culture and Qijia culture of the Qiangrong tribes in southern and western Shanxi, and combine all these with the fact that Yu the Great was born in Xiqiang (an attestation belonging to the inherited literature), one can have a fuller understanding of the origins of the Xia culture. The fourth type of evidence refers to unearthed archaeological objects and the images they bear. Bear-god images, confirmed by western archaeology, in Eurasia date back 8000 to 10,000 years (Gimbutas 1999, 13). Although the inherited literature points to the Xia Dynasty and the Yellow Emperor’s reign as the origins of the bear totem, this does not prove that the East Asian bear totem tradition only began at this time. Recent archaeological discoveries direct attention to more distant prehistoric times for the origins of the bear totem in East Asia.

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In the 1980s, bear skulls and clay bear heads and claws were unearthed in the Niuheliang Goddess Temple in Jianping County in the province of Liaoning. Since then, the fact that the ancestors of the Hongshan culture (5000 or 6000 years ago) worshiped a bear god became known to the world. In 2006, this author identified earlier bear-shaped stone carvings of Xinglongwa in Linxi County Museum of Inner Mongolia. In the meantime, goddess statues, dating back about 7800 years, have been unearthed as well (Ye 2007a). This corresponds fully with the prehistoric goddess religion discovered by archaeologists of the European Neolithic period. That is, the bear is an incarnation, or animal symbol, of the goddess. Compiled by the Archaeological Institute of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the book Baiyin Changhan (2004, 308) also highlights an unearthed bearshaped stone carving from the same period: “It is round, having short ears and an erect body posture, two small round pits representing two eyes, and a mouth protruding forward. It has a height of 2.7 cm and a diameter of 1.5 cm.” From bear-shaped stones in the Xinglongwa culture to clay bear-god carvings in the Goddess Temple of the Hongshan culture, all the way through to bear-shaped carved idols of shell in the lower Xiajiadian culture, the making of bear totem idols was a tradition that stretched and developed into the artistic modelling of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, in which the image of jade bear production became separated from the original totem worship and survived until the jade industry of Emperor Qianlong of the Qing Dynasty (1736–1795). Though certainly smaller, jade production is still handed down over generations to this day. The excavators of the Niulianghe relics, Sun Shoudao and Guo Dashun, wrote that the Hongshan culture, dating back at least 5000 years, worshiped bears and that the dragon images on jade carvings unearthed in the Niuheliang stone tomb are actually bear-dragons. Research into the legendary Five Emperors era should be linked to the cult objects discovered from the Hongshan culture (Guo 2005, 207). By connecting jade sculpture to jade dragons unearthed from the Fu Hao ruins in Anyang, this author has already found how the bear-dragon entered Chinese history from the Xinglongwa and Hongshan cultures, and identified its relationship with Shang and Zhou bronze beast face patterns and taotie (a mythical beast) patterns (Ye 2006b) (Fig. 13.4). As for the key issue of how the bear became the dragon, one can offer new explanations for this by referring to folk beliefs that say that the bear is the snake spirit in The Tales of the Marvellous by Ren Fang. The bear’s head and snake’s body are the two archetypes that collectively construct the dragon symbol. The hibernating bear and the snake are integrated into a sacred animal capable of transformation and metamorphosis. It could fly in the sky, swim under water and walk on the land, traversing the three realms and thus shaping later imaginations of the dragon. The widespread Eurasian prehistoric deity bear image can be understood as an animal incarnation, or symbol, of the regenerating goddess. The bear caves that, according to The Classic of Mountains and Seas, “close in winter and open in summer” and from which “a god-human comes out of it” strongly indicate that hibernating bears were considered by ancient peoples as deities who could return to life after death. This belief in resurrection is a core concept of all important religions and myths around the world (Fig. 13.5).

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Fig. 13.4 A jade carving of bear-dragon unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

Fig. 13.5 A deity bear holding two sheep depicted on a gold ornament of the Warring States Period, unearthed from Yi County. Photographed at the Hebei Museum

The gradual decline of the deity-bear belief was caused by the rise in the belief in the deity-dragon, another mythical image able to move from the darkness to the light, from heaven to beneath the sea. This is an excellent example of how cultural elements of the big tradition were lost under the influence of the small tradition.

Chapter 14

Erlitou Bronze Bells and Plaques: An Anthropological Perspective of the Origins of Civilization

14.1 Studies of the Origins of Civilization from an Anthropological Perspective Studies of the origins of civilization, as a grand systematic subject, require interaction between the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities. In this regard, an integrative perspective, which is found in cultural anthropology (hereafter referred to as “anthropology”), is especially needed instead of a research paradigm which focuses on just one discipline. A key feature of an anthropological approach is its ability to switch flexibly from macro interactions to micro interactions. This has the advantage of integrating interdisciplinary perspectives (for instance, Western institutions often deem archaeology, folklore, mythology and comparative religion to be sub-disciplines of anthropology) and cross-cultural data. It also attaches importance to field investigations and thick description rather than relying only on scientific data and reasoning from concept to concept. This chapter adopts an anthropological perspective to analyse three sets of brass bells and plaques discovered in three Erlitou tombs, taking them as an entry point for the study of the origins of Chinese civilization. Comparing them with similar objects of the Taosi, Sanxingdui and Qijia cultures, it focuses on the material and cultural narrative function of brass bells and plaques, and discusses their spiritual and religious implications. It further aims to reveal their importance as sacred symbols in the founding of the Chinese ritual and music system and their connection to the myths and totems of the Xia Dynasty (as described in the inherited literature). The “quadruple-evidence method” is thus used, by integrating the study of ancient history and archaeology. Discussions relating to the importance of the anthropological perspective in the study of the origins of civilization date back more than twenty years ago, when Li Xueqin, the chief scientist of the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project, wrote the article “How Far is Xia-Shang-Zhou from Us?” (1997a), which recommended several © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_14

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works by Chang Kwang-chih. The “five-door” approach is especially recommended as being a multidisciplinary and comprehensive means to research the Shang Dynasty. Li held that it is a useful approach, but suggested it not solely be used to research the Shang Dynasty, but also the Xia and Zhou Dynasties (1997a, 61). The idea of “walking out of the ‘doubting of antiquity’ era” proposed by Li, which largely marked a shift away from the era of doubting ancient history, is academically based on approaches rooted in multidisciplinary comprehensive research perspectives and methods. Many scholars, except Li himself who has made numerous contributions in this respect, have been restricted by the departmentalism of the discipline of ancient history. It is hard to apply the “five-door” approach when academic institutions continue to force such an arbitrary division of disciplines, it is a systematic drawback that deserves public concern. Although the article of Li highlights that “the training and background of Chang Kwang-chih are those of an archaeologist” (1997a, 62), and also mentions his position as an archaeologist in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, it does not fully explain the subtle distinction between archaeology as a sub-field of anthropology and as a sub-field of history. This is because Li, who worked in the Institute of History in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, whilst he attached great importance to anthropological methods, was unable to emphasize them in his own work as a historian. The distinction between archaeological anthropology and historical archaeology is outlined in the book by Chang Kwang-chih titled Notes on Anthropological Archaeology (1995). From an anthropological perspective, archaeology as a sub-field of history and mythology in Chinese departments in China causes it to suffer from disciplinary restrictions. In several works of Chang, such as Art, Myth and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (1983) and The Bronze Age of China (1982), he spontaneously incorporated mythology, folklore, comparative religion and art history into studies that approached the topic from the perspective of anthropology. According to the anthropological theory of the origins of civilizations, the three fundamental elements of a civilization are writing, bronze and cities. For China, the Xia Dynasty in legends is closely linked with the late Neolithic Age in archaeology because no writing system has been found dating to before the Shang Dynasty. Over the last twenty years, new findings regarding the use of metallurgical technology in the Longshan culture and the prehistoric cities in the basins of the Yellow River and the Yangtze River demonstrated to many academics that two of these elements had emerged by this time. The study of the origins of civilizations seemed to have been regarded as the professional task of archaeology, but this is not the case. Chang stated that the archaeological efforts alone are far from enough for the accurate study of Neolithic history. He held that historians should first know well the materials and principles of social and cultural anthropology before comparing various known patterns with unknown archaeological materials and reconstructing the history (Chang 1997, 8). In other words, archaeological materials cannot be used for interpretation in isolation. Cultural anthropological materials and theories also play a crucial role in the reconstruction of the preliterate era.

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Anthropology has not yet been given due recognition by the system of higher education in China (there are far fewer universities with s department of anthropology in China than in the United States). Moreover, the division of the fields within the social sciences has resulted in the severe departmentalization of disciplines. Thus, each discipline operates by itself, as is commonly demonstrated in academic research and publications. The few attempts at interdisciplinarity were discriminated against for swimming against the tide. The integrative method promoted by Chang is undoubtedly an attribution of anthropology with its interdisciplinary nature. In the climate of updating the materials and tools at the academic’s disposal, the five approaches put forward by Chang twenty years ago should be complemented with at least another four approaches: (A) The study of the jade culture (supported by the knowledge of mineralogy, geology, natural history and the study of collections); (B) Ethnomusicology and the anthropology of music; (C) Comparative religion and comparative mythology; and (D) Art history and art archaeology. Thus, there are altogether nine approaches to the studies of the origins of civilization if all the materials and perspectives are considered. The study of jade culture in China in recent decades reveals that the “universal model” of the formation of civilization from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age does not completely apply to China. Beyond the three great indicators of civilization being present, there was another—the preeminence of jade, the equal respect for jade and gold, and the combination of jade and gold. The indigenous Jade Road, a term overshadowed by the well-known Bronze Age and Silk Road, is the key to this unique feature of Chinese civilization, and at the same is deeply representative of the richness of the “big tradition” lost in later generations. At the end of the Jade Road lay the Kunlun “jade world”, a region wrapped for hundreds of years in a plethora of fascinating myths, and which attracted prehistoric kings like Yu and King Mu of Zhou, the emperors in Qin and Han and generations of men of letters like Qu Yuan, Li Bai and Cao Xueqin. When academics first discovered an intriguing set of bronze bells with jade clappers, they seemed to hear the “golden sound and jade vibration” knocking on the gate of civilization, and to see the first performance of the Chinese ideal of the “predestined union of gold and jade”. An unearthed Chinese dragon, made of two thousand pieces of turquoise stones (Fig. 14.1), further reveals the spectacle of the fusion of Chinese precious stone culture and dragon culture, Fig. 14.1 Dragon shaped turquoise stones unearthed from the Erlitou site. Photographed at the exhibition room of the Erlitou working team in 2011

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which existed in the hinterland of the Central Plain Dynasty even earlier than the Shang Dynasty. Without knowledge of the long-established jade myths and jade worship of the Chinese tradition, it is not possible to fathom the mysterious and sacred implications of the gold-jade and metal-turquoise constellations in the tombs of the Xia Dynasty. From the perspective of the anthropology of music, the new set of bronze bells with jade clappers in the tombs, notably belonging to the upper class, in the palace district of Erlitou remain crucial in interpreting the origin and evolution of ritual music as the material archetype of an entire system of Chinese religious music. Comparative religion and comparative mythology can free one from the restrictions of modern culture and secular conceptions and enable one to project oneself into the context of the beliefs and ritual systems of three or four thousand years ago. With reference to “Exodus”, where the Lord revealed to Moses the religious regulations of the priest in a mysterious yet direct way on Mount Sinai—the garments of the priest should be ornamented with divine tablets and golden bells—one can almost hear sounds from the silent excavations at Erlitou and imagine the divine tidings and the atmosphere of music and dance in the religious ritual of a prehistoric dynasty. In short, the cross-disciplinary elements inherent in anthropology, the thick description it encourages, and the hands-on fieldwork it necessitates will help attain embodied cognition in scholars, and in turn will help them to overcome departmentalism and change the habit of solely promoting literature as a medium in the study of history and culture. This will thus help make up for the “emphasis on archaeological objects alone” in archaeological research. This may also help one re-enter historical time and space with greater auditory and visual acuity.

14.2 An Ethnographic Interpretation of the Three Medium-Sized Erlitou Tombs Anthropologists have transplanted the conception of the “literary text” in literary criticism to the field of culture, and promoted the idea of “cultural texts”, diverting anthropological studies from the search for universal laws to the “close reading” or “interpretation” of specific cultural texts, a diversion which includes an interpretation of narratives contained in texts, images and objects (Geertz 1973; Ye 1998b). In accordance with the three object types emerges three new branches of anthropology: the anthropology of text, the anthropology of image (or “visual anthropology”) and the anthropology of material culture. The bronze bells and plaques, as rare relics left by ancient peoples in preliterate society, can be “interpreted” and “thickly described” by means of studying the image narratives in material culture. The bronze bells and plaques were excavated from: 81YLM4, one of the six tombs in the V district in the Erlitou ruins in 1981; M11, one of the ten tombs in the VI district in Erlitou (found in 1984); and M57, one of the 58 tombs in the VI district in Erlitou (found in 1987). Of the 400 Erlitou tombs discovered so far, only three

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contain bronze bells and plaques. Other exquisite objects were excavated from those three tombs, such as lacquers, jades and potteries, explicitly proving the singularity and uniqueness of those three tombs, which each as a result deserve further research from many points of view. Here is an introduction to the excavations from the three tombs, followed by a comparative and qualitative analysis of them rooted in ethnography. The first tomb, 81YLM4, belongs to the second-phase of the Erlitou culture, and from it twelve objects were excavated: two round pottery shards, two turquoise tubes, one pottery wine vessel, one bronze plaque embedded with turquoise, one bronze bell, one jade tube, one lacquer drum, two lacquer bowls, and one handle-shaped jade ornament (Yang, 1984). The second tomb, 84M11, belongs to the fourth-phase of the Erlitou culture, and from it thirty objects were excavated: one bronze jue, one bronze bell (Fig. 14.2), one bronze plaque embedded with turquoise (Fig. 14.3), one jade gui, one jade blade, one jade qi, one jade tube, two seashells, four shells, six round pottery shards, three handle-shaped jade ornaments, two pottery jue, one pottery wine vessel, one turquoise, one lacquer box and one big scallop (Yang and Zhang 1986). The third tomb, 87M57, also belongs to the fourth-phase of the Erlitou culture, and from it approximately thirty objects were excavated: one bronze jue, one bronze blade, one bronze plaque, two handle-shaped jade objects, one three-hole jade broadsword, one jade ge, two turquoise beads, several small jade objects, one jade clapper, one moon-shaped jade, nine pottery objects, one lacquer object, one stone shovel, five shells and a batch of scattered turquoise pieces (Du 1992). These three tombs were created between the second phase and the fourth phase of the Erlitou culture. According to new data from the Xia-Shang-Zhou Chronology Project, the time span between the two phases is nearly 200 years from the middle of the 1800s BC to the middle of the 1600s BC. The production techniques used for Fig. 14.2 A bronze bell unearthed from the Erlitou site. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

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Fig. 14.3 A bear-shaped bronze plaque inlaid with turquoise unearthed from the Erlitou site in 1984. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

the bronze bells and plaques reveal a culture of different phases but which developed in one continuous line with no substantial change over time. However, only a small number of the bronze plaques and bells were first found in the second-phase tombs. Apart those excavated from Tomb 81YLM4, there are only two bronze bells excavated from Tomb 1982YLIXM4 and Tomb 2002YLVM3 respectively (Chen 2008, 153). The number obviously increased in the fourth phase, with four bronzes from the tomb 87M57, amounting to the total number of the bronzes in the second phase. The increase in the number suggests that the Central Plain entered the Bronze Age at an accelerated pace, paving the way to a splendid and prosperous era of ritual bronzes in the Shang Dynasty. From this perspective, the bronze bells and plaques, though small in size and number, are crucial in conveying the exact way, and order in which, Chinese civilization developed. Prehistoric central China first applied bronze casting to the production of the ritual instruments, which not only follows the old Chinese maxim, “ritual and military affairs are of utmost priority for a country”, but reflects the extraordinary social status of the owners of the three tombs. So, who were these three people buried with high-level ritual accessories? Take a look at the functions of bronze bells in inherited literature. Bronze bells dating back to the Xia, Shang and Zhou are recorded in The Book of Poetry: Hymns of Zhou: An Audience, where they are depicted as ritual instruments in the West Zhou Dynasty: The knights appear before Lord Cheng, To seek the mandates as their specimen. Their dragon banners gleam bright, with bells resounding in the light. (Wang 1994, 65)

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The Erlitou culture developed later than the early Xia Dynasty. Ritual instruments such as bells, plaques and drums are closest to the real objects used in the etiquette system of the Xia Dynasty. The set of bronze plaques embedded with jades (turquoise belonged to the category of jade in the minds of the ancient ancestors) and the set of bronze bells with jade clappers indicate that the pre-Qin mythology is not merely fictional. “The etiquette system for equipage and dressing” for the royal family of West Zhou required metal bells to make sounds and flags with images of divine objects as recorded in Hymns of Zhou, which suggests that the customs of using bells and flags also existed in the Xia and Shang, before the Zhou Dynasty. What is lost in the books can be completed by the records about the folk culture of different ethnic groups in China, in other words by applying an ethnographical perspective. First, the important ritual instruments of Manchu Shaman: waist bells and bronze bells. Waist bells: “Xisha” in Manchu. The earliest waist bells were made of stones, while now they are mostly iron. They are ornaments of shamans, with dozens of bells, each 300 g, on one strip, totalling 30–40 kg, some of which are too heavy for ordinary people. It is said that the waist bells are ornaments of the god Abka Hehe, worn on her dress in war, whose sounds could terrify and daze the devil, Yeruri, who was therefore defeated and fell into the underworld. The striking of a shaman’s waist bells means that he is ascending to the natural world, accompanied by winds and thunder on his long way ahead. And their people believe that the ringing of waist bells is not caused by a human, rather it is under the command of the gods when they come and go. (Fu and Meng 1991, 151–152)

The case above shows that the waist bells, as divine ritual instruments, are similar to the so-called “hierophany” often referenced in comparative religion, or more simply they were an incarnation of the gods. Their function, of warding off evil, comes from the divinity they represented. Other divine objects like flags, icons, plaques are also represented in visual form. Secondly, bells as ritual instruments used by the sorcerers of the Yi (彝) people, the Bimo. As recorded in the work of Li Shikang, Biographies of Yi sorcerers (1995), ever since the Qing Dynasty, the Yi sorcerers were called different names but with the same pronunciation as “Bimo”, such as “baima”, “bumu” and “bangma”. What are the features of the ritual instruments used by the sorcerers to cure diseases and ward off disasters? According to Xingping County Annals: Ethnic Groups, a Baima holds a book in the left hand and a bell in the right hand (Li 1995, 6–7). The function of the sounds of bells is again verified here. Third, the shamanic costume and ornaments of the Hezhe. The features of the shamanic costume of the Hezhe are as follows: “there are 3–7 bells on the front skirt. The number of the bells will increase as the owner becomes more experienced. There are also small bronze mirrors and leather turtles and snakes on the skirt, which are divine creatures that protect the shaman who owns the dress” (Wu 1989, 227). The symbolic combination of bronze bells and divine icons provides some referential clues for interpreting the original meaning of similar sets of religious ritual instruments apparent in the archaeological excavations.

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Fourth, the ritual instruments used in singing and performing the divine songs among Tima of the Tujia. Like shamans of the northern ethnic groups and the Bimo of the Yi, there is a folk religious leader of the Tujia, who is also called the senior chieftain. He is seen as the mediator between gods and man, wearing the dress of eight patchworks and the phoenix hat, holding the most crucial ritual instrument to communicate with gods—the eight-treasure bronze bell. Encouraged by the ringing of the bell, he will then wield another ritual ware, the ritual broadsword, to dance and sing the divine songs. People today may not recognize the value of the first batch of bronze bells excavated from Erlitou and Sanxingdui, with a history of more than three thousand years in China, or they may laugh at the tedious monotonous music played by the bells. However, with reference to the Tima of the Tujia and their divine songs, one can better understand the abundant information about art in the ritual performances of the Xia and Shang Dynasties that is encoded in the excavated bronze bells, knowledge which has been lost for so long. The song, “Gods, Please Catch the Spirits” reveals the dialogue between the Tima and the deities. The sorcerers invite gods to the secular world with the summons of the songs and the sounds of the bronze bells, exerting their power of warding off evil or catching ghosts to protect the human beings. The interaction of man, gods and spirits also provides a broad space for the mythological interpretation of the bronze bells. Fifth, the ritual bell of the sorcerers among the Lhoba peoples. There are three sacred objects of the Apatani people of Lhoba in southeastern Tibet according to anthropologists: “The ritual bronze bell is seen as a sacred object by the Apatani people; the Tibetan broadsword is also essential when killing the gayal bison; the Tibetan beads are vital ornaments for the priests during a solemn rite” (Lü, et al. 1999, 839). Together with the bells, the plaques and the blades, jade beads, jade tubes and turquoise tubes were also excavated from three middle-sized tombs in Erlitou, providing circumstantial evidence linking them to the system of three sacred objects in Lhoba. Sixth, the large number of bronze bells excavated from tombs, belonging to various historical periods, of the northern ethnic groups. The family tombs of the Turkish era were found in the border region of Krasnoyarsk in southern Siberia in 1985. In the seventh tomb, two golden ornaments were discovered in the shape of birds spreading their wings. A bronze bell hangs on the top of each wing and on the upper end of each flank. Inside is a statue of a man with a hook on the top of his back. The excavated items from the tomb also include a diamond-shaped hanging bell ornament, with a knot on the top corner and a small bell hanging on the left and right and bottom corner. The waist bells and plaques used by shamans are the epitome of the religious beliefs of shamanism as well as important tools to communicate between gods and man. These objects have been gradually found in Hunnish and Turkish tombs in Siberia, Jurchen tombs of the five kingdoms of the Liao Dynasty, the city sites of the kingdom of Dongxia of the Jin Dynasty along the coast, and the Jurchen tombs of the Ming Dynasty in Liaoning.

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Although the materials above are not found in the history books, written in biographical style, of the Han Dynasty, they serve as effective tools with which to annotate the classics. This is the biggest breakthrough in the traditional study of the classics and history brought about by anthropological knowledge. In order to explain the function and origins of the system of the golden bells and the robes of the priests in Judaism, James George Frazer (1923, 417–440), cited literary and ethnographic materials from more than thirty different cultures in his analysis of the bells of priests and churches, even exploring the custom of infants wearing bells to drive away evil spirits in many ethnic groups. The comparison and integration of materials from all the five continents suffice to prove that the development of sounds enriched with symbolism from small bells to church bells is not only a part of music history, but also a part of religious and mythological history (cf. Gaster 1969, 263– 278). The ethnographic materials cited above about the sacred bells are exclusively from China, demonstrating a similar conception of the “sacred bells” and a shared function of exorcising ghosts. These excavated items are silent, yet profound in their implications, with these implications manifested in the anthropological method of comparison.

14.3 The Overall Interpretation of the Ritual Instruments in Erlitou Tombs In the past half century after the excavation of the Erlitou site, studies in archaeology have thrived. Research on the three bronze plaques excavated from the Erlitou site has been particularly helpful in finding more than ten types of bronze plaques in different museums scattered all over the world, which led to around ten research papers on this topic. But the meaning and purpose behind combinations of these ritual instruments, like bronze plaques and bells, the lacquer drums, the jade blades and handle-shaped jades, have not been studied thoroughly, owing to a lack of an integrative perspective. The interpretation of images on the bronze plaques has traditionally been rooted in the ideas of the “taotie motif” and “dragon motif” (Li 1991) and the tombs were generally attributed to nobles. The following are eight types of shamanic ritual instruments, outlined by experts on folklore. A comparison is conducted in the hope of identifying the owners of the three tombs in Erlitou and the functions of the ritual instruments buried with the dead. In short, the owners of tombs with bronze bells, bronze plaques and handle-shaped jades must have been sorcerers and witch doctors, employed by emperors or shamanic chiefs. (1) (2) (3)

The divine drums found in Tomb 81YLM4 in Erlitou. The bronze mirrors. The waist bells. Bronze bells have been excavated from Tombs 81YLM4, 84M11 and 87M57 in Erlitou. The three bells were all placed on the waists of the tomb owners.

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(4)

The divine sceptres. Corresponding items have been found, such as jade yue in Tomb 81YLM6, the jade tubes and turquoise tubes in M81YLM4, and the jade gui in Tomb 84M11 in Erlitou. These non-utilitarian ritual jades have functions similar to the shamanic divine sceptres—both being symbols of divine power. The divine whip. Corresponding items are the handle-shaped jades in Tombs 81YLM4 and 87M57 and the handle-shaped jade ornaments in Tomb 84M11 in Erlitou. The long thin handle-shaped jade whips were engraved with segmented nodes, resembling the shape of the whips made of coppers or irons in the later generations. The divine blades and swords. A one-hole jade broadsword was excavated in Tomb 84M11 and three-hole jade broadsword and bronze blades were in Tomb 87M57 in Erlitou. Blades, as ritual instruments, are not practical tools in their usual sense. The jade blades and the bronze blades were all made of the rarest materials of that time to symbolise divine power. The song sung by the sorcerers of the Dai people, “The Song of Driving out the Ghosts” gives the simplest explanation of the mythological functions of this type of divine blades:

(5)

(6)

Hey The wandering ghosts, the evil and the beheaded ones Now listen! You are the origin of the diseases You are the woe of man Today you haunt the patients I’m going to drive you out of the village …… My blade is sharp enough to cut the head of a ghost My bow and arrow are good enough to penetrate the heart of a ghost (Yan 1989, 240)

(7)

(8)

The divine idols. Corresponding items are the owl-shaped, the bear-shaped and the tiger-shaped divine idols on bronze plaques inlaid with turquoises found respectively in Tombs 81YLM4, 84M11 and 87M57, and the unrecognized combination image on the decayed turquoise. The box of ritual instruments. Corresponding items are the two lacquer bowls buried on the left side of the owner in Tomb 81YLM4, the lacquer box in Tomb 84M11 on the bottom of the tomb and the vermilion lacquer container (resembling a drinking vessel) in Tomb 87M57 at the east wall of the tomb. The functions of all of the four vermilion lacquers are not recorded in the excavation report.

Seven out of the eight types of shamanic ritual instruments presented in the folklore reports, with the exception of the bronze mirrors, have equivalents at the Erlitou site, thus 87% of the totality. The extensive materials used for comparison come from the living cultures studied in ethnography and the excavations studied in archaeology, which provide relatively convincing evidence for verifying the identities of

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the owners of the tombs in Erlitou as high-ranking priests at that time. The earliest excavation of bronze mirrors was from the Majiayao culture in northwestern China, where the bronze-melting technology started before being brought to the Central Plain. The bronze plaques clearly imply the worship of icons and totem markers. JeanPierre Vernant (2001, 349) suggested that in addition to myths and rituals, any religious system has a third aspect, that of the visualization. In an attempt to build a bridge with divinity through visualization, the images of icons should mark a clear distance from the human world. The importance of the bronze plaques lies in their role as physical evidence of the evolution from the prehistoric shamanic statues and divine flags to the ritual systems of bells and flags in early Huaxia states. The etiquette systems related to bells, flags or drums recorded in the literature of the later generations, as the significant auditory and visual representations of the theocracy, find expression in the bell-plate system found in Tomb 84M11 and Tomb 87M57and the bell-plate-drum system in Tomb 81YLM4 at the Erlitou site. The bronze bell is one of the most epoch-defining divine objects in the formation of the Chinese ritual system—an instrument with an outstanding religious function. Even with the secular and scientific knowledge of today, one would be unable to figure out the symbolic meaning of the bell sounds from three or four thousand years ago. But the anthropological ethnographic perspective and the “ethno-archaeology” derived from it help shed light on the issue. The fact that the same type of bronze plaques have been excavated from Sanxingdui in Sichuan and Tianshui in Gansu, archaeological sites in northwestern and southwestern China respectively, suggests a cultural exchange and interplay among different ethnic groups. Bronze and jade were used to exorcise evil due to their nature as rare and special materials. Frazer (1923) noted the function of bronzes or even metals in warding off evil, which again evidences the belief in the exorcising function of bronzes across cultures within the Eurasian supercontinent. The Hani people, an ethnic group in China, also have the saying of “taking along bronzes to keep away evil”. The bronze bell with a jade clapper was placed close to the bronze plaque inlaid with turquoises in the tomb, which suggests their corresponding and correlative features. The divine sceptre of the Qiang (羌) people is the best modern witness to the combination of bronze bells and plaques. Hu Jianmin, an anthropologist, gave reliable ethnographic descriptions in the 1940s when investigating the Duangong (the sorcerer) etiquette of the Qiang people around Wenchuan in Sichuan (1993, 488): The divine sceptre, “Ser-ko-ta-bo”, is one of the important ritual instruments of the Duangong. The sceptre is about four or five feet long, with a copper or iron god statue on the top. A bell hangs on the head of the statue, and a spearhead at the bottom, which can be stuck into the earth. The sceptre is used in exorcising evil, releasing souls, curing diseases and fighting wars. It is carried by the senior Duangong when dancing to invite gods to visit the world of living, but it cannot be used in the sacrificial rites to the chief gods.

The divine sceptre of the Qiang people grants clues as to the reasons for the juxtaposed locations of the bells and plaques in 81YLM4, 84M11 and 87M57 in Erlitou—particularly suggesting the possibility that they were used in combination. This perspective helps to explain their functions as symbolizing sacred identity

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through auditory and visual images. Academics are now in a better position to believe that the three excavated bronze plaques and more than ten other bronze plaques that drifted into museums abroad earlier on all have the nature of divine icons. The tradition of “casting a ding and engraving on it the images of many creatures” in the Bronze Age recorded in inherited literature could, indeed, be derived from “casting a plaque and engraving on it the images of many creatures” before the Shang Dynasty. The combination of the divine icon and the bronze bell, taken together with the reference to the combination of flags and bronze bells in The Book of Poetry and The Rites of Zhou, can help one find that the bell-flag system in the West Zhou Dynasty developed from the bell-plate system in the Xia Dynasty. The images on the bronze plaques in 84M11, 87M57 and 81YLM4 are believed to be bears, tigers and owls, and the profound prehistoric origins of the three divine animal totems have also been traced (Ye 2008c). The old maxims of “dragons on flags” and “bears and tigers on flag” in The Rites of Zhou are proven by the images on the bronze plaques of Erlitou. Ethnographic materials also suggest that the handle-shaped jades, which were also discovered in Erlitou tombs along with the bronze bells and the bronze plaques, should also be seen as divine ritual instruments of wu, the shamans or sorcerers. The divine whip of the northern shamans and the divine sceptre of southern Qiang people may be used as reference points. Recently, there have been many discussions on this issue based on the established theory of “wu’s jade” in jade studies. The shape of the lacquer drum in 81YLM4, though damaged, has been verified by excavators. Its usage can be made clearer by referring to the description of the Manchu shamanic drums by ethnologists: The divine drums, or “imcin” in Manchu. The shape of the drum can be round, cuboid or oval. It is covered with leather and decorated with copper, with a handle on the middle of the back of the drum, for which it is called zhuagu (a drum that can be held in hand). The drum head is often painted with images of heaven or figures of gods. In people’s minds, the drum represents waves of clouds on which souls can ride to heaven or the underworld; when the shaman beats the drum, the souls fly to the sky. The drum is beaten with the drum whip. Its sounds spreads far and loud. (Fu and Meng 1991, 151)

The core idea behind wooden drum worship among the Va people is that by beating the wooden drum they can communicate with the gods. The production of the drums is also a religious ritual. Knowing this helps one to dig deeper into the nature of the royal bronzes and the jade workshops found in the palace district of Erlitou. The function of the divine drum in the sacrificial rites is recorded in detail in The Book of Poetry: Hymns of Zhou: Blind Musicians (Wang 2008, 671–673): “Blind musicians, a sightless hand, There in the court of Zhou do stand. …The tune is loud and sweet; the sounds are solemn and neat. The ancestors will hear”. According to this, no instruments among the burials in royal tombs before the Zhou Dynasty were used by ordinary players, but by priests as a divine means of communicating with gods in sacrificial ceremonies. The relationship between the divine bells and the divine drums cannot be ascertained simply with the evidence from Tomb 81YLM4. The case of their being used by the sorcerers of the Drung (独龙) ethnicity, “Namusa”, is noteworthy:

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In the above religious activities, the “Namusa” will don a special linen blanket. His most important ritual instruments, an ordinary bronze bell and a double-head drum covered with animal skin, are exclusive to the sorcerer himself. Every time a religious activity is held, the “Namusa” shakes the bell or beats the drum (in the areas downstream of the Drung River he only shakes the bell), to inform the spirit to descend. (Lü 1993, 642)

It may be concluded from the materials above that first, it is not necessary for all sorcerers to shake the bell and beat the drum at the same time, which explains why the combination of bell and drum was found in only one of the three sorcerers tombs, while only bells were found in the other two tombs; and second, there is a tendency for divine ritual instruments to be exclusive to their divine users, which explains why these rare ritual instruments were buried with dead sorcerers in the tombs of Erlitou. Could hallucinations have been caused by the combined use of bells and drums by the Erlitou sorcerers in rites to communicate with gods? It seems perhaps too bold to raise such a question, for it goes beyond the limits of traditional textual criticism. But is there any possibility of evaluating the real effects of these religious ritual behaviours practiced in the Xia Dynasty, reaching into depths that the written texts cannot help one reach? On this occasion there seems to be no other options but to take ethnographic materials as a reference point. The report on the Indian shamanic dances conducted by Wolfgang G. Jilek states: When the speed of the drum sounds becomes extremely high (amounting to 3.3–3.7 hits per second), the sounds can help to cause hallucinations for the dancer. We can see from the electroencephalogram that the stimulation to the human brain alters the state of consciousness through hearing, which is associated with other physiological states. ...Women help them keep beat time with willow sticks, while men let out the shouts of battle. All the people encourage the man to seek hallucinations. (Guo 2004)

From the above case, one can see that the ritual activities, like singing and dancing, of the ancient ancestors were probably a way of inciting a super-normal mental state. The experiences of shamanic sorcerers in inviting the gods to the earth and in freeing their spirits to seek hallucinations are quite dependent on the sounds and fast tempo of the drums and bells. The inseparable relationship between sorcerers and dance lies in the beliefs of the connection between man and gods. The 15th generation shaman of the Horqin in Inner Mongolia, Buyanhexig stated that one can only enter world of the gods through means inspired by the gods. At a point of rotation, the shaman is transformed into a different entity during the ceremonial trance, and seems to disappear such that only the drum and the mirror can be seen (Bai 2002). From the bell-drum and bell-plate-blade combinations in Erlitou, one may imagine that the owners of the divine ritual instruments had the power to communicate with the gods and had outstanding spiritual charisma. Although their bodies have rotted away, leaving only the instruments in the three middle-sized tombs, the ethnoarchaeological perspective helps one to overcome the weakness of “being supported by the evidence from objects alone” in conducting research. Paul Devereux, the anthropologist, wrote a book on the prehistoric shaman’s trance, The Long Trip (1997), starting his analysis from prehistoric relics. It traces the physical evidence of that special mental state of humans back to the cave paintings of the Old Stone Age 20,000 years ago. By comparison, it is not so strange to think that the sorcerers of the Erlitou culture were

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able to enter a trance through instruments like bells, plaques or drums three or four thousand years ago.

14.4 The Origins of Sacred Ritual Instruments: The Sanxingdui and Qijia Cultures After interpreting the ritual instruments and identifying the tomb owners, one now needs to probe into the cultural origins of the Erlitou ritual instruments, that is, the bells and the plaques. The system of worshipping icons like bears, dragons and owls gradually became a profound tradition during the four thousand years from the Xinglongwa to Hongshan, and then into the Erlitou and Yin-Shang cultures, which together can be called the “owl-bear” period. After the Western Zhou Dynasty, people began to worship new icons such as dragons, tigers and birds, hence the “dragontiger-phoenix” period was born. The significance of the Erlitou bronze plaque lies in its contribution to revealing new divine materials, i.e. bronze replacing jade and turquoise in the “owl-bear” period. It marked a new age for the combination of gold and jade and raised the curtain for the Bronze Age of the Central Plain later on. Archaeologists have noted that: The bronze plaques and bells are quite distinctive among the bronzes found in the Erlitou Culture. We have found no bronze plaques in Erligang Shang tombs. Although there is no agreement on the meaning and the nature of the bronze plaques, since they were found in the tombs of the nobles only in the Erlitou Culture, we can conclude they represent distinguished identity and have ritual meaning. (Li 2008, 56)

The system of bronze bells and plaques, which was not inherited into the tradition of the Central Plain, has left some traces in the cultures outside the Central Plain, such as the bronze bells and plaques excavated from Sanxingdui, the bronze bells from Qijia and Kayue in Qinghai, and the bronze plaques inlaid with turquoise from Tianshui, Gansu. A dragon-shaped bronze plaque inlaid with turquoise was excavated at Sanxingdui in Rensheng village in 1984; a tiger-shaped bronze plaque inlaid with turquoises was found at Sanxingdui on the bank of the Yazi River in 1995 (Chen 2000, 77; 70); 43 bronze bells were found in the No. 2 sacrificial pit at Sanxingdui in 1986; and three bronze plaques inlaid with turquoise were found in the Cangbaobao sacrificial pit at Sanxingdui in Zhenwu in 1987. As the Sanxingdui culture of the Chengdu plain developed later than the Erlitou culture of the Central Plain, its system of bronze bells and plaques is deemed to have been influenced by the Erlitou culture. The Qijia culture of northeast China, however, is earlier than the Erlitou culture of the Central Plain; thus its bronze bells and plaques are of exceptional significance. Its system should be interpreted as a “root” rather than a “branch” of the Central Plain’s, especially in its bronze-casting technology. The earliest bronze in China was found in a Majiayao cultural sits in Dongxiang, Gansu, rather than among the relics of the Central Plain culture. There

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are a greater variety of bronzes from the Qijia culture than from the Central Plain of the same period. According to Wei Liao Zi (尉缭子) (Fenghou 1990), ritual instruments were used to command soldiers in battle: “jin (metal), drum, bell and flag were used for different purposes. Beating the drum means to march forward; beating it hard means to attack. Beating jin means stop; beating it hard means retreat. The bells send messages. Waving the flag to the left means march towards the left and waving to the right means march towards the right”. Each of the four ritual instruments, used in combination in the pre-Qin period, has its own independent origins. The term jin refers to metal instruments like bells or zhong (钟, bigger bells). Therefore, the search for the origins of the combination of jin, drum, bell and flag can be simplified into that of drum, bell and flag. The bell, the plaque and the drum excavated from Tomb 81YLM4 at Erlitou clearly indicate that zhong were absent in the Xia Dynasty. The bronze musical instruments like the closed-tile-shaped cymbals, yong (镛), bo (镈), zheng (钲) and zhong (钟) were all derived from the closed-tile-shaped bells. But the formation of the bell-plate-drum combination needs to be explored outside the context of the Erlitou culture. With the excavations so far, the flags, which were made of fabric, were hardly preserved over thousands of years and can only be replaced by symbols of the same kind—the pottery and bronze plaques. These three symbols might have been invented separately and gradually combined somewhere outside of the Central Plain, most likely in the northwestern area. Although the direct ancestor of the bronze bell, the pottery bell, was found in both the Central Plain and the northwestern area and the first copper bell (Fig. 14.4) in China was excavated from the Taosi culture near the Central Plain in Xiangfen, Shanxi, bronze-casting and mosaic techniques originated in the northwestern area rather than the Central Plain. In other words, bronze-casting technology, which opened the door to China’s Bronze Age, was probably not an independent invention of the Central Plain culture. It was brought to the Central Plain through the Hexi Corridor. It is intriguing to connect this archaeological discovery with the voyage of the first ancestor of the Xia Dynasty, Yu “going out of the west Qiang” as recorded in inherited literature. Fig. 14.4 A copper bell unearthed from the Taosi site. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

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Some scholars believe that the clay mask inlaid with jade eyes found in the Niuheliang Goddess Temple was the first case of, and thus the prehistoric origin of, inlaying jade to be studied. However, the technology of inlaying two jade eyes onto a clay mask does not seem to be comparable with the technology of inlaying grids of turquoise onto bronze plaques. Rather, the origin of this technology seems to date back to the Qijia culture in the northwest rather than to the Hongshan culture in the north. Turquoises are still among the most important accessories of the Tibetan people. The technique behind the creation of the well-known ritual instruments, the conchs inlaid with turquoises, is similar to that of ritual instruments at Erlitou three thousand years ago. It can also be interpreted through the ideas of the gold-jade combination: the brilliant set of bronze (or gold) inlaid with jade (or turquoise) is the shared tradition of the Han and Tibetan cultures. To produce this attractive sound, two of the rarest materials at that time, which also appear in the production of the Tibetan divine ritual instruments, were used to design the Erlitou bronze bell with jade clappers. The ancestor of the bronze bell is the pottery bell. The pottery bell excavated from the Shijiahe site in Hubei, south of the Central Plain “is likely to be the ancestor of the important bronze chime bells” (Wang and Wang 2000, 12). This speculation is pertinent, but simple. There occurred a series of developments from the pottery bell of the Longshan culture to the copper bell, the first metal instrument in human history, to the seven bronze bells excavated from Erlitou, to the bronze bell in the Yin-Shang era and its variants, the bronze cymbal and the bronze zhong, then to the set of cymbals (such as the set of three bronze cymbals from the Yin Ruins in Anyang and the set of five bronze cymbals in Fu Hao Tomb) and chimes. In reconstructing a chronology of the Chinese ritual and music systems, these silent relics, left sleeping underground for thousands of years, can be reconnected to one another to create a developmental pattern, providing clues to revealing their lost history. If the prehistoric pottery bell preceded the Erlitou bronze bell, how and when might it have developed? Experts of musical instrument archaeology consider that the pottery rattles excavated from the prehistoric tombs of children in Tugutai, Lanzhou were the predecessor of the pottery bell. This point of view helps one expand one’s attention from the Longshan culture of the Central Plain to the prehistoric cultures of the western regions when investigating the origins of the Erlitou culture. The Tugutai site in Lanzhou belongs to the Majiayao culture. Further to the west, there are the Majiayao cultural ruins in Yuanyangchi, Yongchang, Gansu, in the hinterland of the Hexi Corridor, from which were excavated pottery percussion instruments— the predecessor of the bronze bell, the early-stage mosaic ritual instruments—the predecessor of mosaic bronze plaque, turquoise ornaments and sporadic bronzes. These elements of early material culture may have contributed to the characteristics of the Erlitou culture. Take the production technology behind mosaic plaques as an example. The face-shaped statue inlaid with nacreous pearls excavated from the Yuanyangchi site in Yongchang can be seen as an embryonic form of the Erlitou bronze plaques. It is described by archaeologists as follows:

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The human face-shaped statue was made of dolomite, inlaid with white nacreous pearls as its eyes, nostrils and mouth, with black colloid as its bonding agent. These two bone hairpins and the carved stone took the lead in the mosaic technology. ...It is inferred that these human statues and the human-face-shaped statues might be buried as icons of belief or as the supernatural tools of sorcerers. (Xie 2002, 102-103)

In the tomb of nobles belonging to the same time and culture, M564, in Liuwan, Qinghai, there are 91 pieces of pottery in total, along with turquoise ornaments and a set of stone blades inside a wooden coffin, similar to most ritual instruments buried in Erlitou tombs. Later, in the Siba culture that came right after the Machang culture, ritual sets of pottery plaques and bells appeared, together with turquoise ornaments, agate beads, bronze wares like tubes and bracelets, sea shell and mussel ornaments (ibid., 148). It was slightly earlier than the Erlitou culture, but they were almost contemporaneous, which suggests the possibility of communication and connection between these two cultures. Archaeologists have noted an inexplicable phenomenon concerning the metal musical instruments of the Shang Dynasty: “The bronze musical instruments of the Shang Dynasty were mainly bells and cymbals. Although a large number of bronze bells have been found at Erlitou, it is still baffling why the number of the bronze bells, which was small in the early and middle Shang Dynasty, should increase so rapidly in the late Shang Dynasty. The intersecting surface of the bronze bell is often oval or like a willow-leaf. There may be panels at one side or both sides of the object and a hole or a half-ring-shaped beam on the top, with a clapper in its cavity” (Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences 2003, 404). This author believes that the rise and decline of the bronze bells between Xia and Shang Dynasties can be explained by changes in culture. The rulers of the Xia Dynasty, who were related to the Qijia culture in the northwest, used the bronze bells as their main ritual instruments. The Shang people, who overthrew the rulers of the Xia Dynasty, came from the east, where the bronze bell was not dominant in the ritual and music system. Therefore, the bronze bell, which appeared in Erlitou period, disappeared in the early and middle Shang Dynasty and reappeared in the late Shang Dynasty probably under the influence of western ethnic groups, most probably Di (氐) and Qiang (羌). The bronze bells and plaques of the Sanxingdui, Qijia and Kayue cultures were related to the western ethnic groups of Qiang and Rong (戎), which were different from the eastern Shang people. Zhang Tianen from the Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology believed that the beast-face pattern on the lower part of the plaques excavated from Tianshui, Gansu, is almost the same as that on the M11:7 at Erlitou, though the patterns on the upper part are different. The plaques also share some features with the four plaques preserved in the Honolulu Academy of Art and seen in the United Kingdom and the United States. M11 is an Erlitou fourth-phase tomb. Therefore, the plaques excavated from Tianshui and other similar samples all belong to that period. The bronze plaques in Tianshui suggest that early in the Xia Dynasty, the western region had communicated with the Central Plain, which provided precious materials and new opportunities for the research in this field (Zhang 2002). Wang Xun also held that the Majiayao culture was the forerunner in producing and using bronze. The subsequent Qijia culture was earlier

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than the Erlitou culture and was more likely to influence it in terms of metallurgy (Wang 1997). Besides bronzes, some traces of pottery production were also found in the Erlitou culture of the Central Plain and the Qijia culture in the northwestern area. The pottery jar excavated in Zhuanglang County, Gansu Province is similar in texture, color, shape and decoration to the one excavated from the second-phase Erlitou tomb at the Nanzai site in Yichuan County, Henan. “Thus there is some interplay between the Qijia and Erlitou cultures, which may date back to the second phase of the Erlitou culture” (Zhang 2002). The resemblance between certain pieces of pottery belonging to the Central Plain and those belonging to the northwest of China suggests a more profound cultural relation than perhaps previously assumed. However, whether the Erlitou culture of the east influenced the Qijia culture of the west or the other way round is a moot point. The direction of diffusion of cultural elements like metallurgy and wheat is consistent with the record of Yu going eastwards from the West Qiang in mythology. The clue that the Qijia culture was one of the most important cultural influences of the Xia culture will be clearer with the evidence of the direction of cultural diffusion on the Jade Road since the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties (cf. Ye 2008b).

14.5 The Origins of Ritual and Music Civilization This chapter focuses on interpreting the cultural implications of Erlitou high-ranking tombs through use of interrelating materials from different disciplines, analysed on the basis of the quadruple-evidence method. It proposes that scholars reconstruct their understanding of the development of the Chinese ritual and music systems in reference to new analyses of the mythological function of major excavated ritual instruments. A new interpretation of the existing evidence must be rooted in the inherent relationship between ritual and myth. The double-evidence method promoted by Wang Guowei in the early twentieth century revitalized the study of ancient Chinese history by means of his stunning archaeological discoveries. The developments of the past century prove that the exploration of new materials and methods is an important part of academic progress. Meanwhile, the study of the origins of Chinese civilization is now in great need of an integrative method. The quadruple-evidence method, which combines the four “narratives”, those being inherited literature, unearthed writings, the living culture of oral tradition and folk custom, and unearthed images and objects, can be applied to interpreting the reasons behind the combination of bronze bells and plaques excavated from the Sanxingdui culture. This model of interpreting cultural texts is likely to be promoted and improved by more case studies. The next chapter intends to discuss the historical reliability of the myth of Yu hanging drums and to reinterpret the cultural connotations and origins of the lacquer drum excavated from Erlitou. One hopes to see more breakthroughs in the study of the origins of civilization brought by the quadruple-evidence method.

Chapter 15

Yu Installing Drums in the Court

15.1 The Narrative of “Yu Installing Drums in the Court” in Inherited Literature Conducting textual criticism into the historical events of the Xia Dynasty is by no means an easy task, owing to the absence of written records. Cui Shu wrote two volumes of Textual Criticism of the Xia Dynasty, in which he argued against the retrospective accounts of the emperors of Xia given by later generations, and stated that these accounts were fake. Critical opinions on ancient events permeated contemporary study circles of Chinese culture, leading to a school of “doubting antiquity” in the twentieth century, represented by Gu Jiegang. This school challenged the orthodox interpretations of the genealogy of the ancient emperors. It was not until the past two decades that numerous cultural relics were excavated, which not only enabled people to see objects representing the ancient culture of the Xia Dynasty, but also enabled them to understand more clearly the ancient culture of times much earlier than the Yu, Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. This new evidence helps academics to rethink the authenticity of the legendary history of the Xia Dynasty. This chapter starts with the event of “Yu hanging drums” as documented in Huainanzi, which was criticized by Cui Shu. It then cites the second type of evidence, i.e., the unearthed text, Rong Cheng Shi, and refers to the third type of evidence, i.e., the Babylonian emperors’ system of sending messages by drums, and then restores some context to the event using newly excavated Xia Dynasty drums. Finally, one will explain anew the cultural connotation of this legend in light of the ritual and music system relating to drums in China. In the first volume of the Textual Criticism of the Xia Dynasty, Cui Shu (1983, 116) doubted the narrative of Yu hanging drums to solicit opinions from four directions. First, he cited from Huainanzi: At the time when Yu was in power, he put the world in order while listening to the Five Tones. He hung the bells, drums, small bells, rattle-drums as well as other stone instruments to await scholars from all the four directions, and issued an order, saying, “Whoever instructs © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_15

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me about Tao please beat the drum, whoever informs me about righteousness please strike the bell, whoever has something to tell me please ring the small bell, whoever reminds me of trouble please hit the pan, and whoever brings a lawsuit against somebody please shake the rattle-drum”. (Zhai and Mu 2010, 903)

Cui then commented, “The story describes the sage king’s good will and sincerity, but it is not true. Since it was very difficult for the emperors of later ages to know what was going on at the lower levels due to the distance between the emperors and their people, they hung drums to avoid being kept in the dark. When Yu was the ruler, he and the people were so close that there was no need for hanging drums”. In the view of Gu Jiegang (Cui 1983), the method Cui used to conduct textual criticism into early ancient history came from Sima Qian—“textual criticism into six arts”, i.e., “to argue against the legends in numerous schools of thought with the documentation in Confucian classics.” This resulted in the exclusion of the time before Xia from “history”. Though Cui did not outright deny the history of the Yu and Xia Dynasties, he was doubtful of the accounts that existed. The above story of Yu hanging drums cited from Huainanzi is related to the ritual and music system of ancient times. Whether from the perspective of musical history or semiotics and media studies, it is worth close examination. However, Cui Shu’s critique that the story is not true became tantamount to a final judgement, and few scholars of later generations challenged it. Consequently, it was questionable whether the four instruments—bells, drums, chime stones and rattle-drums—had appeared in the Xia Dynasty, and the author of Huainanzi was also suspected of fabrication. If one rereads the reasons Cui Shu used to argue against Huainanzi, one can find elements of both guess and assumption, though he states his reasons with certainty. For instance, he said, “When Yu was the ruler, he and the people were so close that there was no need of hanging drums”. One should ask Cui Shu, “How do you know the system of ‘hanging drums’ was not needed then?” The reason why Cui Shu doubted the system first of all was that he did not trust the books of the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties. Such a critical attitude toward ancient books constituted the necessary condition for Cui Shu to become a famous expert of textual criticism. However, such a strict attitude could also lead to prejudice. Even though one admits that the narrative in the books of the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties about the Three Dynasties belongs to legend, it might not have been totally invented by people of later ages, as historical events and echoes of the truth are usually included in these legends. Similarly, one should not see Huainanzi as a mere fabrication of the Han people. One can find the event of Yu hanging drums in other documents such as Guanzi and Shizi. What scholars nowadays need to do is not only to judge the authenticity of one particular historical event, but also to explore as far as possible the ancient cultures which have been lost in, or even hidden by the narrative of ancient texts. Thus, in respect of “investigating things to attain knowledge” one can return to the historical context which has been lost for so long. While Cui Shu did well to distinguish the “fictive” (legends) from the “factual” (history), comparative mythology nowadays, in light of archaeological evidence,

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attempts to derive the “factual” (ancient historical information) from within the “fictive” (legends). The advantage of today’s archaeology when compared with traditional textual criticism mainly lies in the new materials that this new horizon has brought. These new materials include unearthed texts (e.g., bamboo slips), materials useful for cross-cultural comparison, and other forms of evidence besides inherited literature (e.g., excavated objects). These three materials are called the second type of evidence, the third type of evidence and the fourth type of evidence, respectively. The quadruple-evidence method is certainly much different from traditional textual criticism, which only used one type of evidence. The following three sections will investigate the narrative of Yu hanging drums with the second, third, and fourth types of evidence.

15.2 The Second Type of Evidence: The Bamboo Text of Rong Cheng Shi It has been more than 200 years since the completion of the Textual criticism of the Xia Dynasty by Cui Shu. For example, researchers of cultural relics acquired a series of bamboo slips from Hong Kong’s antiquity market. A book about these bamboo slips was published entitled Bamboo Slips of the Shu State in the Warring States Period Collected in the Shanghai Museum. In 2002, the second volume came out, which contains the new material Rong Cheng Shi, the bamboo text. In Rong Cheng Shi, there are not only legends of ancient history before the Three Dynasties but also a detailed narrative of Yu. Some content in the text corresponds to ancient books (to cite just one example, “Rong Cheng Shi” is the name of an ancient ruler in Zhuangzi); some contents are new, e.g., Yu’s five directional flags used to distinguish the four directions, with the central bear flag as the sign of his own state (Ye 2008f). Rong Cheng Shi also mentions Yu installing drums: Yu then installs drums in the court, so people can come to report a case. If anyone beat the drums, he would immediately go out of his room to deal with it. In winter he did not excuse himself for the cold, while in summer he did not for the heat. (Ma 2002)

Yu’s creation of five directional flags and installing drums in the court was meant to strengthen the central authority. With an optical semiotic association, the first was used to visually distinguish the identities of the central state and surrounding subordinates. The second had an auditory significance, and used to set up the system of soliciting opinions, which reflects the regular communication that existed between the ruler and his subordinates. For the founder of a new dynasty, these two important semiotic systems are what he needed to rule the state. Even in the view of the School of Doubting Antiquity, these two events are recognized as legends. The narrative in Rong Cheng Shi suggests that the events happened earlier. Since Yu’s five directional flags are not described in books after the Han Dynasty, the narrative about Yu hanging drums was certainly not created by the Han people. One may suppose that it took place in pre-Qin times. Scholars studying bamboo slips and silk documents have found

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other evidence to prove that the narrative of Yu hanging drums in Rong Cheng Shi is not the only example of this tale being told. For instance, as Yu Kai in his “Nine Notes on Chu State’s Bamboo Text Rong Cheng Shi Collected in the Shanghai Museum” pointed out, Although the event of Yu hanging or installing drums (建鼓) in the court cannot be found in The Book of Documents and Records of the Historian, it can be found in other inherited literature. Liu Lexian has noted related documentation in Guanzi: Queries of Duke Huan and Taigong Jinkui (太公金匮) in the 22nd volume of A Grand History (Lu Shi, 路史), which confirm the bamboo text. However, in my opinion, some contents in today’s version of Guanzi can also be found in Pei Song’s annotation on Records of the Three Kingdoms: Records of Wei: Records of Emperor Wen. However, the two versions are different in many parts. In particular, the sentence “Yu hangs drums in the court to seek advice” in today’s version is written as “Yu hangs drums in the court to hear a case”. It seems that Pei’s annotation corresponds more closely to the text of Rong Cheng Shi. (Yu 2003)

However, 建鼓 (jian gu) is also written as 谏鼓 (jian gu) in other versions of Guanzi, for instance in Guo Moruo’s Collected Annotations to the Guanzi (1984, 265). The Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei: Knowing Yourself relayed the event with the name of Yao. Although the two characters建 and谏 are homophones, they actually have very different meanings. 建 means “to install” and谏means “to give suggestion or criticism”. When transcribing text, later generations may have made some mistakes. Because the Rong Cheng Shi manuscript was written by people of the Warring States Period, its record of Yu hanging or installing drums in the court seems more convincing. In respect of the similarities in the narratives of the Rong Cheng Shi, Guanzi and Shizi, the folklore of Yu hanging of the drums was certainly a popular story in the Warring States Period. Hence the question: why did the people of the Warring States Period prefer such ancient stories about the Three Dynasties? One can easily understand this in the context of the history of the development of media. Cui Shu saw this rather clearly. He mentioned the difficulty of assessing the authenticity of the views of scholars in the Warring States Period. The reasons he gives were that “in the Warring States Period, the ‘books’ were made of bamboo slips, which were hard to access and to remember, leading to difficulties in discerning their authenticity. By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, books were made of paper, so they were to easier to check” (Cui 1983, 2). Cui Shu did not dig deeper. If in the Warring States Period ordinary people could hardly read bamboo manuscripts, what about the Western and Eastern Zhou Dynasties? Of course, there was no need to find documented legends, since there were not even bamboo slips for documentation at this time. One can deduce from the teaching method employed by Confucius, which was principally an oral one, that in the late Spring and Autumn Period, documenting texts with characters was not popular. In the Warring States Period, bamboo slips appeared (used only by local authorities and the nobility). In other words, with respect to the history of the development of media, Cui Shu had no reason to blame the people of the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties for their invention of the Three Dynasties, for they did nothing but document what was passed down orally since the Spring and Autumn Period. For such legends regarding the Three

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Dynasties, the credit for creation belongs not to the later generations who transcribed them, but to the oral tradition passed down since earlier times. How diverse and deep the tradition was is not known, but one can more or less infer an estimate from Sima Qian’s words: “Varied schools of thought talked about the Yellow Emperor”. Innis proposed the theory of “media determinism”. He believed that previous studies had misunderstood Greek civilization due to the focus on writing, and do not recognize that Greek civilization was a reflection of the power of the spoken words that preceded writing (Innis 2007). If one refers to his or her views and the fruits of international research on oral cultures in the late twentieth century, one cannot easily agree with the views of Cui Shu and the School of Doubting Antiquity; neither can one easily admit that the documented legends about the Three Dynasties are totally fictive. Conversely, one hopes that one might use cultural relics to recover lost cultural information in the exaggerated or distorted documents (Fig. 15.1). As for the second type of evidence, the Rong Cheng Shi, the bamboo slips of the Chu State in the Warring States Period, have offered evidence against the claim that the Huainanzi tells purely fictive stories. By comparison, the story of Yu hanging drums in the court documented by the people of the Warring States Period became more complicated in the Han Dynasty, which was documented as “Yu hanging the bells, drums, small bells, rattle-drums as well as other stone instruments”. The people of Han simply expanded one auditory sign to five kinds. The following sections attempt to answer questions which Cui Shu and the School of Doubting Antiquity did not raise: is it possible that in the Xia Dynasty, such systematic auditory signs had appeared, that common people reported or filed lawsuits to the emperor by striking Fig. 15.1 The Jian (建) drum unearthed from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng: its shaft, which points upward, and the upwardly spiralled bronze pedestal both embody its function as an object to communicate with the deities. Photographed at the Hubei Provincial Museum

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the bells, drums, chime stone, small bells, and rattle-drums? If these percussion instruments were used in the Xia Dynasty, what were their original shapes and usages?

15.3 The Third Type of Evidence: The Divine Right of the King’s Drum The third type of evidence refers to popular oral narrations, customs and rituals and materials of ethnic minorities and foreign nationalities. The methods of traditional textual criticism can be improved by virtue of the strategies of “searching for rituals in the countryside when they are lost at the court” and “searching for things in other places when they are lost here”. Modern scholars have now rediscovered the first epic of the world, Gilgamesh, a Babylonian work dating back four thousand years. In this work the hero, the king of Uruk, has the privilege of the first night with the bride of his men. This rite was symbolised by the sound of the drum set in the square of the city. When the second hero, Enkidu, came to visit the city, a citizen introduced the privilege of the king to him: Gilgamesh has gone into the marriage-house and shut out the people. He does strange things in Umk, the city of great streets. At the roll of the drum work begins for the men, and work for the women. Gilgamesh the king is about to celebrate marriage with the Queen of Love, and he still demands to be first with the bride, the king to be first and the husband to follow, for that was ordained by the gods from his birth, from the time the umbilical cord was cut. But now the drums roll for the choice of the bride and the city groans. (Sandars 2006, 7)

Uruk was an ancient city of Sumer, dating back to 3000 BC. The hero Gilgamesh is modelled after a genuine king of this city. His right is symbolised by this auditory sign—the drum. Its semiotic function is much like Yu’s in the Xia Dynasty. Yu hung drums to listen to the voice of the people. Once the drums were beaten, he would receive the petitioners himself. In contrast, Gilgamesh used the drum to enjoy his privilege: once the drum was beaten, he would possess the first night of a bride. The sound of the drums had different meanings in the above two cases. The sound of Yu’s drums became auspicious omens in his kingdom, while that of Gilgamesh’s drum was ominous. No wonder Yu was loyally supported by his subjects, but Gilgamesh was cursed by his people. One detail in the epic should not be ignored: the privileges of the king were not determined and granted by way of his moral qualities, but by divine providence. The king was given such privileges by the deities when he was born. In this regard, the act of the Sumerian ruler possessing the bride before the groom should not be viewed as a first-night right, but as a sacred ritual obligation symbolizing theocracy. The drum was clearly a sign of divinity. In the Sumerian myth, Inanna made a pukku (drum) from the base of the hulupputree and a mikku (drumstick) from its crown, and gave them both to Gilgamesh, who dropped them into the netherworld by accident (Kramer 1961, 34–35). Referring to the divine origin of the king’s use of the drum in the myth, China’s mythical narrative about Yu hanging drums must have originally connotated some mysterious

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belief. In ancient China, or rather in the whole world, the drum is not only a secular instrument, but an essential musical and sacrificial instrument in religious and ritual activities. Percussion instruments such as bells and drums were closely related to a prehistoric religious context of divine belief when they were first used. These instruments themselves were actually the symbols of divine providence. For instance, the Va people in Yunnan regard the wooden drum as an embodiment of the divine. From the wooden drum of Va to the sacred bronze drum that many ethnicities worship, there is evidence about the nature of the drum to be found by examining the abundant ethnological materials available, particularly the view that in ancient times, that the ritual system included “beating drums in every sacrificial activity” was based on the ancient belief that the drum is divine, or seen as a deity. The myth of the Yao ethnic group, The History of Danu Festival, is similar to that of Sumer, in which bronze drums were created by a goddess in heaven. According to this, the Creator Miluotuo ordered that the first divine bronze drum be created (anonymous 1985). Referring to beliefs about divine drums in the narrative of books like The Zhou Book of Change, The Spring and Autumn Annals, The Verse of Chu, The Classic of Mountains and Seas, and The Biography of King Mu, one can find the nature of divine rites behind the narrative of Yu hanging drums. First, take a look at the Zhongfu hexagram, the 61st one in The Zhou Book of Change. The Zhongfu hexagram symbolises sincerity. Sincerity that can even move piglets and small fish will bring good fortune. It is appropriate to cross great rivers and to persevere in the right way. (Fu 2008, 343)

The piglets and small fish as sacrifices refer to rites in the hexagram judgement. The following linear judgements explain the hexagram with fives rites (funeral, hosting, military, congratulatory and auspicious rites), in which the linear judgement on the rites for the army is: Six at the third line, he is not sincere and faces the strong enemy. He either beats drum to attack, or retreats exhaustively, or cries with fear, or sings happily without any worry. (Ibid., 345)

Thus, it can be seen that the sounds of drums, crying, and singing can be combined to form a ritual and musical performance. The phrase鼓舞 (gu wu, dance to the beat of the drums), which means “encourage”, also illustrates the close relationship between music, dance and drums in Chinese culture. From The Verse of Chu: Nine Songs, one learns that music, dance, and drum-beating are combined in the ceremonies to offer sacrifices to the gods and to amuse them. The “Hymn to the Sovereign of the East (Dong Huang Tai Yi, 东皇太一)” describes such a scene: Lucky is the hour, and auspicious th’day; Now homage to th’ Sovereign of th’ East we play. We lay hold of our swords, which are inlaid, With jadeite, clanking the pendants of jade. Fix’d with opal weights is th’ cushion divine,

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15 Yu Installing Drums in the Court And th’ lemongrass is so fragrant and fine. In orchids and on boneset is steam’d meat, And brew’d with cassia is th’ nectar sweet. Drum-sticks rais’d, resounding many a drum; ‘Tis in slow rhythms that we sing and hum. (Qu 2006, 35).

Another example in The Spring and Autumn Annals shows how the drum was used in ceremonies to offer sacrifices to the gods. In the sixth month, on Sin-we, the first day of the moon, the sun was eclipsed when we beat drums, and offered victims at the altar of the land. (Legg 2011, 109) In autumn, there were great floods, when we beat drums, and offered victims at the altar of the land, and at the city gates. (Ibid., 109) In the ninth month, on Kang-woo, the first day of the moon, the sun was eclipsed, when we beat drums and offered victims at the altar of the land. (Ibid., 117)

These three narratives each tell how people used drums to communicate with gods in sacrificial ceremonies, praying to them to ward off calamities (e.g., solar eclipses, floods, etc.). According to the documentation, the drums were used alone. They can also be used together with bells in military situations. For instance, it is written in The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming: “An expedition with bells and drums was called Fa (an attack or invasion); one without them, Qin (a stealthy incursion) (ibid., 116). In this case, drums and bells seem to be used in secular situations, but the use was still rooted in the ideology of divine right: the sound of drums and bells symbolises the attack on those who are evil or rebellious. In “Hymn to the Sun God (Dong Jun, 东君)” the music and dance for worshipping gods is documented, in which the drum takes on the role of the leading ritual instrument in the complex accompaniment system. (Sing Witch as Usherette). To rise in the east is the morning sun, For it’s sent from Fusang to th’ railings streaks of light. I curb my steed and at ease run, For with night fading away day now breaks. (Sing Sun God Incarnate: ) My dragon chariot’s rumbling astride Thunders, th’cloud-flags fluttering alongside. Starting to ascend I heave a long sigh, My heart lingering, I stagger in th’s sky. (Sing Witch as Usherette) In th’ enchanting music and performance, The spectators of the event are drown’d. Th’smitten strings of se in concert with th’ drums, Vertical flutes and th’ complex bells resound. (Sing Sun God Incarnate: ) The chi’s being blown and the yu’s played, Show th’ pretty usherette’s creative mind. Lithe being the whirling, graceful the steps, Th’ rhythm of verse and dance are well design’d. (Sing Witch as Usherette). To th’ rhythm of th’ melody, the Sun God. Now arrives with his entourage behind! (Qu 2006, 49).

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In the classic funeral rites shown in the “Eulogy on the Martyrs of the State” (Guo Shang, 国殇) and “Epilogue of the Rites of Sacrifice” (Li Hun, 礼魂), the drum functions as a supernatural instrument. The latter poem describes: …… The reins are entangel’d, and bogged down two wheels stay; I raise the stick of jade, though, and beat the signal drum. (Ibid., 55) …… You are slain, but with glory will glow your deeds great, And souls of all souls you shall forever remain! (Ibid., 57) Th’ rites perform’d, majestic th’ drums sound. And melodious th’ belles chant. To play. Homage we dance in turn and pass around. The posy. Orchids in spring we’ll lay. And asters in fall for e’er and aye. (Ibid., 57). Another example is the poem “Requiem” (Zhao Hun, 招魂): Connecting their skirts at salute, They gently step back in retreat. The pipes and zithers then resound, And drums majestically beat. When Th’Anthem of Valor is play’d, Th’palace with courage is infus’d. As to the melodies of Wu, And Cai, the second pitch is us’d. (Ibid., 191).

The above materials each reveal elements of the ideology of drums and bells, used as rites and music and preserved in the culture of Chu in pre-Qin times: the living communicated with their ancestors through the sound of the divine drum. Gods, ancestors’ spirits, shamans, and ghosts were all stimulated and amused by the signal effect of music and dance, which would achieve harmony between gods and man. In Volume 6 of The Biography of King Mu, there is a detailed description of the funeral of King Mu’s favourite consort Sheng Ji. In the funeral the drum and the bell were both essential ritual instruments (Zheng 1992, 197). The description of “making the drum in the shape of birds, and making the bell in the shape of beasts” implies that there existed a mythological view and understanding of these ritual instruments. As emissaries of gods or as supernatural symbols, their images were familiar on ritual instruments from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age. These symbols of divine birds and beasts themselves had the visual effect of suggesting communication with gods and spirits. If these images were combined with the auditory capabilities of instruments, the ideology of communicating with gods and spirits could be even more obvious. A delicate lacquer box in the shape of a mandarin duck was excavated from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in Suizhou, Hubei, in the summer of 1978. On each side of the mandarin duck was drawn a picture of rites and music being performed. The picture on the right side was titled “Beating a Drum and Dancing” (Fig. 15.2), while the one on the left was titled “Striking Bells” (Fig. 15.3). In the picture showing “Striking Bells” the bells are hung on a wooden stand in the shape of birds. This seems to prove the narrative of Yu hanging the bells, drums, small bells, rattle-drums as well as other stone instruments. The person who strikes

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Fig. 15.2 The image of beating a drum and dancing on the lacquer box unearthed from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng. Photographed at the Hubei Museum

Fig. 15.3 The image of striking bells on the lacquer box unearthed from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, photographed at the Hubei Museum

the bell has a human body and a bird’s head, standing beside the bell with a stick in their hand. In the picture depicting “Beating a Drum and Dancing”, there are three images. In the centre a jian drum hangs on a tree-like bell pole set on the back of a divine beast (which seems to be a walking dragon); on the left there is a bird-like human, who is about to beat the drum with the drumsticks in his hand; on the right there is a dancer waving his long sleeves, with a feather hat on his head and a sword hanging on his waist. Although these two pictures were unearthed from royal tombs in the early Warring States Period, the ritual and music performances they depict in such splendid detail, almost like photographs, date at least from the Spring and Autumn Period. This kind of new material is directly perceived through the senses. It is reasonable to regard them as the fourth type of evidence, which can give one a profound understanding of ancient history in the absence of inherited literature. For instance, the two pictures above can be compared with the text of “making the drum in the shape of birds, and making the bell in the shape of beasts” in The Biography of

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Fig. 15.4 The bo 镈 bell of King Chu unearthed from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng. Photographed at the Hubei Museum

King Mu. The bo (镈, bell with flat bottom) of King Chu excavated from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng State was cast with the images of double dragons and double beasts (Fig. 15.4). This can help annotate and explain the myth of “making the bell in the shape of beasts” from the perspective of iconology. If one refers to the evidence of images left by the northern shamans; divine drums, a piece of evidence that is ethnological in nature, one can infer that birds and beasts, and drums and bells were used to communicate with deities (for detailed information see the following section).

15.4 The Fourth Type of Evidence: The Mythological Images of Divine Drums From the perspective of the connection between drums and royal divine power, the section above has sought to clarify the mythological belief on which the narrative of Yu hanging drums is based. In this section. this author seeks to use the fourth type of evidence, i.e. the images of divine drums on newly excavated objects, to explain the development of China’s tradition of divine drums, especially focusing on its origin, that is, the relationship between the myths of divine drums and the shaman-witchcraft beliefs of the period. Since the drum appeared earlier in history than the bell, the rite system of “making the drum in the shape of birds, and making the bell in the shape of beasts” documented in The Biography of King Mu might originate from the shamanic

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tradition of musical instruments, in which drums were made in the shape of birds and beasts. How were these birds and beasts related to divine musical instruments? One can find a reasonable explanation in the traditional pictures of the divine drums of northern shamans. It is widely known that the most important musical instrument in shamanism is the drum. The anthropologist E. Devlet has researched for a long time the “central region of shamanism”. In his work Rock Art and the Material Culture of Siberian and Central Asian Shamanism, using systematical pictorial materials, he clearly demonstrated that that the drum was and is the essential medium through which a shaman enters a state of trance. Much “material evidence” left by shamans’ activities in ancient times can be found in large areas spanning from central to northern Asia, e.g., pictures showing shamans beating drums. Devlet has also tried to prove and clarify the nature of the mythical universe symbolised by shaman’s drums, and their relationship with it. Some Siberian people perceived a drum as having once been a female being, later transformed through its possession by a new ‘owner’, the shaman. The latter received the drum by undergoing a ceremonial marriage with the being that it had once been: this ritual confirmed the drum as a living entity, and it was following this act that images were created on it. The painting of the drum-skin with different motifs was thus the final action in the process of drum creation (Lvova et al. 1988: 168–71). The drum and drumstick together thereafter became personal attributes of the shaman, gaining the ability to change the essence of things and to transform themselves into anything that the shaman might need in the course of his or her activities. These needs might arise during a journey to another world, or during a struggle with the shaman’s enemies. (Devlet 2001, 47–48)

In the rock art of the Zuojiang River region in Guangxi Province, a number of images of bronze drums were found. Folklore researchers inferred that these images were related to the local belief of holding sacrificial ceremonies to water deities (Pan 1990). Experts of shamanic pictures have collected a spectrum of sacred animals commonly seen on Siberian shamans’ drums (Wang and Wang 2003, 103). As to the familiar and difficult question arising in the literature of ancient times, if one tries to understand the mythological ideology surrounding transformations from the perspective of a “hierophany” according to the three types of animal images on shamans’ drums (those flying in the sky like eagles, those walking on the land like bears and cattle, and those living in the water like fish and snakes), then a general explanation can be made. In the fifth volume of The Biography of King Mu, there is a story about “the king leaving behind a divine drum”. It is the first time the divine ability of shamans’ drums to transform themselves appeared, somewhat mysteriously, in Chinese literature. The drum symbolises the divine energy of transformation. Since the divine drum makes its power felt through visual and auditory signs, it is reasonable to assume that it came first on the list of sacred objects in the legends of shamanism. The divine drum left behind by King Mu transformed into a yellow snake. This demonstrates the close relationship between divine animals and the divine drum. On the same day, King Mu had also planted a tung tree. A drum was then made of this tree, which showed its sacred nature by being divine and making divine sounds. According to

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the specific logic of metamorphosis in these legends, the tung tree can be viewed as another form of the snake which had been transformed from the divine drum. This shows the everlasting life in and across these ongoing changes. If one refers to the myths of Sumer mentioned above, and the legend of the divine drums narrated in the Dongba scriptures of Naxi, it is not difficult to perceive that the story of King Mu making a drum out of a tung tree is merely another version of a familiar mythical motif: gods making a divine drum out of special trees. The origin of the divine drum in Naxi’s myths comes from an ancient scripture of Dongba, Asking Gods for Help (He and He 1989). In this scripture, the divine drum is called the magical drum, which combined with magical beads, magical small bells, and a magical shell trumpet to constitute the systematical divine magical instruments in the rites of the religious sect of Dongba. The stories about the origin of the magical beads and drums focus on the relationship of transformation that existed between them and the animals in the sky, on the land and in the water, which together provide circumstantial evidence to understanding the myth of “making the drum in the shape of birds, and making the bell in the shape of beasts”. Here is the probable origin of magical beads: the sea at the top of the Divine Mountain of Junaluo was called the Yellow Sea. In it lived a white conch with wings. The god Gu shot the conch down with his arrow and cut it into small pieces on the mountain. Later on, the god Si living at the end of the Yellow Sea linked the pieces together, making a string of magical beads. The beads had 108 small white conches, used especially to eradicate demons and ghosts. The magical bell was made by a divine craftsman with nine pig heads called Tongluo. He added gold to the bronze, making a magical golden bell, which was used to eliminate ghosts and amuse the gods. There were three kinds of magical drums: turquoise, golden, and black, each with their own origins. On the top of the divine mountain of Ju there grew three cypresses. The god Gu found them and chopped them down. Then he planed the wood and made it into the base of a drum. The skin of a blue dragon was made into the drumhead; the bones of the blue dragon were made into drumsticks. A turquoise magical drum was thus made, used especially to amuse the gods. The magical golden drum was used primarily to amuse human beings. Its origin was similar to that of the turquoise one. The base of the drum was also made by the god Gu out of three cypresses on the top of Mount Ju. The drumhead was made of the skin of an elephant and the drumsticks of the bones of the elephant. Gu also made a black drum, its base made of three Sa trees at the foot of Mount Ju, its drumhead made of the skin of the ghost Le, and the drumsticks made of the bones of the ghost. This drum was used specially to conquer ghosts. (He and He 1989)

The magical instruments mentioned above were all made by gods and deities. The magical beads were made from a white conch with wings, and the three magical drums were made from divine trees and the skin of a blue dragon, an elephant, and a ghost. This again shows their relationship with animals flying in the sky, walking on the land, and living in the water. Experts on the Naxi’s myths pointed out: “The ideology behind the stories stating that these magical instruments were created by gods was to show and emphasize their divine power. The drums were divided into three types in terms of color: turquoise, golden, and black. Thus, not only were their functions distinguished, but also their correspondence with the white sky, yellow land, and black underground realm was established. The color of the drum used to

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amuse the gods was described as turquoise rather than white. This is because green was sometimes similar to white in terms of its use as a divine color” (Bai 1999, 179–180). The magical drums of Dongba in the south symbolise the three realms of universe. The depiction of the universe on the magical drums of northern shamanism offers evidence for this. For instance, three realms were drawn on the drumhead of the shaman’s divine drums of the Saamians commonly seen images of the divine eagle on the shamans’ divine drums seem to indicate their ability to transform and fly too. In Siberian rock art there is a scene in which a shaman beats drums and flies to the sky surrounded by the sun, the moon and other stars. These all offer evidence supporting the widespread nature of the belief in “building drums in the shape of birds”. From the drum of the shamans in early times to the complicated and standardized ritual and music system in later generations described in The Rites of Zhou, i.e., the six drums, one can finally understand the origin of and changes to Chinese divine drums. The Six Drums refer to the lei (雷) drum, ling (灵) drum, lu (路) drum, fen (鼖) drum, gao (鼛) drum, and jin (晋) drum. According to The Rites of Zhou: The Land Officer: The Officer in Charge of Drums: The public are taught to distinguish the sounds of the Six Drums in different situations. The lei drum is used at sacrifices to gods in heaven; the ling drum is for gods of the Earth; the lu drum is for ancestors’ spirits; the fen drum is used in military affairs; the gao drum is used in labour services; and the jin drum is used as a chime bell. (Sun 1987, 898–902)

The first three of the Six Drums were used in religious contexts while the other three were used in secular situations. People may wonder how the function of the Six Drums could be described in such great detail. The names of the Six Drums speak for themselves. As is often said in cognitive anthropology, if something does not exist, it will never have a proper name. Let one return to the issue of the credibility of the myth of Yu installing drums. The myth unabashedly hails the virtues and ideals of the “sage king” throughout, which led to some scholars like Cui Shu doubting its authenticity as a historical narrative, seeing it instead as a moralistic narrative. However, is it possible that the kings of the Xia Dynasty established the ritual system of drums and music? The archaeological findings of the last thirty years have offered material evidence for this notion. Drums and chime stones used in the state ritual and music system were excavated from the Taosi site in Xiangfen, Shanxi, dating back to ancient times earlier than Xia, and in the Erlitou ruins in Yanshi, Henan, dating to the Xia period (Gao and Li, 1983) (Fig. 15.5). These serve as real archetypes for the mythical narratives of Yao and Yu hanging drums. This indicates that in the periods of the emperors Yu and Shun, by which time the tribes in China had gradually developed into early states, the system of ritual and music composed of the tuo (鼍) drum, the wooden drum, small bronze bells (early form of large bells and medium bells), and chime stones began to take shape. Looking back to an earlier period, one can refer to pottery drums discovered in the Yangshao cultural sites in the Central Plain and in Majiayao cultural sites in the northwest (Zhao 1993) (Fig. 15.6). These artifacts show that the ritual activity of dancing to divine drums had formed in the big tradition five to six thousand years ago.

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Fig. 15.5 A tuo 鼍 drum excavated from the Taosi site. Photographed at the Shanxi Museum

Fig. 15.6 A pottery drum of the Majiayao culture, dating back to 4800 years ago. Photographed at the Gansu Provincial Museum

In this regard, although it is possible that the emperors Yao and Yu established the rites of drums and music for their newly formed regime, they cannot be the creators of today’s Chinese drums. In 1981 precious magical instruments such as wooden drums (about 54 cm long), small bronze bells, and jade handle-shaped objects were excavated from Tomb M4, created in the second phase of the Erlitou culture (Yang 1984). One can thus infer that the owner of the tomb was a sorcerer in charge of rites and music. The simple combination of small bells and drums in the tomb is almost consistent with the shaman’s use of magical instruments, small bells and drums in ethnological reports.

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This provides physical evidence for the inference that the ritual and music system of the Xia featured chime stones along with the shaman’s drums and small bells. It gradually developed into a system with drums and bells as the main ritual and musical instruments by the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. To view this in terms of the evolution of material culture, it is obvious that bronze instruments gradually took the place of wooden and stone instruments which had appeared before the Xia Dynasty. In particular, the newly invented bronze bells began to outshine other instruments. In summary, the excavated objects suggest it is not only entirely possible but also very probable that the emperor who had established the Xia Dynasty to “hang drums in the court to solicit advice from the people”. Although mythical narratives often differ from historical narratives, the historical truths embedded in myths cannot be denied. Even in Huainanzi the five instruments (the bell, the drum, the chime stone, the small bell, and the rattle-drum) used in the Xia are mentioned, among which four instruments are believed to have existed at that time, although not the bronze bell, an example of which has not been excavated yet. With newly excavated objects, one can compare the myths and legends of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou from a new and wider knowledge horizon and analyse in depth the archetypes, in terms of objects and cultural connotations, behind the mythical narrative on which these things drew inspiration from.

15.5 The Cultural Genealogy of Chinese Drums Through an analysis rooted in the quadruple evidence method, one may provide a general summary of the genealogy of Chinese drums. No matter whether it is a drum to transmit information, or an instrument used in a system of ritual performance, it has its roots in the belief in the divine power of the drum and in the ritual activities performed by religious leaders to communicate with gods and spirits in prehistorical times. The role of the drum has changed over time from a tool used by sorcerers and shamans to perform magic to the most important instrument in China’s ritual and music system. The drum had undergone two to three thousand years’ development before writing appeared. Although the narrative of Yu hanging drums became imbued with the political ideal of becoming a sage king, it is based on real material objects, the divine drums, for which worship was often combined with politics. Among the objects excavated from Erlitou ruins, the drum can be found together with ritual instruments such as small bronze bells and plaques. This proves that in the Xia Dynasty, the drum was still a sacred ritual instrument. The system of drums and music used in civilized society afterwards was marked by the system of Six Drums elaborated on in The Rites of Zhou. Half of the Six Drums were used in ceremonies to communicate with gods and spirits, while the other half began to be used in secular situations, such as military affairs, construction, and ceremonies. This shows that the function of the drum has continued to change since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, growing increasingly secular in its use and decreasingly divine. After the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, the divine drum still played an important role in the construction of

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Confucian sage myths. The ideology of the shaman beating their drums, acting as a medium between gods and man, has undergone a humanistic transformation, thus complementing the symbol system of xiang-ci (象-辞, images-judgement) which was used by sages to communicate with gods. The most representative remarks by Confucius appear in The Book of Changes: Xi Ci II: Confucius said, “Writing cannot record a language in full and a language cannot convey man’s thought in full.” Can the thoughts of the Sages not be expressed in full? Confucius pointed out: “The Sages invented images to express his thoughts in full, designed sixty four hexagrams to represent true and false states of all things of creation in full, attached the hexagraph and linear judgements to expound what they wanted to say in full, made all the lines changeable and transformative to benefit all things of creation, and encouraged all people (by drums and dances) under heaven to elaborate in full the miraculous principles of The Zhou Book of Change. (Fu 2008, 403. The words in the brackets are added.)

Chapter 16

Jie Waged War on Mount Min: The Sanxingdui Archaeological Site and the Jade Road of Southwest China

16.1 Sanxingdui Culture and the Central Plain Culture Chinese archaeological research commenced with fresh pace in the 20th Century. Following the great excavation of Emperor Qin Shi Huang’s tomb and his terracotta warriors, conducted in the 1970s, which stunned the whole world, came another unbelievable excavation in the 1980s, the Sanxingdui site of Guanghan, Sichuan Province. Among the remarkable objects created 3000 years ago, the unique treasures first shown to people were a giant wand, a sacrificial altar, a four-meter-tall bronze tree, axes, tablets, rings, knives, and hundreds of other unique items. Among the collection was also the world’s largest and best preserved bronze standing human figure, measuring 2.62 m (8 feet) (Fig. 16.1). A large bronze head with protruding eyes believed to be a depiction of Cancong, the semi-legendary first king of Shu, all of which are so distinctively different from artifacts unearthed in the Central Plain. There was also found a mask with protruding eyes and circular jade bi as big as a cart wheel. Sanxingdui, until then an unknown site, along with the subsequent discovery of the Jinsha site in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province, started to impress the world with their unprecedented archaeological treasures. Among the objects found at the two sites were bronzes, ritual jades, and even gold items, which were rare in the early Central Plain civilization. The sensational discovery of the Sanxingdui culture presents an unprecedented challenge to the traditional historical view that saw the Central Plain as the centre of Chinese civilization. Before this archaeological excavation, most researchers of Chinese civilization mainly focused on the lower reaches of the Yellow River, namely regions like Henan, Shaanxi, and Shanxi. The ancient Ba (巴) and Shu (蜀) cultures were often neglected by historians. However, the excavation of two tomb pits in Sanxingdui from 1986 onwards revealed more than had been anticipated. A great number of treasures were unearthed, and archaeologists believed that their age could be dated back to the Shang Dynasty. The bronzes of Sanxingdui differ markedly from © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_16

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Fig. 16.1 A standing bronze figurine unearthed from the Sanxingdui site. Photographed at the Sanxingdui Museum

those found in the Central Plain, which instantly attracted the attention of academics (cf. Duan 2003). Scholars attempted to explore the relationship between the two cultures. Their research has generated two schools of thought. The first focuses on the cultural transmission between the Di and Qiang ethnic groups, linking the Sichuan Basin and its regional culture to the area north of the Qinling Mountains. The second looks to the cultural transmission belt of the three ethnic Miao regions, hence linking the Ba and Shu cultures with the northwest of Hubei and the southwest of Henan. Yet the two schools of thoughts are full of unknowns due to the lack of historical records about the Central Plain culture. In addition, academics still cannot determine whether any form of writing existed in the Xia Dynasty. The inscriptions on oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty were about divination, rather than historical events. In the Western Zhou Dynasty, though writing was increasingly widely used, the revolutionary social context of Zhou focused the view of its people toward the East. Evidence for this has been found in historical records of grand ceremonies of worshiping heaven on the top of the Mountain Tai in the east, and the eastward movement of the capital city of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to Luoyang. Given insufficient historical documentation

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regarding the events in the southwest and northwest of ancient China, a definite conclusion cannot be reached. Hence, one can only rely on the third and fourth types of evidence. The research into the relationship among the ancient Shu culture, the Yellow Emperor, and Xia Dynasty culture, conducted in the 1940s was refuted as groundless by scholars like Xu Zhongshu, Meng Wentong, etc. Since the 1980s, a time in which China experience a renaissance of studies on the Yan and Yellow Emperors following the discovery of Sanxingdui, academic interest in the relationship among the three was reignited. In particular after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, studies analysing the claim that Yu the Great being born in the western Qiang ethnic region again aroused researchers’ interest. The Xia Dynasty cultural elements found in the Sanxingdui Culture have been studied from various perspectives. This trend of research differentiates itself from the research done before in that this time scholars have adopted archaeological materials which will make up for the insufficiency of historical documentation and legends. Many scholars launched follow-up research into the origin of Shu Culture, the Xia Dynasty, and the Yellow Emperor based on the unearthed objects in Sanxingdui, like jade zhang, earthen-ware and bronze accessories, and their apparent similarity with cultural relics of the Erlitou culture in Luoyang. Furthermore, they explored the relationship between the invention of silk and Leizu (嫘祖), the legendary Chinese empress and wife of the Yellow Emperor, the Baodun ancient city in Jinsha ruins and the legend of Gun (Yu’s father) building walls, the bronze tree and the sacred tree that ancient people worshipped which bridges the communication between gods and man (cf. Li 1992a; Duan 1996; Duan 1999; Du 1994; Lin 1998; Tan 2000). Cultural relics of the Xia and Shang Dynasties unearthed in the Three Gorges area, along with the archaeological excavations at the Zhongbaodao site, Chaotianzui pier, Lujiahe, highlight both the continuity and divergences that occurred between the Sanxingdui and Erlitou cultures. Lacking proper historical documentation, cultural relics can help show the traces of cultural and material exchanges between ancient Shu Kingdom and the Central Plain Culture, and their integration in the west of Hubei Province and the Three Gorges area in the east of Sichuan. Research into exchanges that occurred between the Sanxingdui culture and Central Plain, Xia and Shang cultures was not confined to purely political history. Researchers discussed their mutual relationships, especially their trade of tin and jade (Duan 1993, 43–48). The relationship between the Sanxingdui culture and non-Central Plain culture is also a new research field, which has generated two schools of thought. One focuses on the interaction between the prehistoric culture of the Chengdu plain and the Gansu Hexi corridor culture; the other focuses on the bronze culture transmission route starting from the centre, the Chengdu plain, to its south. The bronze culture of southwest China, with the drum as its defining symbol, extended to Vietnam, Burma, Thailand, and even projected its influence as far as to the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia. Such research thus involves the rediscovery of the so-called “Southern Silk Road” and a series of subsequent related issues. Between the two routes, there must have been a cultural corridor which linked the northwestern and

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southwestern cultures. Contemporary scholars often name it the “Tibetan-Yi Corridor” or “Minshan-Hengduan Mountains Corridor” (Xu 2009). Exploring the important role of this cultural corridor in the birth of Chinese civilization will be a challenge for academics, for want of more background knowledge. Sichuan has long been acclaimed as “the land of abundance”. Its topographical features played a decisive role in helping it gain this reputation. Sichuan lies in a basin, with the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau to the west, the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau to the south and the Qinling Mountains to the north, constituting a self-sufficient enclosure. Since the Neolithic Era, it has formed its distinctive culture. In comparison with the Central Plain area, the difficulties presented by the logistics of transportation in ancient Sichuan were beyond imagination. A line in Li Bai’s poem reads “The road to Shu is harder than to climb the sky” (Xu 2007, 45). The description of its isolation is made even more prominent in the following lines “Since the two pioneers, put the kingdom in order, Have passed forty-eight thousand years, And few have tried to pass its border” (ibid., 45). Is this true? Modern people had no idea of how difficult the roads in Shu would have been until the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, which attracted the attention of the whole nation to the ancient Shu area, today’s Sichuan province. The live TV broadcasts stunned the whole nation and revealed that Wenchuan County and Beichuan County lie along a seismic belt full of precipitous mountains and canyons. Such places are even often inaccessible for helicopters. Such an isolated geographical location and rugged landscape could not easily have had any sustained contact with the outside world. Thinking of 3000 years ago when transportation was not as advanced as it is today, it would have been even harder for the ancient Shu people to reach the outside world. In 1929, a farmer named Yan Daocheng unearthed 300 jade objects from a small ditch near his house, including jade zhang, jade gui and jade axes. Then in 1933, experts like Ge Weihan of Huaxi University Museum made an initial survey of the area and found prehistoric relics. Yet large-scale excavations did not begin until the 1980s. Cultural relics unearthed include 18 house foundations, 3 pits, 4 tombs, over 70 pieces of pottery and more than 110 pieces of jade, as well as 100,000 pieces of ceramic. A picture of a civilization dating back more than a thousand years gradually emerged. Later archaeologists determined that its history could be traced back 4500 years. It had existed for 3000 years, and then perished mysteriously. The era of its existence corresponds to the earliest dynasties of Yu, Xia and Shang. Meanwhile, the archaeological discovery of the Sanxingdui culture reveals that the origin of Chinese civilization may be found in the southwest. The excavation of the distinctive ancient Sanxingdui culture naturally aroused scholars’ interest in its origins. There are three hypotheses for the culture’s unique features: it is the result of local culture, of foreign culture, or of extra-terrestrials. Subsequent archaeological discoveries showed that the Sanxingdui culture, though unusual and unique, did not come from nowhere, but was native to the land of the Ba and Shu states, today’s Sichuan and Chongqing. It had at least one thousand or two thousand years of prehistoric cultural development before it came into being. However, this does not mean that it was closed off and isolated. On the contrary, the Sanxingdui civilization was a link between Chinese civilization in the middle reaches

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of the Yellow River and the civilizations of Central Asia, Western Asia and South and Southeast Asia. As far as Chinese civilization itself is concerned, it was a link between the Yellow River Basin and the Yangtze River Basin in the upper reaches. The basic elements of this link are man and matter. As far as ethnicity is concerned, it is the result of the migration of the ancient Di and Qiang ethnic groups. As for the matter, it is the jade produced in the vicinity of the Min Mountains and Min River that links the Ba and Shu states with Central China. There are three new clues as to the indigenous roots of Sanxingdui civilization. The first is “Baodun Culture”, which refers to the large-scale serial excavations of city complexes in the Sichuan Basin that has occurred since 1995, such as Xinjin Baodun village, Dujiangyan Mangcheng village, Pixian City ancient city village, and Wenjiang Yufu village, all of which can be dated to the Longshan culture and the Xia Dynasty. These ancient buildings have a history of four thousand years, earlier than the Central Plain Erlitou sites, and roughly equivalent to the Taosi ancient city in Shanxi. Baodun culture existed between 4500 and 3700 years ago, right during the heyday of the Sanxingdui culture (cf. Huang 2002). Some experts maintain that the large-scale prehistoric complex of buildings might have belonged to the ethnic Qiang people. What strikes academics is that a small number of jade fragments were found in the ruins excavated from the ancient village of Pi County (Yan et al. 2001). This was the earliest jade found in the Shu State before the unearthing of the Sanxingdui site. Excavation reports did not reveal the origin of the jade fragments; but based on speleologists’ estimation, it is most probably from the local jade mine. The second is the Yingpan Mountain archaeological site, discovered in 2003 near Maoxian County, dating as far back as 5000 years. In the upper reaches of the Minjiang River was also found the Boxi ruins, with a history of 6000 years. The culture represented by these prehistoric sites appeared much earlier than the Sanxingdui and Jinsha cultures. Based on these findings, the history of the ancient Shu civilization can be traced to around 6000 years ago, roughly contemporary with the Yangshao culture in the Central Plain. In other words, Sichuan’s prehistoric cultural development was a continuation and variation of the ancient Shu bronze civilization. Although there were several external influences too, the evolution of the Shu culture was never interrupted. The third one is the Buwa site, which was discovered by archaeologists after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, when they reconstructed the Buwa tower complex, whose history can be dated back to 4800 years ago, leaving a gap of about 300 years between the Buwa culture and the Sanxingdui culture. The Buwa ruins, at an altitude of 2100 m, are located on the west bank of the Minjiang River northeast of the Zagunao River terrace. Their history is equivalent to the early era of the Longshan culture along the Yellow River. The site covers an area of about 50,000 square meters. The archaeologists collected a large number of stone tools, pottery pieces and other relics on the site of the ruins, two pieces of a ground stone axe, a piece of a grinding stone, and piece of cake-shaped object, all of which are indigenous to the local Neolithic culture of the Sichuan Basin. The unearthing of the Buwa ruins provides evidence for the cultural exchanges that would have occurred between the Sanxingdui culture and the Neolithic cultures of the upper

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reaches of the Minjiang River, the upper reaches of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River. It is worth noting that the pottery found at the Buwa ruins is both similar to and different from that found at Sanxingdui. So new questions emerge. Which ethnic people produced the Buwa culture and what was their relationship with the people who created the flourishing civilization at Sanxingdui? Was Buwa culture the legacy of an earlier local culture, or the result of a reconstruction after conquest? These questions remain to be answered. The preliminary conclusion is that cultural discontinuity is highly possible. Ritual jades and metals were not found on the site of the Buwa ruins, while a large number of jades and metals were discovered at the Sanxingdui and Jinsha sites. The objects found that were created during the Jade Age and Bronze Age in the Central Plain appeared almost simultaneously in the Chengdu plain. In other words, the ancient cultures of Ba and Shu experienced both the Jade Age and Bronze Age, which shows the influence of jade worship and the impact of the mythological view of foreign cultures on the region. According to the archaeological finds, the main influx of foreign influence may have occurred at the end of the Shang Dynasty. The influence of Liangzhu jades and Qijia jades may also have played a role. How, then, is it possible that jade myths about the ancient Shu kingdom could have started from the Xia Dynasty?

16.2 King Jie Seeking After Treasures of Ancient Shu Kingdom In his poem “Questions to Heaven”, Qu Yuan mentioned Jie, the last king of the Xia Dynasty. From th’ raucous war against Mengshan. What was th’ booty that Jie obtain’d? What justifi’d the banishment Of Moxi that Tang had ordain’d? (Qu 2006, 112)

In Wangyi’s annotation of The Verse of Chu he remarked that Jie, the last ruler of Xia, also a tyrant, brought about the collapse of the dynasty. The Meng Kingdom was another state of the same era. Jie waged war on Mengshan (Mount Meng) and captured a beauty named Moxi (妹嬉), then indulged himself in lust, leading to the downfall of the dynasty, and he was finally banished by King Tang of the Shang Dynasty to Nancao. Wangyi should not take the blame for attributing the fall of the Xia Dynasty on the women captured from a foreign state. To find the historical truth that has been lost over the years, one needs to abandon the long-established patriarchal view, to make a close reading of inherited literature and to explore the implicit information hidden in the historical narrative. In this vein, Jiangji of the Qing Dynasty presented his unique perspective. Based on his reading of The Bamboo Annals and The Biographies of Exemplary Women (Lie Nüˇ Zhuan, 列女传), he maintained that Jie’s attack on the Meng Kingdom and

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capture of a beauty Moxi as his wife, and his attack on the Min Kingdom and capture of Wan (琬) and Yan (琰) as his wives are two corresponding stories. Mount Min was also named as Mount Meng. Hence the two kingdoms are actually one. You Guo’en also proved this point of view by means of analysis of the four accounts of the historical records in Hanfeizi (韩非子): “Jie led a campaign against the Min kingdom and took away two daughters of the king as his wives, hence the downfall of the Xia Dynasty”. You Guo’en maintained given multiple historical accounts of this event in pre-Qin dynasty literature, it is trustworthy (1982, 273). Mount Min, located northwest of Sichuan, is situated on the border of Sichuan and Gansu provinces. With its canyons, precipitous cliffs and mountains, it is the origin point of the Min River, Jialin River and Bailong River. It is also the natural demarcation line between the Yangtze River and Yellow River. The jade from Mount Min is called min (珉) and the jade from Mount Wen is called min (玟). Both were used by the Central Plain dynasties since the beginning of recorded history. It is written in The Rites of Zhou that jade from Mount Min is also called Sichuan min jade. The Verse of Chu mentions that min is a kind of gem inferior to jade, but that it was also cherished by people and even used as tributes to the central government of that time. The unearthed jades of the Han Dynasty reveal that top-grade items are made of Hetian jade. As King Jie established his capital in the Central Plain, what made him go to the lengths of crossing to Shaanxi Province and attacking the Min Kingdom of Sichuan? Did he do it for the two beautiful girls, as recorded in ancient books? If one regards the records in the books as myths, then the hidden historical information within them might at least tell one what strategic resources of Sichuan could have such a powerful charm as to lure Jie to travel thousands of miles with his strong army and brave the difficult and rough roads in Sichuan. After King Jie of Xia, King Mu of Zhou also embarked on a long westward journey to the Kunlun Mountains, where he met Queen Mother of the West. This has great implications for one attempting to understand Jie’s attack on Sichuan. Based on the narrative analysis of The Biography of King Mu, it seems that the purpose of King Mu was to meet the Queen Mother of the West; but in fact, his pilgrimage to the Kunlun Mountains was to seek Hetian jade, which symbolised eternity. The Queen Mother of the West was crowned with jade ornaments and lived in a jade palace. All these details reveal that she was the jade goddess personifying Hetian jade in the Kunlun Mountains in the imagination of the Central Plain peoples (Ye 2008b). According to Chinese historical records, the Ba and Shu states have always been described as “barbarian” and “backward vassals”, lacking writing or literary cannons, nor any ritual system, and where the way of living was akin to primitive tribal groups. Contemporary scholars argue that academics should regard Ba and Shu as separate cultures on the grounds that Shu had more highly developed agricultural production and established a state-level government no later than the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods. Its leaders were no longer chiefs, but kings. Ba, based in east Sichuan, was primarily a tribal society. Its production lagged behind that of Shu, although the two states shared similar cultural ties. Such a view must be rectified after the great discovery of Sanxingdui civilization. Today, people tend to regard

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Sanxingdui as the capital city of Shu during the Xia and Shang Dynasties. The ritual instruments made of gold, bronze, and jade are far more sophisticated and advanced than those found in prehistoric tribes. The excavated precious metals demonstrate that their craftsmanship was far superior to that of the Central Plain culture. This means that the ancient Shu Kingdom was highly civilized and prosperous even three or four thousand years ago. Its cultural influence certainly had an impact on the Ba people in eastern Sichuan. The idiom of “Ba-Snake swallowing elephants” vividly describes the strange scenery of Shu in the minds of the Central Plain people. The economy and culture of the Ba and Shu kingdoms still lagged far behind those of the Central Plain region, and hence were generally regarded as backward. This stigma has persisted till today. Only a few local treasures and specialties were and are praised: the stone of Shu, cloth or embroidery of Shu, the bamboo walking cane and the croton medicinal herb. Among the products of the Ba and Shu kingdoms, the stone of Shu had great appeal to the Central Plain people. It is a crystal clear jade originating from Sichuan. Though inferior to Hetian jade, it is still beautiful, and possesses many of the qualities of top jade. It has acquired many alternative names such as min (砇), min (珉), jade of Mount Min and jade of Jialing (Jialing is a river in today’s Sichuan Province). For modern people, it is really hard to understand the value ancient peoples afforded it, giving so many names to the stone of Shu. The reason behind this must be that jade was appreciated, valued, and sought after at that time by people of all ranks. The historical records from the Han Dynasty to the Song Dynasty shed some light on the motivation behind the attack orchestrated by Jie of Xia, and can simply be regarded as a useful cross-reference. Why, though, was Jialing jade regarded as inferior? This may be explained by the fact that the Central Plain people often took jade from Hetian to be the most valuable. Hetian jade has a soft luster, especially after being processed. The so-called “sheep fat white jade” is not a metaphor or exaggeration, but rather, describes its visual and tactile soft beauty. In contrast, the jade produced in Sichuan was more like a stone than a piece of jade; hence it was used as a substitute. In terms of distance, the Ba and Shu states were closer to the Central Plain region than to Xinjiang. The rulers of Xia could not control the trade route to the Western Regions, and hence the Hetian jade in Xinjiang, lying thousands of miles away, was inaccessible to them and their people. Therefore, they could only seek jade in nearer places, that is, Jialing jade or Mount Min jade. This finds expression in the narrative of the attack of King Jie against the Min Kingdom in inherited literature. Volume 135 of the Imperial Overview from the Taiping Reign quotes The Bamboo Annals in saying that Jie attacked the Min Kingdom and took away the ruler’s two daughters, Wan (琬) and Yan (琰) as his wives. From the story, one can easily identify the reason why Jie attacked the Min Kingdom—it is the same reason that the Greeks attacked Troy for Helen. The names of the two wives were Wan and Yan, which both denote beautiful jade. Volume VIII of the Collection of Literature Arranged by Categories (Yi Wen Lei Ju, 艺文类聚) also cites this story under the Precious Stone Section, and notes that King Zhuang presented the two beauties to Jie. Hence, one can postulate that King Zhuang must have been a tribal leader who resided

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Fig. 16.2 A collared jade ring unearthed from the Jinsha site. Photographed at the Jinsha Site Museum in 2007

on Mount Min. That Jie took his army and travelled thousands of miles to attack it was not only for women, but for its precious and strategic resources like jade (Fig. 16.2). The excavations of the Sanxingdui and Jinsha ruins demonstrate that the production and processing of jade of the Xia and Shang Dynasties in Sichuan had already incorporated jade cultural features from different places and had gradually developed its own jade ritual system featuring jade zhang (璋) (Chen 2007; Yang 2006, 214–215). Among the ritual jades, jade zhang were the largest. The display of several large pieces of jadestone in the Sanxingdui Museum indicates that the local jade supply was much greater than that of the Central Plain region. The local army of King Zhuang of Mount Min could not contend with the powerful army of Jie, so King Zhuang had to offer them the jade of Shu, which Jie craved. The names of the two women, who were captured as his wives, reveal this hidden truth: the two characters both have a jade radical, denoting fine jade. Jie used a special substance to name the two beautiful women, called jade of Tiaohua (苕华), a kind of quality jade. This was recorded in Volume 82 of the Imperial Overview from the Taiping Reign, which accorded with the account of The Bamboo Annals in Volume 135 of the Imperial Overview from the Taiping Reign to a large extent. The only difference in the two volumes was in the introduction. In Volume 82, the story was changed to “Jie of Xia ordered Bian to attack the mountain people. The mountain people offered two women to Jie, who were named Wan and Yan.” Here “mountain people” (山民) actually means Min (岷) because the Chinese character 岷 (the name of the mountain) had been mistakenly separated as 山 (mountain) and 民 (people). Then what does Tiaohua jade, which the people of Xia valued so much, look like? Let one first examine tiao (苕). Literally, it refers to a kind of vine. The Erya Glossary: Interpretation of grasses (尔雅·释草) explains: “Tiao (Chinese trumpet creeper) is also called lingtiao, which has two colors: yellow and white.” These are exactly the colors of the jade of Shu. It is also written in The Mao Commentary on the Book of Poetry that “Tiao is also called lingtiao. When it is about to fall, it turns yellow.” Based on these descriptions, one can guess that jade of Tiaohua is yellow jade, which can also be found in Hetian, Xinjiang. However, it is rare, much rarer

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than white jade. Among antique collectors there is a prevalent belief that yellow jade has the highest value. Some jades excavated from the Sanxingdui and Jinsha ruins are yellow. This shows that the jade from Mount Min was yellow jade. Ancient people used the name of the plant tiao to name the river, denoting its relationship with the origin of the jade. In The Classic of Mountains and Seas there are two rivers with the same name Tiaoshui (“shui” means water, in this case a river). 200 li to the west is a mountain called Longshou. On its southern slope there are rich deposits of gold, while on its northern slope there is a great deal of iron. The Tiaoshui River flows out of this mountain and runs to the southeast before it empties itself into the Jingshui River where there is a great deal of beautiful jade. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 37) 500 li further east is a mountain called Fuyu. …The Tiaoshui River flows out of the northern slope of Mount Fuyu … (ibid., 75)

Hence it can be deduced that this beautiful jade came from Tiaoshui in Shaanxi Province. In Zhejiang Province, the mountain which is located near the Tiaoshui River is called the Floating Jade Mountain. All the accounts contribute to a deeper understanding of the term “jade of Tiaohua”. Now one shall probe the two Chinese characters 琬 (Wan) and 琰 (Yan). The 玉 (jade) radical section of The Handy Mirror in the Dragon Shrine (Long Kan Shou Jian, 龙龛手鉴) explains, “琰 (yan) means beautiful jade”. It can also refer to the pointed jade tablet. The Chapter “Offices of Spring” of The Rites of Zhou has a clear description about its function: “The jade tablet is used to expel evil”. In his annotation of Confucian classics, Zhengxuan cited Zheng Silong’s view, “The jade tablet is a symbol that the emperor used to order officers to attack the unjustified party in a war of justice”. 琬 (wan) was a round-headed jade tablet used for court audiences. The Records of Trades of the Rites of Zhou explains the symbolic meaning of the round head: “The length of wangui (琬圭) is nine cun, using an ancient Chinese measurement. It is also a symbol of virtue.”. From the above literature one learns that the two characters 琬 (wan) and 琰 (yan) are both symbols signifying beautiful jade. The ancient peoples used them for their benevolent and virtuous implications. However, during the reign of Jie of Xia, the Confucian idea of comparing virtue to jade had not yet been formed. The prevalent practice from the prehistoric era to the Xia and Shang Dynasties was to compare jade to deities. The deities were understood as immortal; hence the people who ate jade could live eternally or, in other words, become an immortal. It would seem that the compound phrase 琬琰 (wanyan) had long been used in the Verse of Chu: Far-off Journey, referring to edible jade. Most of the scholars in China annotated it as meaning “jade instruments” (Qu 1980, 181). Hence its original reference, to beautiful jade, was forsaken and the interpretation of it as jade instruments became regarded as a new orthodoxy. In the Confucian context, the same phrase referred to the beauty of virtue, or of language. Based on the narratives of the ancient myths given in the classics, 琬琰 (wanyan) also refers to a specific golden elixir. It looked yellowish. The chapter King Mu of Zhou remarks that the Queen Mother of the West lived in a jade palace, ate delicacies and drank the cream of wanyan. It compared the special food and drink consumed

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by the Queen Mother as a rarity, like jade in the deities’ realm, which inspired people of the world to seek eternity. Where does this myth archetype originate from? This author has explained its origins in the paper “Jade Religion and the Mythological Source of Confucianism and Daoism: Exploring the National Religion in the Emergence of Chinese civilization” (Ye 2010c) and in Chap. 7. After perceiving the implications of wanyan, one must move on to explain the character 岷 (min), the name of the mountain King Jie attacked. There is another character 珉 used interchangeably with 岷 in the ancient classics. That character highlights the strategic resources of the region. 珉 is also written in the forms of 琘, 琝 and 玟. They all refer to precious stones like jade or the stone of the Shu Kingdom. It is written in Xunzi: Discovering the Way, “Although Min (the serpentine) is carved, the result does not equal the natural markings of jade” (Knoblock 1999, 963). The compound word 珉玉 (min jade) which appeared after the Han Dynasty refers to jade from Mount Min, and extends to cover precious stones like jade in a broader sense. Li Daoyuan, a Chinese geographer that lived during the Northern Wei Dynasty, wrote in his book The Annotations on the Waterway Classic, “In the garden there is an old jade well. The inner wall of the well is made of min jade, and the mouth of the well is made of black stones”. According to The History of Song: Military Dress 6 (Song Shi: Yu Fu Zhi 6, 宋史·舆服志六), “The prayer book of the emperor which is used at the ceremonies of prayer to heaven is made of min jade”. The historical records indicate that the tradition of shipping jade stone from Sichuan to the Central Plain continued until the Song Dynasty. Due to the limited quantity of Hetian jade transported via the Hexi Corridor, the ancient royals and nobles had to use alternative jade materials. The archaeological discoveries of the Sanxingdui ruins demonstrate clearly that beside the abundant jade zhang, jade gui, jade bi, there were other stone objects created including huge stone ritual instruments with a diameter of one meter. This shows that the king of the ancient Shu State drew upon min jade stone to make ritual instruments, but when facing a shortage of jade material, he had to resort to other stones (Fig. 16.3). Household phrases among the Chinese like “making no distinction between jade and stone” (yu shi bu fen, 玉石不分) or “jade and stone burned together” (yu shi ju fen, 玉石俱焚) also evidence the fact that the ancient people chose with great care about the raw materials used to make ritual instruments. In the Central Plain, ritual instruments were made of jade rather than Fig. 16.3 Stone bi unearthed from the Jinsha site. Photographed at the Jinsha Site Museum in 2007

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stone. If the best jade was inaccessible, at least lower-grade jade was required, such as Lantian jade of Shaanxi, Dushan jade of Nanyang of Henan province, or Minshan jade from Sichuan. Though min (珉) jade is lesser in quality, people have used it in many poetic terms. The parallel use of minbi (珉陛, jade terrace) and qionglou (琼楼, jade palace) must have started from the Xia Dynasty. Other examples are minpei (珉佩, jade ornaments), minxun (珉珣, the eminent talents of the same period) and minyao (珉 瑶, all the jade and precious stones). Min jade, as an alternative to Hetian jade of Xinjiang, has also been canonized and beautified along with the Hetian jade of the Central Plain. Its origin might be related to the historical event of Jie’s waging war on Mount Min. Why did Jie of Xia go to Sichuan, a faraway place, to seek min jade? What was his ultimate motivation behind the attack? It was known that Jie valued jade as much as his life. To build a worldly jade palace like the one that the Queen Mother of West had in the heaven, Jie used a large quantity of jade. The ancient classics gave a very detailed description of this, and some even attributed the fall of the Xia Dynasty to his misuse of jade, money, and the manpower of the country. Here are just a few records of it written since pre-Qin and Han dynasties. Jie built a splendid palace with jade terraces, chambers and gates. (The Bamboo Annals) In chaotic times, there have been infamous sovereigns such as Jie of the Xia Dynasty and Zhou of the Shang Dynasty. Jie had his rooms and platforms built with jade-like precious stone, corridors made of ivory as well as a bed made of jade. (Huainanzi: Fundamental Norm) (Zhai and Mu 2010, 459) Luxurious palaces are represented by the hall of Yellow Emperor and of Shun, which cannot compare with jade palaces of Jie of Xia and Xin of Yin. (“Ode to West Capital”)

In terms of the superficial narrative structure found across the classics, the Xia Dynasty perished because King Jie was highly obsessed with Moxi or Wan and Yan and he abused his power to force his people to build him a jade palace. It seems that they are two independent historical events. But in terms of their underlying structure the two things are one. Just as one analysed in the previous section, Wan and Yan are a mythical invention, the personification and feminization of the jade of Shu. The five historical records mentioned above demonstrate that Jie had built luxurious jade palaces, pavilions, terraces and beds. What jade did he use? The archaeological discovery reveals that during the Xia Dynasty, Hetian jade was not widely used. The jade used during this era was simply a substitute for Hetian jade. If Jie really built jade palaces, terraces and beds, it is most likely that the source of his jade was from Mount Min, Sichuan Province. The region was also familiar to the first founder of the Xia Dynasty, Yu, who built his government in the Central Plain. The accounts given in the classic texts, that Yu came from the ethnic Qiang region of Sichuan, preserves the memory of this ancient history (cf. Ren 1990; Li 1997b; Li et al. 2000). Yu of Xia thrived with the jade gui bestowed by deities, while Jie of Xia led the state to destruction because of his obsession with jade. Such was the case with the reign of King Zhou in the Shang Dynasty. The factors that result in the rise and fall of

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the states repeat themselves across the literature, which demonstrates the importance of the concept of mythistory to the research of Chinese ancient history.

16.3 Mythologized Ba and Shu States Influenced by the Central Plain culture, words associated with the ancient Sichuanese people and Sichuanese culture often have derogatory implications. Obviously, the Central Plain people looked down upon other cultures and demonstrated their chauvinism openly. The short form of Sichuan in archaic Chinese is Ba or Shu. From its etymology, Ba and Shu together refer to both the place and people of Sichuan. Besides, the two words have an animal as their archetype. Ba refers to the snake. Shu means silk worm. Why, then, do there exist places named after animals? Changqu (c. 291–361), a scholar of the Jin Dynasty, wrote in Huayang Chronicles: Records of Shu (Hua Yang Guo Zhi: Shu Zhi, 华阳国志·蜀志), The Shu State was established since time immoral, bordering with the Ba State. In the era of the Yellow Emperor, the ruler of Ba arranged for his son to marry the daughter of the Shu State and gave birth to his grandson, Gaoyang, who was called Emperor Ku (喾), one of the Five Emperors of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors of Chinese mythology. His descendants established the State of Shu and the hereditary marquis system persisted through the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. King Wu of the Zhou Dynasty overthrew King Zhou of the Shang Dynasty and conquered the land of Shu.

The Ba is not just an ordinary snake, but a rare and huge legendary anaconda in the Central Plain (Fig. 16.4). It is said that it is as huge as an elephant. In the entry for the radical 巴 (ba) in Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters, Xu Shen explained that character 巴is a pictogram of an anaconda, but later people seemed to forget this, hence they coined another word, “bashe” (both ba and she mean a snake) to denote the imaginary anaconda. As is written in The Classic of Mountains and Seas: The Classic of Areas Within the Seas: A snake called bashe eats elephants. It will not disgorge their bones until three years later. Whoever eats it, he will be free from heart disease or illnesses of the belly. This snake has

Fig. 16.4 A stone snake unearthed from the Jinsha site. Photographed at the Jinsha Site Museum

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different colors, such as green, yellow, red and black. Some people say that it has a black body and a green head and lives west of where the rhinoceros lives. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 247)

From this record, medical experts saw the medicinal value of the elephant bones: if the Ba swallows an elephant, the elephant’s bones will not be excreted until three years later. The bones were regarded a ready-made panacea, a remedy to cure heart and abdominal diseases. That is also why The Classic of Mountains and Seas gives a vivid description of how the snake swallowed elephants, and how the bones of the elephant came out. It is even written that the snake had four colors. However, in today’s Sichuan, traces of elephants are entirely invisible in the mountains and the plains. Is the legend of the Bashe swallowing elephants a myth of the Central Plain people or just a folk narrative of the Ba and Shu states? The excavations in the Sanxingdui and Jinsha ruins dispel all doubts about the existence of elephants in ancient Sichuan. The archaeological discoveries show that tons of ivory were used as ceremonial objects in the State of Shu three thousand years ago. Many scholars also used Bashe as a literary allusion. Zuo Si (c. 250–305) of the Jin Dynasty wrote in “Ode to the Capital City of the Kingdom of Wu” (Wu Du Fu, 吴 都赋), “Bashe swallowed elephants and the bones of elephants came out”. Diaoyuan Ning (1883–1913) in his poems on Yanjing, capital city of Yan (one of the seven states during the Warring States Period), wrote, “Seeing Bashe devouring elephants, the emperor of Shu felt so sorrowful that he turned into a cuckoo”. This is a brief summary of the allusion. There was also a legend that the emperor of the ancient Shu State was turned into a cuckoo. Hence, the cuckoo is also named as the “bird of Shu” or the “soul of Shu culture”. As the saying goes in Chinese, a greedy man is like a snake swallowing elephants. This phrase is also evidence of the disparaging and demonizing of the Shu people by the Central Plain people. According to The Book of Documents: The Speech at Mu, among the forces of the King of Zhou, which he recruited to attack King Zhou of Yin, many came from faraway states largely inhabited by ethnic groups “O men of Young, Shu, Qiang, Mao, Wei, Lu, Peng, and Pu” (Legge 2013, 177). Confucius also mentioned that eight ethnic groups jointly attacked King Zhou of Shang in battle. From its geographical range one can see that the state of Ba was adjacent to Gansu and Shaanxi in the north, the west of Hubei Province in the east, the Yunnan-Guizhou plateau in the south and the Chengdu plain in the west. Ba people were ancestors of the people who now live in the east of Sichuan Province and west of Hubei Province. Legend has it that before the Zhou Dynasty, people were led by its leader Lin, who lived south of today’s Gansu and later migrated to Changyang of Hubei, where Lin was called a barbarian. Since they also used the white tiger flag as totem, they were also called “Tiger ‘Barbarians’”. During the Western Zhou Dynasty, this territory was named the Ba Viscount State, which contributed greatly to the development of the region between the west of Hubei and the east of Sichuan. In 316 BC it was merged into Qin, and became Ba prefecture. One group of its people migrated to today’s eastern Hubei, and were called the Xia barbarians during Eastern Han Dynasty. They were called Wushui barbarians during the Western Jin and Northern and Southern

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Dynasties. Another group migrated to the west of Hunan Province and were then called Wuling barbarians. The group which stayed in Sichuan were called Bandun barbarians. The Ba people were assimilated into mainstream Han Culture, due to the continuous migration that occurred after the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The ethnic Tujia people, who now live between Badong and western Hunan Province, are said to be related to the ancient Ba people. Liu Yuxi (772–842), a poet, philosopher and essayist active during the Tang Dynasty, wrote in his poems about the Ba people (Baren in Chinese) noted for their ability to sing many local songs. Baren also refers to the local tunes. Li Bai also wrote about the songs of the Ba people and their thousands of followers who could sing along. Later people used xiali baren (下里巴人) to refer to popular folk music, which formed a sharp contrast with court music. The classic texts above reflect the disparaging of the lowbrow culture by the highbrow culture and that of the Ba culture by the dominant Central Plain culture.

16.4 Ancestors of Ancient Shu and Eye-Protruding God The structure of the character 蜀 (Shu) is composed of the upper part 四, which means eyes and the lower part 虫, which means worm. It is said to be derived from the character 佸, which means the larva of butterflies. According to the section regarding the 虫 radical in Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters, “蜀 is a pictogram. The upper part of the character Shu looks like “eyes”, the middle part like a silkworm.” It is written in Huainanzi (Duan 1981, 65) “Silkworms and Shu look alike, but they trigger different feelings”. What is this worm that looks like a silkworm? People generally hold that Shu also refers to the wild silkworm found in the Min mountain range. The Shu State or ancient Shu people took it as their name. Legend has it that the earliest king of Shu was named Cancong (蚕丛). The two characters of 蜀 (shu) and 蚕 (can, silkworm) have a realistic reference—the silkworm in Mount Min. The State of Shu was incorporated into Qin and became a prefecture after Qin defeated Shu. The name of Shu is still used today, but the name of Cancong has long been forsaken. According to inherited literature, Cancong was called the god of silkworms because he taught people how to raise silkworms. The sixth volume of Collection of Literature Arranged by Categories cited Yang Xiong’s Records of Shu: “The line of kings of Shu started with Cancong (the god of silkworms), then succeeded with Boyong and Yufu”. From its etymology, one can infer that cong means clustering or gathering, and Cancong means clusters of the wild silkworm. Can one say that the mythic king who instructed the ancient Shu people in silkworm raising is a personification of the wild silkworm? Are there any precedents in which wild silkworms were regarded as the ancestors of human tribes? One must first examine the thought of archaeologists like Song Zhaolin on the origin of silk: “China was the earliest country to start producing silk industrially. Its history can be traced back to primitive society. But it should be pointed out that at the very beginning, silkworms lived in a

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wild state and were discovered by people while hunting and collecting food. People first consumed silkworm pupae and then commenced to take the silk thread out of silk cocoons. There was a Tibetan tribe in the Sichuan Liangshan prefecture called Bulangmi, which means eating silkworm pupae. They acquired silkworms for food and then began making silk out of what they found” (Song et al. 1983, 166–167). The Ainu people in Japan were sustained by hunting bears. The bear was their source of food and the totem ancestor. The ancestors of the Chinese people residing along the Yellow River lived on millet, and the term Sheji (社稷, state), coined out of their reliance on millet and the land, became the worshipped symbol of China’s agrarian society. According to the epic The Book of Poetry: Major Odes: the First Birth (大 雅·生民), people also regarded Houji (后稷), the Lord of Millet, as their ancestor. In light of this, it is not difficult to understand why the Shu people, who fed on silkworm pupae, used wild silkworms as the sole totem for their ancestor. Among the jades excavated from Hongshan culture sites, jade silkworms are quite common. The Neolithic stone yue (battle axe) handle resembling a silkworm (cf. Wang and Zhang 2004.), which was unearthed in Jintan Country, Jiangsu Province, might provide new physical evidence about the initial worship of silkworms among ancient peoples. It is worth probing how the ancient Shu people were related to the ethnic Zang or Qiang people. Today, it is obvious that ethnic relations in southwest China have a long history, a topic which cannot be avoided when one studies Chinese civilization. Based on the explanations afforded by Chinese characters, one can infer that it was the intermarriage between the Central Plain people and ethnic peoples in the Southwest that generated the so-called Shu people. As recorded in historical records and cited in the previous section, the Yellow Emperor arranged for his son to marry a daughter of the King of Shu State, and she gave birth to Emperor Ku. The name of the daughter is unknown, but her identity (coming from the west of Sichuan) has been proven. The historical narratives created by the ruling class of the Central Plain tend to view those ethnic groups that were connected to the Central Plain through intermarriage as their kin., For example, Sima Qian, the author of the Records of the Grand Historian, used to regard the Xiongnu people of the northern border as the descendants of the Yellow Emperor. Such narratives are, however, more often a creation of the ruling classes of the Central Plain than they are historical fact. The first chapter of Records of a Historian: Annals of the Five Emperors mentions the origins of silk culture. It is said that the Yellow Emperor married a girl of Xiling, also named Leizu, a legendary Chinese empress and wife of the Yellow Emperor. A chapter of The Book of Han: Geography records that under the Shu prefecture was located Canling County. Hence, the wife of the Yellow Emperor, a girl of Xiling, was actually from Canling County. Some believe that she was a princess of the Shu royal family. This record could trace the practice of forging alliances through marriage back to the very beginning of Chinese civilization. In Li Xueqin’s paper The Legend of the First Emperors and Shu Culture, he probed the two branches of the descendants of the Yellow Emperor and concluded that Shu culture was closely related to the Central Plain culture, based on the archaeological discoveries of jade zhang in the Sanxingdui ruins. Hence it can be deduced that both the states of Xia and

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Shu derived from Zhuanxu, a mythological emperor of ancient China and grandson of the Yellow Emperor (Li 1997b, 221). What does the Goddess of Silk look like? In the Records of Huyan State (Hua Yan Guo Zhi, 华阳国志), an ancient classical text of Sichuan, Jin Changqu uses the term 纵目 (zongmu) to describe her. Scholars have not reached a consensus on its meaning. The older explanation is “vertical eyes”. In The Verse of Chu: The Great Summons (楚辞·大招), zongmu is used to describe a pig’s eyes. It seems to be a weird mythological image. Now bronze masks unearthed from Sanxingdui have led people to believe that zongmu is said to connote exaggerated and protruding pupils. Does the term refer to protruding eyes? Most scholars in China gave an affirmative answer. For example, Chen De’an, the writer of the monograph Sanxingdui: the Holy Place of the Ancient Shu Kingdom, called the three eye-protruding masks unearthed in Pit 2 as zongmu masks (Fig. 16.5) and maintained that they are also depictions of the image of Cancong (Chen 2000, 8). Fan Xiaoping, a scholar from Sichuan, shared the view. However, the Australian sinologist N. Barnard criticized this view and claimed that the term zongmu refers to vertical eyes. Hence, it is not justifiable to use the term, which was used to describe the king of the ancient Shu State, to also describe the pupil-protruding mask found in Pit 2 of the Sanxingdui ruins (Falkenhausen 2003, 172). But the question is whether the masks are unrelated to Cancong, the ancestor of ancient Shu. Since the artifact itself is silent, new theories continue to emerge. However, the facial features of the masks, like protruding eyes, ears and forehead and huge feather hats, all suggest that these masks depict deities rather than human beings. Deities like Qianliyan (Thousand-Mile Eyes) and Shunfeng’er (Follow-Wind Ears) in later mythological narratives also have such exaggerated facial features. The third type of evidence has great significance here. The religious leader Bimo, of the ethnic Yi people in today’s southwest China, wears a tall feather on his head, which has been said to help send messages to deities. Some scholars even presented a new hypothesis that the people from the Sanxingdui may be the ancestors of Yi Fig. 16.5 A huge bronze eye-protruding mask. Photographed at the Sanxingdui Museum

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people. In the spring of 2010 at the First Symposium of the Origins of the Ethnic Yi Culture and Sanxingdui Culture, researchers discussed the commonality between the objects unearthed in Sanxingdui and some core cultural elements of the Yi people, some believing that the art of dragon, eagle and tiger totem worship practiced by the Yi is reflected in the Sanxingdui archaeological discoveries. In addition, the bronze standing figure, gold stick, jade zhang, jade bi, gold foil fish-shaped ornament, sun shaped bronze, bronze tree, bronze rooster, eye-protruding mask, bronze diamondshaped and triangle-shaped eye cast, stone toad, gold crown belt, etc., all find similar counterparts in the practices and items of the Yi people, a fact that should not be viewed as a coincidence. Why were the Sanxingdui ritual instruments burned and buried? There is also a cultural resonance with the ethnic Yi people here. Pu Shidaling, a scholar of ethnic Yi cultural studies noted that ancient Yi people would conduct a ceremony to commemorate their deceased ancestors every 7 to 10 generations, on which occasion they would cry bitterly and loudly to move the gods, and the whole clan would be at the scene of this memorial service and would burn images bearing the images of their ancestors at their clan graveyard. There is an old saying among the Yi people that if the older generation does not pass away, the younger generation will not prosper. The burning ceremony is to pray for the growing prosperity of later generations and to open up new opportunities for their households. Today this ceremony is still alive among the Yi people. It demonstrates a close resemblance with the burning and burial of the ritual instruments evidenced in the Sanxingdui ruins (Pu 2010). Could this example of local ethnography elucidate the Sanxingdui mystery? New interdisciplinary studies (ethnography and archaeology) have given full play to the interaction of the third and fourth types of evidence and one hopes it will offer a sound explanation to the mythistory of Ba and Shu.

Chapter 17

Xuan Bird from Heaven: The Owl Archetype Theory

17.1 Predicament and Breakthrough in the Archetype Study of the Xuan Bird The Book of Poetry: Hymns of Shang: Xuan Bird is an important work that gives an account of the mythological origin of the Shang people. According to the poem, the Shang peoples’ ancestors originated from the xuan bird, but for centuries there has been no relevant physical objects in the Shang Dynasty to investigate, and this account has fallen under the interpretation of scholars of classical study. Following are the beginning lines of the poem: From the eggs of the heaven-sent xuan bird sprang, Forefather of the House of Shang; On this land of Yin inhabited his gang. And then Heaven ordained the warlike Tang. To push forward the frontiers of the land. (Wang 2008, 719, slightly modified.)

According to The Mao Commentary on The Book of Poetry, the xuan bird is the swallow. At the spring equinox, the xuan bird descended and caused the birth of the ancestor of Tang. Jiandi, a daughter of the Yousong clan, was married to the emperor of the Gaoxin clan. After she and others escorted the emperor to pray to the god of fertility, Gaomei, she gave birth to Qi, who was then regarded as sent by heaven, for his birth was connected with the arrival of the xuan bird. According to an annotation by Zheng Xuan (X. Wang 1987, 1103), “heaven made the swallow descend and bring about the Shang”. The swallow left an egg which was swallowed by Jiandi, a daughter of the Yousong clan, and who then gave birth to Qi. Qi was appointed as a minister by Emperor Yao, and for his great service, he was enfeoffed the land called Shang. Meanwhile, he was granted a surname by the emperor, who knew he would arise to greatness in the future. From Qi to Tang the capital moved eight times until Tang finally settled at Bo. He was chosen by heaven © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_17

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as a king, extending his land far and wide. Tang was a descendant of Qi, so the birth of Qi was by the mandate of heaven. This story is narrated in even more detail in The Records of the Historian: Annals of Yin. According to this text, Jiandi (简狄) was the second wife of Emperor Ku (of the Gaoxin clan), and when she and two others went out to bathe, she saw a xuan bird lay an egg. She took it and swallowed it. As a result, she became pregnant and gave birth to Qi. Zhu Xi also confirmed the above legend in his Commentaries on the Book of Poetry (Shi Ji Zhuan, 诗集传) and proposed that heaven should refer to the Emperor of Heaven. The poem was originally sung with music during the ceremony of offering sacrifices at the ancestral temple, recounting where the Shang came from and how it grew to be a powerful country (Zhu 1980, 244). The above quotations constitute the orthodox interpretation which was long and widely accepted, though it was vehemently opposed by Fang Yurun (1986, 647–648), a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty, who argued that the story was too far-fetched to be true. However, owing to the lack of knowledge of birth myths and a comparative perspective, his radical objection was trapped in positivism. It seems to be a highly impractical requirement for the ancient mythical narrative to follow conventional logical reasoning. Classical scholars influenced by modern anthropology abandoned the views of ancient exegetes and were inclined to account for the legendary story of the origin of Shang in light of new understandings of “totem birth myths”. Yu Xingwu (1959) cited the xuan bird kettle as an example in his paper “On totems, the origin of religion and totems of the Xia and Shang”. It is a bronze object of the Shang Dynasty with an inscription of three characters玄鸟妇 (literally xuan bird woman), which Yu judged as evidence of the xuan bird totem being passed down from former times, and reflected in the Shang bronze inscriptions. This meant that the kettle-maker was a woman whose totem was the xuan bird and who was a descendant of Jiandi, and belonged to a noble family in the Shang Dynasty. Books like Chen Zizhan’s Direct Annotation of the Book of Poetry, influenced more or less by Yu’s totem theory, attempted to choose between the “old swallow” and “new phoenix” totems. In his article Dragon and Phoenix, Wen Yiduo made an effort to use the totem notion to systematically interpret the mythological belief of the ancestors in the Xia and Shang Dynasties. In his view, the dragon was the totem of the Xia and the phoenix the totem of the Shang (Wen 1982, 69). This author first learned the poem about the xuan bird found in The Book of Poetry while taking a course on Chinese inherited literature some thirty years ago and, since then, has wondered: what was the mysterious “xuan bird” which the Shang people deemed as having given birth to their ancestor? The first twenty years passed with no hope of finding the answer, for the traditional interpretation had been prevalent for a very long time. If one denies that the swallow and fictitious phoenix are the ancestors in the Shang mythological belief, one must provide new evidence. The swallow theory was the traditional interpretation set down by The Mao Commentary and Zheng’s annotation, and for two thousand years it faced no serious challenges. The phoenix theory, meanwhile, was the modern academic point of view advocated by scholars including Wen Yiduo, and has now established its neo-orthodox

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position and achieved popularity similar to the swallow theory in intellectual circles. Many scholars, however, insist on following the swallow theory. Cao Dingyun, for example, considered the swallow as the totem of the Shang people. In the inscriptions on the bronzes in the Fu Hao Tomb, people find such characters as 亚其 (yaqi) and 亚燕 (yayan), which refer to the State of Yan (燕, swallow) in the Shang Dynasty. After the Shang Dynasty declined, Duke Zhao was enfeoffed the land of Yan. Beijing started to be called “Yan” from the early Shang Dynasty rather than from the early Zhou Dynasty (Cao 2007, 144). However, with new evidence gradually accumulating, the time is ripe to propose a new theory concerning the origin of the xuan bird, which may have dumbfounded people in ancient times and may continue to do so in the present day. This is the owl theory advocated by scholars who rely not so much on written classics and literary works, but on unearthed objects and iconological materials as evidence (Fig. 17.1). Hu Shi once compared historical authentication to the work of a detective or a judge. Repudiating an old theory and proposing a new one is like re-examining a mishandled case, so it is no trivial matter. Hu Shi cited the views of the famous criminologist Wang Huizu in the Qing Dynasty that even the confession of the criminal himself should not be relied on solely for the verdict, but should be examined and authenticated. He said, “People engaged in historical research must follow this spirit and be conscientious and meticulous if they are to shoulder the great responsibility of searching for the truth of history for people of the ages to come” (Hu 1986c, 184). Many of the notions which were accepted as common sense in the past are, in fact, misjudgments. To reverse or amend them requires accurate evidence, and it will Fig. 17.1 A jade owl unearthed from the Yin Ruins. Photographed at the Museum of Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei

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never do to simply make casual statements or propose new theories without serious investigation. To prove that the owl was the ancestral god or totem animal worshipped by people in the Shang Dynasty over three thousand years ago, a singular line of reasoning will hardly be convincing. Therefore, one must continue to emphasize and practice the quadruple-evidence archaeological paradigm. A thorough exploration will be possible through examination of: documentary interpretation; archaeological relics and their iconological analysis; folk dialect; beliefs and myths, integrated with theories of the prehistoric Eurasian goddess religion; and the new propositions accumulated in academic circles in recent years. In doing so, one will be able to present evidence to reverse the former misjudgment, with the aim not only of presenting the truth, but also explaining the underlying reasons why the owl was named the “xuan bird”. It was Liu Dunyuan, a scholar from Shandong University, who proposed, earlier than others, that the owl was the divine bird worshipped from the prehistoric period to the Shang Dynasty. In 1979 he published an article “Views on Owls and theirs Evolution in Ancient China” to restore the reputation of the owl. He maintained that ancient peoples’ attitude towards the owl experienced an obvious transformation. The owl “experienced a much longer period of discrimination than the tortoise. The owl, deft at catching rats, is a beneficial bird and should be protected. Instead, it was treated cruelly and violently, which is harmful to agriculture. The old foolish superstitious view was fabricated and propagandized by the feudalists, but this influence remains in modern times, so there is a practical significance in restoring the reputation of the owl through scientific popularization” (Liu 1979, 214). Liu’s viewpoint was original and insightful, and his argumentation was satisfactory to some extent. His research was worthy of attention in circles of research of ancient culture. But as the article was published in a journal of low prestige, it did not draw as much attention as it deserved. His division of ancient peoples’ attitudes toward the owl into the ruling class’s false charge and laboring peoples’ protection was not entirely convincing, however, and was evidence of the ideological limitations of that time (Ye 2007b, 53). Sixteen years after Liu published his article to restore the reputation of the owl, Han Wei, the director of the Shaanxi Archaeological Institute, paid a short visit to France and Belgium at the invitation of Christian Deydier, a European collector. Deydier showed him his recent collection of Qin Dynasty gold leaves from a robbed tomb in Lixian, Gansu Province. As rare, delicately made, cultural relics they are related to the early history of the Qin people, and very valuable in exploring the origin of Qin history. The gold leaves are of various types, eight of them in the shape of owls. Based on his study of these gold leaves, Han Wei noted the similarity between the Qin and Shang people in their legends that their ancestors were born from the egg of the xuan bird, and argued that the xuan bird was the owl rather than the swallow (1995). After Liu Dunyuan’s research, this is another significant example of using the fourth type of evidence (physical objects and images) to provide new clues for interpreting written documents.

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It is a pity that the gold leaves in the shape of the owl as the fourth type of evidence were not excavated by archaeologists, but were plundered by tomb robbers and then sold to a foreign collector. Fortunately, the robbers could say from where the gold leaves were taken so that Han could eventually associate them with the bird myth of the Qin people and draw the conclusion that the owl was the xuan bird. Now, these precious cultural relics have finally been turned over to the Musée Guimet (the French national museum of Asian art) in Paris and are publicly exhibited in its Eastern Asia Hall. In 2001, this author visited the museum and photographed the artefacts (Fig. 17.2). The xuan bird is neither the swallow nor the phoenix, but the owl. This new proposition, based on such scant evidence, sounds a bit “mysterious” (another sense of the Chinese character玄). Besides, Han’s reasoning was somewhat brief, as he did not explain how the Qin people’s worship of the owl was connected with the xuan bird in the Shang Dynasty. As a consequence, scholars who study the Shang Dynasty history and inherited literature either dismiss or ignore the propositions put forward by Liu Dunyuan and Han Wei and remain advocates of the swallow theory or the phoenix theory. However, Rao Zongyi greatly appreciated Han Wei’s viewpoint. For many years, he had been studying bird gods in myths and legends and ancient history and paid Fig. 17.2 Gold leaves in the shape of an owl, unearthed from the tombs of the ancestors of Qin Shi Huang in Lixian County, Gansu Province

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attention to the archaeological findings in foreign countries. It seemed that he did not notice the earlier article by Liu Dunyuan, though. Rao’s arguments manifest changes along with the appearance of new materials, there are inevitably contradictions in his writing from different periods. In 1991, he wrote a paper “Bird Tribes in Buddhist Texts and Xuan Bird Worship in Ancient India’s Fire Ritual”, in which he investigated the xuan bird in India and China. He cited the Western scholar Louis Renou’s History of Vedic India and believed that the picture of the bird-shaped altar of the fire god in the work was the xuan bird in India. He also explained how the xuan bird got its name in China, “The Emperor of Heaven inhabited in the xuan palace (from scattered articles of Zhuangzi, Mozi and Suichaozi). The deity bird was the Emperor’s messenger, so it was called the xuan bird”. He then referred to books like The Classic of Mountains and Seas and deemed the xuan bird as 鳦 (yi, swallow), which can be interpreted as 一 (yi, one), so it is the supreme god, the god giving birth to everything. In the land of Qi (齐, today’s Shandong province), the xuan bird later became the name for a government post. In the same article, Rao also discussed the phoenix theory: “The xuan bird refers to the swallow and was also regarded as the phoenix for a long time. As it’s linked to fire, it may have originated from people in the land of Chu” (2003, 86–87). From these quotations, it is evident that in the early period of his mythological research of the xuan bird, Rao accepted both the swallow theory and the phoenix theory. His attitude was somewhat ambiguous and, to him, the two theories did not seem to contradict each other. While attending the Symposium on Chinese Myths and Legends held in the Centre of Sinology in Taipei in 1995, Rao Zongyi presented a paper titled “Bird Legends in East Ancient China: Discussions on Taihao and Shaohao”. He started his article by exploring the xuan bird myths in the Qin and Shang Dynasties without mentioning the swallow theory. Instead, he listed the cultural relics, including the text of “Ode to the Divine Crows” (Shen Wu Fu, 神乌赋) excavated in the eastern part of China, elaborated on the cultural background of using bird names as official posts in the period of Shaohao, and finally pointed out the phoenix worship detectable since the Shang Dynasty. “People in the eastern tribes worshipped the phoenix from the period of Shaohao, which was then passed down to the Shang Dynasty as a tradition. This is why there were so many beautiful myths about the phoenix. They have been discussed quite thoroughly by scholars before and will not be repeated here.” In the later part of his article, Rao presented the view that the legend of Shaohao “originated from the West”, seemingly contradicting the word “east” in the title. In the end, he re-addressed the bird legends in terms of their origin. Recently I’ve read a scholar’s article in which he presents the design of a bird flying with the sun on painted potteries of the Yangshao culture unearthed from Huaxian and Miaodigou in Shanxi province. The sun and the bird images on the ancient artifacts represent the sun myths, which are almost the same in both the east and in the west, thus the bird legends are not just confined to the east. (Rao 1996, 73)

The name of the province should read “Shaanxi” rather than “Shanxi”, which is a neighbouring province. While revising the article after the symposium, Rao read

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Han Wei’s 1995 article and, seemingly having realized his ambiguity, attempted to make some revisions. Accordingly, he added a line based on Han’s article without mentioning his name at the end of his writing in hope of improving his argumentation: What’s more, there was the image of owls on the gold leaves unearthed from the land of Qin, which can be interpreted in the light of the legend of the Qin people about their ancestor being born from the egg of the xuan bird. Therefore, it should be concluded that the bird myths concurrently existed in both the East and the West and probably spread from the East to the West. (Ibid., 74)

It was proposed that the bird myths spread from the East to the West because of the bird image found on artifacts unearthed in the West. What conclusion could be drawn if the bird image was also discovered on the artifacts unearthed in the North and the South? Regarding the bold view that the “bird goddess” had been worshiped for about 10,000 years, as held by western archaeologists based on prehistoric artifacts found across Eurasia, one will be more prudent in proposing a theory. The stereotyped notions related to the eastern bird tribes or eastern phoenix have become a trap that all researchers should try to avoid. In his later-edited collected works, Rao maintained the view of “bird myths existing in both the East and the West” and discarded the speculation as to “their spreading from the East to the West” (Rao 2003, 164–166). In 1999, Wang Xiaodun published an article Origin of Guan Ritual and the Vessels Used, and proposed two sources of bird totem worship in the East and the West. Jiyi (鸡彝, chicken wine vessel) and jiayi (斝彝, crop wine vessel) were used as ritual vessels in the guan (灌) ritual featuring pouring wine on a corpse or on the ground in the Xia and Shang Dynasties. They were the results of two types of bird worship in the Neolithic Age, short-tailed bird worship in the East and long-tailed bird worship in the West. The jiyi ritual originated from the custom of offering chicken blood to a god, so the Xia people’s guan ritual was related to the worship for the spring and the sun in the East, for natural life, and chickens and pheasants. The jiayi ritual originated from the custom of offering birds of prey, so the Shang people’s guan ritual was related to the worship of the autumn and the sun in the West, of cultivated life, and owls and eagles. These statements are insightful but are also confined to the rigid division between the two sources in the East and the West. Wang did not mention Han Wei’s proposition that the xuan bird was the owl, but drew a somewhat similar conclusion on his own. In December 2001, Rao Zongyi delivered “Speeches in honour of Fu Sinian” at the Historical Linguistics Institute in Academia Sinica in Taiwan. He discussed the myth of the Shang being born from the xuan bird and seemed to have reversed his viewpoint in the previously published article in 1996. Unlike Fu Sinian’s north-east origin theory based on the side evidence from the Jumong myths of Goguryeo, Rao proposed the north-west origin theory of the xuan bird myths. His first speech was On the Complexity of “Time” and “Place” in the Ancient History in Terms of the Communication Between Different Cultures and the Distribution of the Tribes. In the first part entitled “The Yousong clan and Mount Buzhou”, he cited Huainanzi and The Classic of Mountains and Seas to prove that Mount Buzhou was in the Northeast. In the second part, “Legend of Emperor Jun”, his view was that Emperor Jun (俊)

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was an omnipresent deity who had the sun and the moon at his disposal. He was not confined to the East (Rao 2003, 182). In the third part, “East-West distribution of xuan bird worship”, his proposition, which was contrary to his previous view (that is, the Shang people originated from the East or the Northeast), was that the Shang people and the xuan bird myths originated from the Northwest, i.e., around Mount Buzhou and Black Water (ibid., 176). One of the reasons for this was the existence of the xuan palace in the North and the xuan garden (Mount Kunlun) in the West, both containing “xuan” which carries a connotation of “black”. Later, when his speeches were published, Rao added a ten-page postscript in which he retained his previous idea and deemed that the xuan bird originated from the North (ibid., 225). It may be that some people believe that Rao frequently changed his viewpoints and that his argumentations were often simple. He cited different ancient documents at different times and added a large number of cultural relics and iconological materials at home and abroad, making people feel rather confused. As a matter of fact, in his first speech, he made clear the hardships experienced by researchers in the field of ancient myth history. Without its complexity and variability, the research of ancient history would be too easy. What is worthy of attention is that in the postscript, Rao no longer insisted on the swallow theory or the phoenix theory. Han Wei’s fourth type of evidence seemed so strong to him that he had completely changed his view. He introduced the prehistoric owl-shaped earthen zun, excavated in Huaxian County, and cited Guo Dashun’s interpretation in Searching for the Five Emperors that the owl pot displayed the goddess worship of the Hongshan culture, and explained that it was already present in the period of ancient kingdoms. Now we have seen the gold leaves in the shape of an owl in 822-778 BC (Qin Zhong and Duke Zhuang in the early period of King You’s reign in the Zhou Dynasty), owned by the French collector Deydier, unearthed from the Qin Tomb at Mount Dabaozi in Lixian, Gansu Province. We have also excavated many owl-shaped artifacts in the Shang Dynasty, such as the owl-shaped zun from the Fu Hao Tomb, and the headwear with the design of a bird on the bronze Xing pot in the middle period of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. What does this series of owl-shaped ritual vessels represent? Some people believe it was associated with the legend of the xuan bird laying eggs. According to the Annals of Qin, Nüxiu was the daughter of Emperor Zhuanxu. When she was weaving, a xuan bird laid an egg before her. She swallowed it and gave birth to a son named Daye. Daye is the ancestor of Qin. This account of Qin’s ancestor was similar to that of Shang’s ancestor, so both Qin and Shang developed from clans that had the xuan bird as their totems. (Rao 2003, 254)

As he cited and agreed with Han Wei’s view that the xuan bird was the owl, Rao naturally put aside the swallow theory and the phoenix theory and attempted to add evidence, drawn from home and abroad, for his new position. Yet the ambiguous attitude appeared again. He did not make a clear-cut judgment between the owl and the swallow. Instead, he stated, “The xuan bird may not refer to the swallow”, which made his conclusion less certain and left room for future revision. As previously mentioned, the xuan bird myths were not confined to the East, and the xuan bird may not refer to the swallow. The lyrics about the swallow in the Spring and Autumn Annals were thought to be the earliest Northern music, and possible that the Yousong clan

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related to the xuan bird in the Shang Dynasty lived around Mount Buzhou. According to Huainanzi: Forms of Earth, Mount Buzhou is the gate to Youdu (the capital of Hell) in the far north. Indians call the owl uluka, a messenger of yama. Greeks regarded the owl as the guardian angel. Romans made a vow to the god of death before attacking a ferocious enemy. On the silk painting from Mawangdui Han Tombs were two owls standing in the side rooms as guardian angels to introduce the deceased to the afterworld. Did owl worship have similar implications? The owl has long been considered an ill omen. Hearing Duke Huan of Qi (齐) talk about fengshan (offering imperial sacrifice to heaven and earth), Guan Zhong said, “Now the phoenix and qilin haven’t come… but owls fly in flocks. Is it proper to offer sacrifice to heaven and earth?” From the Chu Silk Manuscript, it can be learned that the owl was regarded as ominous according to the Chu custom. Qi (契) of Yin was called King Xuan, and the xuan bird represented the North. Zhuanxu (颛顼) was Emperor Xuan in the North. People in the Han Dynasty, based on the ancient historical documents, regarded King Xuan as related to Emperor Xuan and deemed that Qi was a descendant of Zhuanxu. The Huaxian region was originally the area Qi was granted. The Miaodigou culture features the Great Owl Bronze ding and the sun-with-bird design, which demonstrates that in this area the xuan bird myths had been prevalent long before the Shang Dynasty. Therefore, it is not necessary to connect the myths with tribes in the East. (Ibid., 255)

Rao’s argumentation, quoted above, boils down to the following two points: 1) The legend of the xuan bird giving birth to Shang can be traced to the region around Huaxian, Shaanxi Province, so it had not been influenced by the bird tradition of tribes in the East. 2) The xuan bird may not refer to the swallow or phoenix, but more probably refers to the owl. What led to Rao’s dramatic change in his views was the unearthed objects in the shape of an owl: one is the owl-shaped gold leaves of the Qin unearthed in Gansu, and the other is the Yangshao culture Great Owl Bronze Pot unearthed in Huaxian, Shaanxi. Rao’s first viewpoint does not seem pertinent, however, because when he published his speeches, the jade and turquoise owls of the Hongshan culture unearthed in the Northeast had already been well known in China and abroad, and an impressive array of pottery owls of the Shijiahe culture had been unearthed in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River in the South. Indeed, these have extended the prehistoric background of the xuan bird myths to almost the whole continent. It can be expected that with the constant advance in archaeological findings people will one day think the other way around and ask different questions. They will not try to find out where else the owl-shaped artifacts have been unearthed, but where they have not been discovered, to manifest the existence of the owl worship and whether there is an exception in terms of this prehistoric belief. Rao’s second viewpoint was ahead of his time. If in fifty or a hundred years new evidence has made the owl theory widely accepted, like the swallow theory and phoenix theory today, Rao’s breakthrough after Liu Dunyuan and Han Wei will be remembered and revered. But if he had more cautiously examined each piece of evidence according to Hu Shi’s tips, followed the logic more strictly, and tried to avoid ambiguity, he would have made even more significant contributions in guiding later scholars.

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17.2 The Fourth Type of Evidence: The Six Thousand Year Owl Image Genealogy When Rao Zongyi’s “Speeches in honour of Fu Sinian” were published in late 2003 in Taiwan as part of the 14-volume Rao Zongyi’s Collected Works in the 20th Century, the present author’s Goddess of a Thousand Faces was in print in Shanghai. The book was written between 2002 and 2003, but it took rather a long time for it to come out because of a change in publisher. Without having read the new propositions of Han Wei and Rao Zongyi, this author proposed to reverse the stereotyped image of the owl from an iconological perspective by giving eight pieces of iconological evidence of the owl image from the prehistoric period to the Yin Ruins. One of them is the stone statue of the owl-faced Goddess, created five thousand years ago, unearthed in Asia Minor, the rest are all cultural relics unearthed in China: (1) Owl-shaped pottery ding of the Yangshao culture unearthed in Taipingzhuang, Huaxian, Shaanxi Province, (2) Owl-shaped pottery lid of the Yangshao culture unearthed in the same place, (3) Owl-shaped bronze zun unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb of the Yin Ruins, (4) Owl design on the top of double rectangular bronze yi (彝, wine vessel) unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb, (5) Stone owl (round carving) of the Shang Dynasty unearthed from the Yin Ruins, (6) Owl-shaped pottery statue of the Shang Dynasty unearthed from the Yin Ruins, (7) Turquoise owl unearthed from a Hongshan culture Site at Dongshanzui in Kazuo County, Liaoning Province (Ye 2004, 80–83). This author mainly relied on the iconological narrative to verify the owl goddess worship prevalent from the Neolithic Age to the Shang Dynasty, echoing the archaeological findings in the western part of Eurasia. Unfortunately, in the book this author did not point out the association between the owl goddess worship and the xuan bird myths or the transformation between the goddess of death and the goddess of rebirth. One may therefore add a newly excavated object, an owl-shaped you of the Shang Dynasty (Fig. 17.3). In the past, similar bronzes have been displayed in museums at home and abroad and reproduced in books on cultural relics. Among them, the owl you exhibited in Hunan Museum is the best known. This bronze is composed of two owls connected back-to-back. Its lid, like a rotund drum, is the bird’s head, on top of which is a tower-shaped knob. The main part is the body of the two owls, and the four legs serve as the owl’s feet. In the upper part between the two owls are two symmetric ears of half loop, though which is a rope-like handle. On the lid are decorated two separate beastial faces, and on the body are carved the bird’s wings in low relief. This bronze is 24.4 cm high and weighs 2.93 kg. It belongs to the late second phase of the Yin Ruins (Institute of Archaeology at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Anyang Municipal Institute of Archaeology 2008).

As more new evidence surfaced, the year 2004 eventually saw important breakthroughs in the study of the xuan bird. In that year, Chinese domestic scholars— without having read the articles by Liu Dunyuan, Han Wei, and Rao Zongyi—independently proposed that the owl was the archetype of the xuan bird. Two of them

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Fig. 17.3 An owl-shaped you 卣 wine vessel of the Shang Dynasty, unearthed from Shilou County, Shanxi Province. Photographed at the Shanxi Museum

are Chang Qinglin from the jade collection circle and Sun Xinzhou from the cliff painting research community. Evidently, both of them are professionals who have no research background in ancient classics but are familiar with the fourth type of evidence. In 2004, Chang Qinglin published the book Collection and Research of Jades in the Shang Dynasty. It contains a section entitled “The Jade xuan Bird in the Shang Dynasty” which he wrote based on the jade designs he collected in Anyang for many years. He pointed out that among the surviving Shang Dynasty jade carvings, there were fewer swallows or phoenixes but a large number of owls. As the xuan bird must have been the favourite animal of the artists in the capital of the Shang Dynasty, he concluded that the xuan bird should be the owl, rather than the swallow or the phoenix. Also in 2004, Sun Xinzhou published an article titled “Owl Worship and Chinese Historical Civilization”, in which he advocated more radically the need to restore the owl’s position as the totem of the Shang Dynasty and proposed that the xuan bird which gave birth to the Shang Dynasty was the owl. Moreover, he maintained that the owl’s degradation and final vilification were due to the blasphemy and insults made towards the sacred object of the former dynasty by people in the Zhou Dynasty. Ma Yinqin provided additional evidence for Sun’s view, and boldly applied anthropology’s totem communion theory to explain the custom of having owl soup at the Dragon Boat festival, as recorded in the Han Dynasty literature. He considered it

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as the remains of the Shang people’s totem communion of the owl and the sun. He echoed Sun’s view that it was the Zhou people’s suppression of the Shang’s owl worship that led to the negative transformation of the owl image (Ma 2006). This view, according to this author, warrants further exploration, based on more extensive iconological materials. If one can still find the owl image on the objects of the Western and Eastern Zhou Dynasties, then the deduction, also supported by the bronze expert Ma Chengyuan and others, should be reconsidered (cf. Yang 2003; Wang 2006). Indeed, from the Warring States Period to the Qin and Han Dynasties, and even to the period when Dunhuang frescoes were created, there exists definite iconological evidence to show that the owl had a positive image and even retained its sacred connotations. Chang and Sun, whose research interests were ancient jade collections and cliff painting respectively, took into account the fourth type of evidence and put forward views that differed from those of classics researchers or philologists who adhered to a single perspective. In 2005, this author delivered an academic speech at Sichuan University entitled “The Fourth Type of evidence: Cross-cultural Interpretation of Owl Symbolism” from the perspective of research methodology and argued for the specific role of cultural relics and images in constructing ancient history and interpreting literary works. This author pointed out the misreading of Jia Yi’s “On the Owl”, and maintained that the owl was not an evil bird or a negative image, but rather manifested the tradition of the sacred bird goddess passed down from the prehistoric era. This mode of writing (with the bird as the messenger of god) which emerged in the inherited literature continued to the “Ode to the Divine Crows” of the Han Dynasty, unearthed in Donghai County, Jiangsu Province (Ye 2006a). After this, this author (2006c) cited examples from The Book of Poetry. This author’s view was that literary classics stem from religious scriptures, and that secularization of the classics is a historical process in the context of the transformation and decline of the primitive religious belief and the separation of religion from politics. The process of secularization from sacredness can be seen from the categorization of The Book of Poetry. The poem “Owl” retained the fable-like writing style in which a bird spoke to a man on behalf of the deities, which originated from the prehistoric mythological belief in the owl goddess. The annotation of the poem since the Han Dynasty began to see the owl as an evil bird. This is a typical case of the further vilification of the primitive god after the decomposition and disenchantment of its sacred cultural connotations. According to Gimbutas’s The Living Goddess, the origin of the owl image in the prehistoric bird goddess tradition can be traced back to the “Three Owls” line drawing about 13,000 years ago unearthed in France. From a broad historical perspective, this serves as a reference for the systematic research of the prehistoric owl image in China and gives one more confidence in understanding the archetype of the xuan bird worshipped by the Shang people. After nearly a decade of research, iconological evidence for the owl theory has accumulated to a very significant degree and needs to be presented as a whole in an attempt to provide systematic visual materials for readers unfamiliar with the iconological evidence.

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In April 2008 and June 2009, this author visited Taiwan’s Palace Museum and the cultural artifacts exhibition hall of the Historical Linguistics Institute in Academia Sinica. Having seen a large quantity of precious cultural artifacts unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Anyang, this author was deeply impressed by the existence of such a variety of owl images. From the size and frequency to the artistic craftsmanship, it is apparent that the owl image was a sacred and awe-inspiring god in the eyes of the Shang people. For instance, in the catalogue of the Shang Dynasty artifacts in Academia Sinica, there is none with the name “phoenix” but six with the name “owl”—all from the Yin Ruins. Unfortunately, it is not easy for scholars in China’s mainland to have access to these rare cultural relics transferred to Taiwan in 1949. If one adds this series of evidence from the tombs in the capital of the Shang Dynasty to that from the Fu Hao Tomb as cited above, one will be able to overcome the inadequacy of single evidence and give a basic presentation of the iconological narrative of beliefs and myths in the Shang Dynasty. Scholars advocating owl theory often ignore the fact that other bird images, such as the swallow, the phoenix, and the parrot, were also discovered on objects from the Yin Ruins. Images of jade swallows and jade phoenixes in the Shang Dynasty are very common. Thus, it is questionable to say that no swallow pattern was found on the objects of the Shang Dynasty. However, in terms of both quantity and craftsmanship, these birds were no match for the owl. For instance, among the objects unearthed from Tomb 1001 of the Yin Ruins and housed in Academia Sinica, there are three with the name of “owl”. They are a little owl-shaped vertical marble sculpture, an owl-shaped vertical marble sculpture, and an owl-shaped jade pendent. Item 1 (Fig. 17.4): This marble sculpture displays the same features in shape and design as the jades and bronzes in the Shang Dynasty. It is 17.1 cm high, 10.6 cm wide and 9.1 cm deep, and weighs 2.46 kg. The delicately carved hooked beak and the two tufts on the head make this owl god dignified and vivid. Item 2 (Fig. 17.5): This round-carved owl god sculpture is very large, about 34 cm high, 25 cm long and 25 cm wide, and weighs 24 kg, the largest among all the single bird-shaped sculptures ever exhibited. The style of its shape resembles that of the owl-shaped bronze zun of the Shang Dynasty. Item 3: Owl-shaped jade pendant No. R001293. Compared with the two owl marble sculptures, this jade owl was much smaller because of the rarity of jade. It is 3.4 cm long and 1.7 cm in diameter. The jade owl is green and cylinder-shaped. It has a hooked beak and two ring-like eyes and has line carvings all over its surface. The shape of this jade owl should be familiar to readers who are interested in jades of the Shang Dynasty. Moreover, some other objects from Tomb 1001 also have owl-like images. One is called a “vertical marble sculpture of an animal with a bird’s beak” (No. R007503). It is a mythical image combining an owl’s head and a bear’s body and can be regarded as the origin of the eagle-bear jade sculptures the later ages. This author has written an article to elaborate on this, so will not repeat it in full here (Ye 2010d). The second is called “little owl vertical marble sculpture” (No. R005054). It is much less known to people because it is small and incomplete and has never been exhibited. The third one is called the “double-bird marble tube” (No. R005055). Judging from

382 Fig. 17.4 A small owl-shaped vertical marble sculpture, unearthed from Tomb 1001 of the Yin Ruins, No. 001610. Photographed at the Museum of Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei

Fig. 17.5 A big owl-shaped vertical marble sculpture, unearthed from Tomb 1001 of the Yin Ruins, No. 001756. Photographed at the Museum of Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei

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the tufts, hooked beak and eyes, it is similar to the owl image on the jades of the Shang Dynasty, so it may be better to call it “double-owl tube”. This is supported by the double-owl jade wristlet (No. R001383) unearthed from the passage of Tomb 1443 at Xibeigang of the Yin Ruins (Research Institute of History and Linguistics, Academia Sinica 1996). In Selected Artifacts from the Yin Ruins (Li 2009) published in Taipei in September 2009 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Historical Linguistics Institute in Academia Sinica, the above-mentioned “double-bird marble tube” was officially renamed “double-sided owl head marble”, which echoed this author’s judgment. The caption for the artifact is as follows. Double-sided Owl Head Marble R005055 Tomb 1001, Xibeigang Marble 18.9 high, top surface 13.5 cm x 21.4 cm, bottom surface 8.2 cm x 12.2 cm, bore diameter 5.5 cm, weighing 7.9 kg The object contains two identical owl heads carved in the front and the rear. Each owl has an upper hooked protruding beak, tufts, ears and a lower beak in low relief and incised eyes. The cross-section almost forms a diamond. A round hole runs from the centre of the top to the bottom. It may have been an ornament on a wooden building or the top of a pole. Two such artifacts were unearthed from Tomb 1001, identical in size and form. (Li 2009, 137)

Thus, unearthed from the high-ranking tombs of the Shang Dynasty kings, these two identical double-sided owl marble sculptures, each weighing about 8 kg, were probably placed on top of a building or a pole as an ornament. It may be hard for modern readers to imagine this extraordinary scene, but to researchers of Shang Dynasty myths, they are undoubtedly precious physical evidence. Now, these three artifacts combined with the above-mentioned three, which are recognized as the owl images by their names, provide all six burial objects in the form of the owl in one tomb of a Shang king. Evidently, it is not appropriate simply to regard them as “ornaments of unknown purposes”. Why, then, did the owner of Tomb 1001 have such a preference for the owl? Was it a result solely of his fondness, or is it representative of a form of god bird worship practiced by the whole of the Shang Kingdom? As is known, from the Tomb of Fu Hao academics have unearthed a pair of superb bronze owl-shaped wine vessels. Therefore, the owl could not have been a personal idol. Instead, it must have been the most revered totem of the Shang Dynasty. The most probable archetype of the god-sent xuan bird which, as the inherited literature reveals, “descended and gave birth to Shang” must be the owl rather than any other bird. Besides these artifacts, one must recognize more owl images present in the precious coloured pictures in Selected Artifacts from the Yin Ruins. They are numbered seven to twelve as follows. Item 7: Buffalo-head rectangular ding (No. R001750), unearthed from Tomb 1004 at Xibeigang. It is an imperial-class great cauldron weighing 110 kg. On the four sides of the cauldron, there are three-dimensional images of buffalo heads. On both

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sides of the buffalo heads in the front and the rear, there is a pair of “ferocious birds with flying crests” (ibid., 8). As they have tufts and hooked beaks similar to those of owls, it is possible that they were carved with the owl as a model. Item 8: Deer-head rectangular ding (No. R001751), also unearthed from Tomb 1004 at Xibeigang. It weighs over 60 kg. On both sides of the deer heads in the front and the rear of the cauldron, there are also a pair of ferocious birds with crests and hooked beaks (ibid., 10–11), but the birds face outward, unlike the Buffalo-head ding. The birds were very possibly designed with the owl as the model, too. Scholars who study oracle bone inscriptions have discovered that there was a place called Lu (deer) which the kings of the Shang Dynasty often visited. It was located along the main road from the capital to southwest Jin, and troops were stationed there to form a defensive line for the Shang king. This place, called Lu, perhaps has something to do with the Mount Lugu (Valley of the Deer) mentioned in the entry of Shangdang prefecture in The Book of Han: Geography. There are also many documents in which the kings of Shang were recorded as hunting deer (Sun and Lin 2010). From these, it can be inferred that in the Shang Dynasty, both the deer and the phoenix were considered sacred animals in certain regions, and rulers rendered their likeness on important ritual bronzes. However, they were not so prevalent as the owl, which, as the totem of the Shang ancestors, has been found on objects in varied royal tombs and ruins. The place called Feng (phoenix) was also recorded on oracle inscriptions. There are at least three examples of oracle inscriptions that related the fact that the king of Shang received tributes from Feng. It is estimated that Feng was located in the southwest of today’s Shanxi Province (ibid., 58). Accordingly, to the Shang people, Feng was a name for those tributepayers outside the Shang territory and the place that they inhabited. Therefore, there is a slim possibility that the phoenix was the archetype of the xuan bird as the totem of the Shang Dynasty. Item 9: Bird zun (No. R001074), unearthed from Tomb 885, at Xibeigang (ibid., 130). As the lid of this zun was lost, it is hard to determine the identity of the bird. But its shape was similar to that of the owl-shaped bronze zun from the Fu Hao Tomb (with a similar design on the wings and the body), so this author speculates that the bird is the owl. Item 10: Double-owl jade bracelet (No. R001383), unearthed from Tomb 1443 at Xibeijang. It was named “double-owl jade wristlet” in the book entitled Houjiazhuang quoted before. It is worth noting that the double-owl image as a mythological motif was very common in the late Shang objects. Bronzes such as the abovementioned buffalo-head ding and deer-head ding feature the imagery of double owls. “Double-sided owl heads marble” came in pairs, so did owl-shaped bronze zun from Fu Hao Tomb of the Yin Ruins. The zun features a design of a small owl opposite a big one, and there is an owl face carved in relief on the tail of the owl zun. To summarize, the motif of the double owls appears on bronzes, marbles and jades from the Shang Dynasty. According to the archaeologist and mythologist Gimbutas, this represents the artistic “double” motif of the prehistoric goddess religion, which aimed to convey

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progressive duplication and to symbolise life’s power of reproduction and fertility (1989, 161). Gimbutas also pointed out that the double image is mainly presented in two ways, one being the symmetry of two animals, the other being the simplified geometric figures such as parallel lines, double rings and double ovals. In terms of the prehistoric owl design, she gave an example of the owl-face steles in 3000 BC unearthed in southern France, which usually used double lines to depict the owl face. On one stele under the owl’s head there was even carved a pair of human arms and a necklace of beads (ibid., 169). These opinions of Gimbutas have some referential value in the understanding of similar phenomena in Chinese civilization in its formative period. The owl has superb eyesight to see through the dark night and was thus deemed by the prehistoric people as having the supernatural power of connecting life and death. The double motif of ferocious birds may have something to do with this symbolic connotation. Item 11: Standing pottery owl (No. R001003), unearthed from Pit 171 at Xiaotun, probably used as an idol in sacrificial ceremonies. It is 21.4 cm high, 12.4 cm wide and weighs 1.3 kg. The image is a standing owl with folded wings. It has an almost round head with no tufts, a protruding hooked beak, and two eyes made of round clay pieces (Li 2009, 187). Three holes on both sides of the owl body show that it might have been placed on other objects in ceremonial processions. Item 12: Owl-shaped jue mould (No. R024944) unearthed from Deep Pit B71 at Xiaotun. Though a damaged object, it clearly shows the circular eyes, straight tufts and feathers typical of an owl (ibid., 291). With a little imagination, one can visualize the magnificent owl-shaped bronze jue made from this mould. The following are more examples from the Yin Ruins to manifest the multiplicity and prevalence of the owl image among the bird designs in the Shang Dynasty. Item 13: Owl-shaped jade pendant unearthed from Tomb 331 at Xiaotun, Anyang. Item 14: Dragon-crested phoenix-shaped jade pendant housed in the Taipei Palace Museum. If one compares these two artifacts and makes a thorough analysis, one is likely to reveal some conceptual elements related to owl worship. This author suggests that the “dragon-crested phoenix-shaped jade pendant” be called “dragon-crested owlshaped jade pendant”. Its caption, written by Deng Shuping, the jade expert of the Taipei Palace Museum, gives an insight as to why. The Shang people were from tribes in the East who worshiped the divine bird, and as a result jade ornaments in the shape of birds were popular in the Shang Dynasty. This thin jade pendant in deep ivory was a side image of a bird carved in low relief and with hollows. The bird has a hooked beak, a short neck, a short tail and a thick leg. A small short dragon stands on its head. On the surface of both the bird and the dragon are carved swirling circular lines, which probably represent the everlasting vigour of the universe. Another point worth noting is that on the bottom of the artifact, that is, the bird’s foot, there is a protrusion that is deeper in color. This indicates that it might have been inserted into something prone to rot. As is evident from inherited literature, in their sacrificial ceremonies, ancient peoples often held a long wooden stick with a jade ornament set on top, which was called “jade tip”, and danced and sang to call for the descending of the holy ancestor’s spirit. This bird-shaped jade pendant might have been a ritual object. Deng

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also provided the reason for its designation: Any birds which communicates with gods can be called a “phoenix” in the mind of ancient people, so this artifact is named “dragon-crested phoenix-shaped jade pendant” (Deng 2003, 15; 1991, 25). Deng’s caption is largely reasonable. However, while calling all birds that communicate with gods “phoenix” may be easy to understand for modern people, this may lead to confusion and misunderstanding in archaeological identification and mythological and iconological research. Therefore, this author suggests that it be renamed “dragoncrested owl-shaped jade pendant” to make clear the dominant position of the owl god and the relative subordination or derivation of the dragon and the phoenix. The above iconological interpretation has shed some light on this author’s explanation of today’s popular expressions such as “dragon-phoenix match” (a perfect match) and “dragon-phoenix twins” (fraternal twins). It seems that the dragon and the phoenix could have been conceived and born simultaneously from the reproductive owl goddess and that the two most prevalent mythical creatures in Chinese civilization were both derived from the owl in the mythological mind of the Shang people. This conception will promote understandings of the legend of the xuan bird giving birth to the Shang. It will also help one understand why the patterns of such mythical creatures, such as chilong (螭龙, one-legged monster), kuilong (夔龙, hornless dragon), the divine bird and the divine phoenix, could appear on the same artifact in the late Shang Dynasty. Further understanding can be achieved if one combines the new knowledge obtained from images on jades with images on bronzes from the Yin Ruins. Item 15: Owl-shaped bronze zun unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb (Fig. 17.6). Fig. 17.6 An owl-shaped bronze zun, unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb

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Fig. 17.7 A double rectangular bronze yi unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb, on the top of which is the image of owl god. Photographed at the National Museum of China in 2012

The owl-shaped bronze zun (one of a pair) (Fig. 17.6) is considered to be a national treasure, and indeed, is magnificent for its intricate craftsmanship and unique design. It has the typical features of iconological narrative both in the representation of the owl image and in its symbolic connotations of life reproduction (there are several little owls in different designs on the body of the zun). The two wings are depicted with circular lines, which makes the artifact as dynamic and rhythmic as it is majestic and divine. From the back of the zun, one can see a delicately made owl image in relief above the tail of the big owl. It has two wings spread for flying, a face made of two circles with two big round eyes which are dynamic and vivid. On the head of the big owl, one can see a small standing owl or a phoenix and a small dragon. Item 16: Double rectangular bronze yi (彝, wine vessel) unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb (Fig. 17.7). Another significant, and indeed unique object also unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb was the double rectangular bronze yi. This resembles a rectangular building, its lid being the roof (a hip roof) of the building. On the front side of the roof there are two owls facing each other in relief, and between them is a large front-facing owl head design with tufts, round eyes and a hooked beak. In its grandeur and design, the frontal owl resembles the statues of a key deity that would have been consecrated in a temple. The author held, “The owl facial design on the top of double rectangular bronze yi unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb may be one of the archetypes of taotie ( 饕餮), the ancient mythical animal.” (Ye 2004, 82). In this regard, it should be said that the xuan bird, i.e., the owl god, is not only the source of the taotie motif but also the origin of the dragon and the phoenix.

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17.3 The Third Type of Evidence: The Xuan Bird with Rotating Eyes The sixteen artifacts bearing the owl image in the Shang Dynasty listed in the previous section indicate that the owl was the most prominent and prevalent sacred animal image put on the burial objects of the tombs of kings and queens. One can therefore make an integrative interpretation of the origin of the xuan bird in the ancient documents with reference to the physical objects which preceded the documents and the owl goddess mythology in the Shang Dynasty. The key to obtaining an overall view is to break the barrier between the four types of evidence and let the funerary objects and the designs on them, typical of the Shang Dynasty, play their role of visual verification. As one lists in the order of time all the materials that can be collected so far to see what birds were worshiped by the ancient people in East Asia from the prehistoric era to the late Shang Dynasty, there is no doubt that the bird of prey represented by the owl predominates. Of course, using only traditional approaches to classical research, it is unlikely that the divine nature of the owl, with its unique night sight, could be recognized. The emergence of the owl worship theory has transcended the limitation of the two-thousand-year tradition of classical study, but cannot yet provide a clear and convincing explanation. Concerning the discussion of the archetype of the xuan bird, an increasingly large quantity of similar documents have been accumulated, which linger on old questions. The materials have been quoted so many times that there is hardly any room to make discoveries. The debates now no longer inspire creative thinking, but are mostly around some designations and notions, for instance, the debate on whether the xuan bird can be called a totem of the late Shang people. To break the bottleneck in the research approach, one advocates integrating the examination of documents and the interpretation of concepts using archaeological objects and iconological analysis. If the third type of evidence of folklore also gets the attention it deserves, one will be able to take a step forward. The owl is also called xiao (枭) and chixiao (鸱鸮) in Chinese. Why, then, should it have yet another name, xuan bird? In the dialect of the central Shaanxi plain, the owl is called chixiao and pronounced according to the present accent of that area. Naturally, the Shang people had their names for the bird, with the xuan bird being one of them. The character 玄 (xuan) originally means rotating or spinning. Guo Moruo’s research on bronze inscriptions (1958) and Yang Xiangkui and Pang Pu’s (Pang 1995) philosophical argumentations on the Chinese character玄have already provided a powerful sensorial and empirical basis for reinterpreting the designation of xuan bird. To put it simply, the xuan bird is a bird with a rotating head and two rotating eyes. Upon close observation, the rotating eyes are the most striking feature of the owl. The worshipers endowed this unique pair of eyes with the powers of intelligence and transformation between darkness and light, linked to the vitality of the sun and the moon, i.e., the power of resurrection. Some scholars interpret the origin of owl worship as being rooted in the fact that the owl is beneficial to agriculture, but that

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assumption is based on today’s experiences. When the “Three Owls” line drawing came into being in Europe about 13,000 years ago, the earth had had little experience of agriculture. Our ancestors were hunters many thousands of years ago. As they made their keen and meticulous observations of nature, they would not have missed the owl’s extraordinary rotating eyes. Some designations of the owl in ancient folklore were related to its rotating head and eyes. For instance, in the area around Sichuan Province, the owl is called “ghost carriage” or “ghost wax gourd”. This may sound strange at first, but upon further consideration, it is not hard to see that “ghost” indicates that the owl’s head and eyes can rotate and switch in an instant, which is rather inconceivable to human beings. “Carriage” indicates that the owl’s head or eyes can rotate like the wheels of a carriage. Moreover, a “wax gourd” has thick skin and white pulp inside, and the owl’s eye movement implies the switch between darkness and light. This may be why the owl is called a “ghost wax gourd”. In Alternative Names of Things (Shi Wu Yi Ming Lu, 事务异名录) edited by Li Quan in the Qing Dynasty, there is another name for the owl, i.e., “wheel bird” (轱 辘鸟). While writing Mythological Imagery (Ye 2007b), this author also cited these aliases of the owl but did not provide a thorough analysis according to the third type of evidence. Now with the reference to the wheel-like eyes on the owl-shaped bronze zun of the Fu Hao Tomb and owl-shaped jade artifacts, one can satisfactorily explain why the owl is called the “wheel bird”. As wheels are circular objects which rotate, they perfectly resemble the owl’s rotating eyes. Yang Xiangkui, in his Interpreting “Bu-xuan-ming” (不玄冥, a line from oracle bone inscriptions), pointed out: “玄” (xuan), the earlier form of “镟” (xuan, a rotary tool for cutting things) is a pictogram which can be found in the oracle inscriptions. (The character 玄 is) like using two hands to move a rotary tool (镟), which is a character created later and pronounced the same as 玄. 镟 implies rotary movement, while dizziness also implies rotary feeling. When you feel dizzy, your eyesight may be dimmed and everything becomes black, so 玄 then took the sense of “black”. This transferred meaning survived, while the original meaning was gradually lost. But there is no doubt that the form of 玄 reflects the rotary movement. (Pang 1995, 286)

Pang Pu cited this view of Yang Xiangkui and claimed that it represented a great leap in the explanation of the character 玄 as Yang referred directly to the oracle inscriptions to link 玄 with dizziness and to explain why 玄 means black. Pang Pu then argued that the archetype of 玄 is not derived just from 镟, a rotary cutting tool, but also from the pottery spinning wheel and the vortex design on it in the more ancient Qujialing culture. Thus, 玄 may originally refer to the vortex design on objects created five thousand years ago. Owing to the large number of spinning wheels with vortex designs and red decorations, Pang proposed that they may not have been spinning wheels but religious instruments. 玄(xuan) originally referred to the vortex and its archetype is derived probably not from the rotary cutting tool but from the mass of water that spins around. “Fortunately we know that the water god is called xuanming (玄冥). He was also the deity of the North, related to water, and was called xuantian (xuan heaven) (玄天). These give one some clues to ponder over. What is more significant in academic terms is the

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close relationship between 玄 and Daoism… Laozi, a native of Chu, sang the praise of water and claimed that the weak can defeat the strong. And the secret lies here” (Pang 1995, 290–291). Both Yang Xiangkui and Pang Pu have made original and profound explorations of the character 玄 and provided valuable insights into the study of the archetype of the xuan bird. Why, then, has 玄 in The Book of Poetry been interpreted as “black” for two thousand years, giving the black swallow rather than the owl the status of the xuan bird worshiped by the Shang people from the end of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty to the Qin and Han Dynasties? If the pre-Qin documents contain examples to show that玄 (xuan) means 旋 (rotating), then there will be direct and effective evidence to reverse the proposition that the xuan bird refers to the black swallow. The first example is the “picture of the xuan palace” in Guanzi, which is not a black palace, but an obvious imitation of the ancient emperors’ abode in which rooms are supposed to be occupied in turn as if they were rotating (Ye 1992, 166–170). The second is the introduction of the xuan turtle in The Classic of Mountains and Seas: 370 li further east is a mountain called Niuyang. On its southern slope there is a great deal of red gold, while on its northern slope there is a great deal of white gold. …The Guaishui River flows out of this mountain and runs swiftly to the east before it finally empties into the Xianyi River. In the river there are many xuan turtles (玄龟), which look like turtles and have a bird’s head and a snake’s tail. They are called xuan turtles (旋龟). They make a sound like a piece of wood being chopped. Whoever wears one in his belt, he will not be deaf and it can cure him of his calluses. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 5, slightly modified.)

In the above quotation 玄龟 in the Xianyi River is also called 旋龟. This means that when The Classic of Mountains and Seas was created, generally believed to be during the Warring States Period, the two characters 玄 and 旋 had the same sound and the same meaning—‘rotating’. Accordingly, 玄鸟 (xuan bird) could be written as 旋鸟 (rotating bird). There is thus no basis to claim that the xuan bird refers to the black swallow, and instead, the owl with rotating eyes reflects the true sense of the term. To sum up, the third type of evidence helps explain the conclusion drawn from other evidence, making it more solid and convincing. The word xuan (玄) was originally used to mean rotating, and the xuan bird was a bird that could rotate its eyes flexibly. The owl’s eyes must have left a very deep impression on ancient people and aroused their mythological imagination so that ancestors of the Hongshan culture five to six thousand years ago especially emphasized these “vortex eyes” (the term used in archaeological circles) in carving the owl on rare and precious jade. Among the unearthed Hongshan jades, there are spherical owls but also a type of flat jade object, which was mistakenly called “hooked cloud-shaped jade” in the past. In recent years, Tian Guanglin, based on iconological analysis, proposed that the so-called “hooked cloud-shaped jade” is the image of an owl with its wings spread (Tian 2004, 232–233). The focus of this type of jade object is the rotating eyes on the head of the owl. The next chapter will provide an elaborate discussion of this in connection with Hongshan jades of the xuanpin (玄牝) type. Based on the features of the bird images found on Hongshan jades, it is generally agreed in academic circles that the owl image was the favourite jade design at that

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Fig. 17.8 A lizard and owl in ancient Egyptian tomb reliefs, photographed at the Dutch National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden in 2001

time. However, there is no clear or convincing interpretation of the reasons behind owl worship in the Hongshan culture. Prehistoric archaeological evidence has proven that the bird goddess started to be worshiped over ten thousand years ago in Eurasia. Therefore, eagle or owl worship was not unique to the Hongshan culture, but rather prevalent in prehistoric mythology (Fig. 17.8). In the mythological mode of thinking, the owl was believed to have supernatural intelligence because its eyes can rotate freely, indicating its superb eyesight in the darkness. That Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, is symbolised by the owl may have been the influence of the 10,000-yearold bird goddess worship tradition that preceded the Greek deities. Similarly, the xuan bird worship of the Shang people must have originated from prehistoric bird goddess worship, especially the worship of the owl with its vortex eyes. That the owl is called the “wheel bird” in some areas in China is a perfect echo of the vortex eyes of the jade owls carved five to six thousand years ago.

Chapter 18

The Origins of the Xuan Bird

18.1 Archaeological Theory of the “Owl Goddess” and Re-examining the Xuan Bird and Xuanpin The previous chapter reviewed recent studies of scholars who have not relied solely on written classics and literary works to analyse the origins of the xuan bird. Inspired by the iconological material to be found in archaeology, they proposed that the xuan bird worshipped by the Shang people should be the owl rather than the traditionally held swallow or phoenix. One has sought to elaborate the empirical and logical reasons why xuan was used in the bird’s name, illustrating again how the quadrupleevidence method can be used to readdress unsolved questions in history by integrating the exegesis of ancient texts, folklore and archaeological relics. From an archaeological and iconological perspective, this chapter will further explore how the mythological xuan bird was conceived in the mind of the Shang people and how it was represented before the mythological belief was expressed in Chinese. The truth is that the ancient people of the Yangshao and Hongshan cultures some 6000 years ago started to show their worship by making owl-shaped objects. The tradition of “vortex eyes”, representative of owl-like birds may be observed in the jades of the Hongshan culture (Fig. 18.1) and Longshan culture, and in the jades and bronzes from the Xia and Shang Dynasties, clearly highlighting the mythological concept of “the xuan bird with rotating eyes” and the iconological narrative related to this concept. Based on a mythological and iconological analysis of the unearthed jades, it may be concluded that the so-called “hooked cloud-shaped jade”, the typical jade object of the Hongshan culture, has been given an inappropriate name as a result of misinterpretations. This term should be replaced by “owl-shaped jade plaque” according to new discoveries and interpretations, thus paving the way for the mythological study of jade objects. The suggestion that the mythological concept of the “xuan bird” dates back to the iconological narrative found in Neolithic artifacts can be supported academically by two world-renowned archaeological theories of the late twentieth century, © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_18

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Fig. 18.1 A hooked cloud-shaped jade of the Hongshan culture. Photographed at the Gansu Museum

namely “The Civilization of the Goddess” theory by M. Gimbutas (1991) and “The Eye Goddess” theory by O. G. S. Crawford (1957). Is “the goddess civilization” theory merely relevant to civilizations in Europe and Western Asia alone, and not to civilizations in East Asia or China?. Tangun, the legendary founder of the first Korean kingdom, was believed to be born of a mother bear. Japan was once governed by a female ruler called Himiko for a period of its history. In Japanese legends, the central deity in Takamagahara, the land in which the gods preside, is Amaterasu, a goddess personifying the sun. Early Japanese literature presents a female-centered world (cf. Ye and Li 2010). The legendary Chinese emperors, such as the Yellow Emperor and the Yan Emperor, had 姬 and 姜 as their surnames respectively, both characters including a component 女 (woman). Indeed, the Chinese character for “surname (姓)” itself also includes a component 女. Based on what was mentioned above, one may infer the existence of a goddess-worshipping era in ancient East Asia that apparently lasted for a great deal of time. This viewpoint is gathering support, evidenced by more and more unearthed physical evidence. In the 1980s, the site of a goddess temple built 5500 years ago was excavated in Niuheliang, Jianping County, Liaoning Province. In the temple, remnant clay sculptures of bears and birds of prey were discovered as well as goddess statues. This presents a similar prehistoric symbolic system of goddesses and animals as proposed by M. Gimbutas, supporting the prehistoric “bear goddess” and “bird goddess” theories in detail. What is more, a Neolithic conjoined double jade bi was unearthed in Yabuli, Shangzhi County, Heilongjiang Province, and was recognized as an imitation of female genitalia. It was made even before the Hongshan culture, providing clues useful in identifying the origins of such typical Hongshan jades as conjoined double or triple jade discs (Figs. 18.2 and 18.3), and also for understanding the physical archetype of ‘xuanpin’ in the philosophy of Laozi. As the crystal jade was the symbol of heaven and god and the sacred token of vitality and eternity in the eyes of ancient peoples, the image of xuanpin, made of jade, could very well embody the implied meaning of the lines in the sixth chapter of Dao De Jing:

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Fig. 18.2 A jade bi of the Hongshan culture in the shape of the female sex organ. Photographed at the Gansu Museum in 2007

Fig. 18.3 Conjoined triple and double jade bi of the Hongshan Culture. Photographed at the Gansu Museum in 2007

The Valley Spirit never dies. It is named the Mysterious Female (xuanpin). And the Doorway of the Mysterious Female (xuanpin). Is the base from which Heaven and Earth sprang. (Waley 1999b, 13. The words in the brackets are added.) One does not propose to elaborate on the founder of Daoism’s consciousness of mother goddess worship, or on the primal chaotic values and feminine tendencies inherent within Daoism. Discussions of such topics can be found in Cultural Interpretations of Laozi (Xiao and Ye 1994, 185–192). Rather, the question that needs to

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be raised here is whether the xuan bird in The Book of Poetry and the xuanpin in Dao De Jing have similar lexical and mythological connotations. This question is difficult to answer merely from the perspective of hermeneutics and exegesis, while the systematic research of prehistoric jade images, rooted in an awareness of iconological narrative, may bring forth some unprecedented profound insights. A Hongshan jade object with rich mythological connotations is the birdanimal jade ornament (Fig. 18.4) unearthed at Niuheliang Site 2. It may shed some light on the mythological connections between the xuanpin and the xuan bird. Archaeologists give the following description of the jade pendant: The artifact shows a bird and an animal joined together, judging from the outer contour and the incised lines. In the centre of the jade pendant is a pear-shaped hole. The animal has a pointed snout with a long tongue, round eyes and a coiled body. The bird has a high crest, round eyes and an upward beak. It is cleverly designed with the bird and animal intertwined, each vividly depicted (Beijing Art Museum 2012, 99). With its unusual and complex design, this jade object has been interpreted in different ways. One key point of interest are the two central holes in the upper and lower part, which can be observed from two opposite perspectives. The above report describes a combined bird and animal, but if it is viewed upside down, the animal turns into another bird with its beak open. Thus, it may be the case that it depicts double birds rather than one bird and one animal (considering the recurring repetition and symmetry in the image, and the connotations of a symbol of a goddess as discussed in Chap. 15). Let one, however, put this idea aside. What should not be ignored is that the incised circular holes in the jade object belong to two different animals. Fig. 18.4 A bird-animal jade ornament of the Hongshan culture unearthed from Tomb 23, Group 1, Site 2 in Niuheliang, housed in the Liaoning Provincial Antiques and Archaeology Institute earlier. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

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What is more significant, perhaps, is the carefully carved pear-shaped hole in the middle of the jade pendant. This must have been specially designed and meticulously polished, as it looks quite different from the usual round holes. One must then ask another question. What was this “pear-shaped hole” intended to represent? If one takes into consideration the oval hole of the Neolithic jade disc unearthed in Heilongjiang, which is recognized as an imitation of the female genital in form, there is the possibility that the “pear-shaped hole” is a symbol of the xuanpin. The symbolic combination of the bird goddess and the female genital is a primary symbol of the replication of life and reproduction. From this point of view, the connection between the xuan bird and the xuanpin should be rooted in the mythology of goddess worship. The fact that female genital worship was embodied in Hongshan jades is further evidenced by three jade shell accessories unearthed in Niuheliang Site 2 (ibid., 16), each incised with a groove in the middle, in which two round holes were drilled. Recorded in the reference book Collection of Rhymes (Ji Yun, 集韵) is a Chinese character 珼 (bei), which can be decomposed into 玉 (yu, jade) and 贝 (bei, shell), probably referring specifically to jade shell accessories. A comparative mythological analysis demonstrates that the shellfish or shell can be a symbol of female fertility. The Greek goddess Aphrodite was born from a seashell. In his book Images and Symbols, Mircea Eliade devoted a whole chapter to observing the symbolism of shells and their ceremonial functions. He revealed the mythic cosmological significance and sexual symbolism found in seashells, oysters, the snail and the pearl, and explored their mysterious connections with the moon, water and women in their power to reproduce life. He pointed out that the empirical foundation for these primary mythological conceptions includes a resemblance between the marine shell and the genital organs of women, the relations between oysters, waters and the moon, and the symbolism of the pearl formed within the oyster. In the footnote, Eliade cited a report about a prehistoric statuette unearthed in Japan which demonstrates the assimilation of the shell to the vulva (1961, 125–126). In his book Prehistoric Religion: Mythology Symbolism, Ariel Golan pointed out that the shell is one of the earliest symbols, and shells painted red were found to be used as burial objects in the Paleolithic period. Some scholars believed it was part of a reproductive spell, but Golan held (2003, 195) that it was an emblem of the netherworld. In Western Europe, burial customs using spiral shellfish lasted for ten thousand years. A section entitled “Shells—Symbol of Females” is included in H. Cutner’s A Short History of Sex-Worship. After mentioning the story of Venus rising out of the sea on a shell—the female symbol, Cutner gave the following analysis (1940, 37): “The shell, particularly the cowry shell, was very early associated with ‘sex’ and considered a symbolical way to be what Professor W. J. Perry calls ‘a life-giver’. Its shape was identified with that of the female sex organ, and even now, says Perry, ‘in the Sudan and elsewhere women wear girdles cowry shells to give them fertility”. Now that the three jade shell accessories of the Hongshan culture have been excavated, one can expect a heated discussion about this soon.

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From the prehistoric period to the age of civilized society, shells were regarded as precious treasures and used as currency, and many pieces of jade and shells have been unearthed as burial objects from the tombs of Yin Ruins. In The Book of Documents: Pan Geng (II) is a line “Here are those ministers of my government, who share with me in the offices (of the kingdom);—and yet they (only think of hoarding up) cowries and gems” (Legge 2013, 139). According to Kong Yingda’s annotation, cowries and gems, both as valuables, are mentioned to depict the cupidity of the ministers at that time. In Sect. 5, Chap. 1, Volume 3 of the Study of Ancient Chinese Society (1930), Guo Moruo stated that generally, the use of shells as currency dates back to the Yin people. Based on the observation of the unearthed shells (genuine shells, stone shells and copper shells are exhibited in the Tokyo Museum in Japan) and their pictures, they were all seashells (the scientific name: Cypraeamoneta) and were not a product of the Huanghe Valley. Therefore, the origin of these shells could be from trade with or robbery of coastal peoples. As shells became a symbol of wealth and were used as currency, the original mythological connotation related to a goddess vanished. However, the custom of using shells in the wedding ceremonies of some ethnic minorities in China can perhaps be used as side evidence to explain the use of three shell-shaped accessories in burials of the Hongshan culture period. The Hani people in Yunnan still regards shell coins as symbols of wealth. They add three shell coins to the other valuables as betrothal gifts given to the bride’s family. When the bridegroom goes to the bride’s family to fetch her, he carries a basket with a shell coin in it. The bride’s family weighs the shell on a small scale before accepting it and giving him a leg of pork in return. The bride’s mother then places two shell coins in the bottom of the trunk of the dowry. At a funeral, they attach a shell coin to the cap of the deceased and place four shell coins in the four corners of the coffin before the corpse is disposed of. When they choose the site for their village, they insert three grains and three shell coins in the soil as a sacrifice to the God of Earth. (Liu et al. 1991, 26)

The God of Earth was certainly a female in the prehistoric period and was also referred to as the God of Mother Earth. The above-mentioned customs of the Hani show vestiges of the symbolic association of shells with females. Jade shells in the Hongshan cultural period were not used as currency to circulate in the market. Instead, the groove and two holes on them suggest that they were probably an imitation of female genitals, like the conjoined double jade discs. From M. Gimbutas’ theory of goddess symbolism, the shell is one of the many symbols of goddesses and wombs; other symbols include fish, ox horns and plants. Like shells, they convey the notion of “rising life power at the moment of death” (Gimbutas 1989, 263). Next, one will concentrate on the archetype of the xuan bird in the Shang Dynasty, the “hooked cloud-shaped jade”, the most frequently misinterpreted animal artifact of the Hongshan culture, and one will further explore the mythological concept implied in its design. Among the new archaeological discoveries in China, there have been such a considerable number of Neolithic artifacts bearing or in the image of owls that their excavation no longer seems as astonishing or inconceivable, as was the case when they were first discovered. However, despite abundant new evidence, a systematic

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study has not yet been placed on the agenda. Some unearthed objects in the shape of owl-like animals have not been identified correctly, and it is no rare case for them to be mistaken for other animals. Take The Complete Collection of Jades Unearthed in China (Gu 2005) for example. As a huge series of 15 volumes, it contains numerous jades unearthed throughout China, providing the most systematic chronological material for researchers by far. However, it is inadequate in terms of professional analysis, and sometimes there have been mistakes in identifying and naming prehistoric jades. The first item in the first volume is an example. It was unearthed in a Neolithic site in Shangzhai, Pinggu District, Beijing, and was named “pendant in the shape of a monkey”. Concerning the characteristics of the traditional design of owl-like objects, and by careful examination, it is not difficult to figure out that this jade item is an engraved owl with no limbs but a cylindrical body. It does not resemble a monkey. Its upper part has three outstanding elements to indicate that it has the shape of an owl: big round eyes, a hooked beak and upright ear tufts. Clearly, the most striking part is the round incised eyes in the middle of the face. An acquaintance with the traditional design of the owl goddess or the related eye goddess can help one ascertain the religious belief hidden in this jade object, to restore its true identity and rename it as a “carved jade owl”. The act of renaming the above jade item can be seen in parallel with the second item—the owl-shaped jade pendant—in the same volume of the above-referenced book, as the latter is also black jade carved in the shape of an owl with ear tufts. What is different is that the second is a three-dimensional round carving and the owl has a pair of drilled rather than incised eyes as its most attractive part. These two jade objects on the first two pages of the book were both unearthed in Beijing and take the shape of an owl. This will certainly serve as a meaningful coincidence at the beginning of the whole 15-volume book of unearthed Chinese jades. To facilitate the above identification and renaming, a systematic understanding and an integrative view are required based on abundant empirical evidence of prehistoric artifacts. Examples include the colossal earthen owl pots and the earthen owl-faced artifacts of the Yangshao culture unearthed in Quanhu village, Huaxian County, Shaanxi Province; round and flat carved jade and turquoise owls of the Hongshan culture unearthed in Liaoning province and the eastern part of Inner Mongolia; many owl-like artifacts of the Liangzhu culture and Shijiahe culture in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River; and the owl-faced earthen pots of the Qijia culture in Northwestern China. All these prehistoric artifacts from different ages and places constitute a map of mythological owl beliefs in prehistoric China, distributed across the Northeast, the Northwest, the South and the Central Plain. With this integrative view of prehistoric owl mythology in mind, one may now be able to avoid biased ideas and simplified judgements in academic endeavors to substitute the “owl-shaped jade plaque” in place of the previous “hooked cloud-shaped jade”, such as the typical Hongshan jade.

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18.2 Hongshan Culture’s “Hooked Cloud-Shaped Jade” and “Vortex Eyes” As early as the 1980s, when the burial objects of the Hongshan culture were excavated, the jade item in the above picture was named “hooked cloud-shaped jade” (cf. Liaoning Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology 1997; Yu 2004) (Fig. 18.5). Several decades have passed, and as many more ancient artifacts have been unearthed, scholars have put forward no less than ten different interpretations for this jade item. Yet the old name remains, and it is used in the exhibitions of museums and books of archaeology and of course in books introducing Hongshan jades in the domain of collections (cf. Xu 2004; Liu and Jin 2005: Liu 2002). The use of this misleading name will undoubtedly continue to expand unless the experts in China make a correction. After twenty years of research on the “hooked cloud-shaped jade”, the key point now is the huge disparity in the iconological interpretation of the design. As Guo Dashun, an expert in the research of Hongshan culture with the Liaoning Provincial Research Institute of Archaeology, noted: “This type of jade is the most complicated and enigmatical jade object in the Hongshan culture” (2009, 77). According to different scholars, the artifact has been interpreted as “cloud-shaped”, “taotieshaped” (Li 1993), “dragon-shaped” (Wei and Hao 1999), “phoenix-shaped”, “beastshaped”, “bird-animal-shaped” (Lu 1991), “animals intertwined” (Cao 2001), “roseshaped” (Guo 2009) and “god eyes-shaped” (Wang 2001). A consensus is yet to be reached. If one admits that the two spiral designs of the so-called “hooked cloud-shaped jade” are a pair of sacred eyes, then the next question is to identify to what creature the eyes belonged. In recent years, the emergence of the owl-shaped proposition has opened up a space for mythological explorations of the religious connotations of the eye imagery present in these artefacts. It is thus possible to integrate the traditional faith in the owl goddess, practiced across the whole of Eurasia for thousands of years, Fig. 18.5 A hooked cloud-shaped jade unearthed from Tomb 27, Group 1, Locality 2 of the Hongshan culture in Niuheliang, Liaoning Province. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing in 2009

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with the identification of archaeological discoveries to raise the research to a higher level and to ensure more accurate judgments. The idea behind the owl shape theory is mainly derived from propositions by a Northeastern scholar Tian Guanglin. In his paper “Reinterpretation of “Hooked Cloud Shaped Jade” of the Hongshan culture” (2005), and ensuing book The Origin of Civilization in the Xiliaohe Region in Northeast China (2004), Tian proposed that the so-called “hooked cloud-shaped jade” really has nothing to do with clouds, and instead what is thought to be a cloud or teeth design is a way of depicting the wings of a bird. Therefore, he concluded it should not be called “hooked cloudshaped jade” (2004, 232). In the same year, Xu Qiang provided a similar iconological interpretation. “What is called ‘hooked cloud’ should be understood as the heads of birds or animals. The double spiral design indicates the head of a bird, on the two sides are the wings and in the lower part the tail” (Xu 2004, 254). Xu Qiang did not say what specific bird it was, but he renamed this type of jade item a “heaven-earth holy pendant” to confirm its significance in religious worship. Compared to the theories about owl and bird shapes advanced by northeastern scholars, two other theories put forth earlier are more popular, one being the “toothed beast face jade” by Deng Shuping, the jade expert with Taiwan’s Palace Museum, and the other being the “bird of prey” by Sun Ji, a cultural relics expert with the National History Museum. Both discarded the “hooked cloud shape” and reinterpreted it as beast-shaped or bird-shaped. Deng Shuping’s theory first appeared in the caption that she wrote for Hongshan jades exhibited in the Taipei Palace Museum. Her theory was published in a research paper on the Palace Museum Cultural Relics Quarterly in 1993 and has since exerted considerable influence in archaeological circles. What follows is the jade object housed in the Taipei Palace Museum and Deng Shuping’s caption (Fig. 18.6). It is made of green jade, gentle and translucent, though the surface is a little rough after having long been buried underground. Carved as an abstract face design, it has a pair of big round vortex eyes with eyebrows and pierced pupils, long projections on both sides of the forehead, and a row of flat paired teeth under the eyes. In recent years, three jade articles of toothed animal face patterns have been unearthed from the Hongshan culture sites around the Liaohe Valley in northeast China. From both the officially unearthed objects and scattered

Fig. 18.6 A toothed beast face jade of the Hongshan culture. Photographed at the Taipei Palace Museum

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ones, it can be learned that this type of jade article usually has sharp teeth and jade carvings with flat teeth were excavated only from the tombs of the later period. The jade article housed in this museum has not only flat and square teeth, but rectangular projected parts on both sides of the big eyes. A sense of harmony and wholeness in such work requires conscious effort. It should be identified as an artistic item of later Hongshan culture. Both “toothed animal-faced jade” and “hooked cloud-shaped jade” have hooks thinned towards the edge, representing typical Hongshan jades. They were mostly unearthed from high-ranking tombs and thus were no doubt a symbol of status and used as ritual instruments in the sacrifice to gods and ancestors. (Deng 1993)

The above caption from the Taipei Palace Museum makes it clear that the basic features of this type of jade object are the “vortex eyes” (Fig. 18.7) and the “paired teeth”. This caption had a significant influence on research and discussions later on. The notion of the “vortex eyes” reflects the most important feature in such designs and has thus exerted a positive impact on the direction of research, while the “paired teeth” notion seems to be an interpretation without a sound basis and has thus exerted a negative impact. The name “toothed beast-faced jade” is based on the “beast-faced jade”—a classification used in regards to later jade and bronze artifacts, so it is unlikely to reflect the fact that in the Hongshan culture period both bird and animal patterns occurred frequently. After Sun Ji and some other National Museum experts accepted Deng’s notions of “vortex eyes” and “paired teeth” and applied them to their analysis of the Longshan jades, Deng’s theory became widely received. Chen Yimin, along with other collectors, also accepted the name of “toothed beast-faced jade”, and in a popular book entitled Jade Collections and Appreciation of Hongshan Culture (2004), placed it alongside the “hooked cloud-shaped jade” and regarded the former as a modified form of the latter. He also attempted to explain as to the mentality of Hongshan culture ancestors in their special emphasis on teeth carvings. Why should the teeth or xiphoid be added in the artifacts of duplicate and modified “hooked cloud shape”? No answer has yet been found. Perhaps the sharp teeth of the animal impressed the Hongshan people so deeply that they were inspired to integrate them into the creation of animal-faced pendants with to obtain the power of sharp teeth. In the primitive people’s minds, possession of an animal’s image meant possession of the animal itself and also its power.

Fig. 18.7 A hooked cloud-shaped jade of the Hongshan culture housed in the Tianjin Artistic Museum, the focus of the design being two “vortex eyes”. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing in 2009

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Fig. 18.8 A toothed beast-faced jade of the Hongshan culture, unearthed in Baarin Right Banner, originally housed in the Baarin Right Banner Museum. The focus of design was two “vortex eyes”. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

In the Hongshan culture period when hunting tools were rather crude and simple, it often happened that people then were injured by animals. They thus grew frightened by the teeth of animals and began to worship and deify them. By carving the teeth on their jade artifacts, they expected to acquire the power of animals. By now it is generally agreed that “toothed beast-faced jades” were used as ritual instruments. Deified animal teeth on these objects could give the sorcerers or the leader of the tribe the magic power of ferocious animals. This may well explain why teeth were carved on hooked cloud-shaped artifacts. (Chen and Chen 2004, 75-76)

In April 2012, the Beijing Municipal Administration of Cultural Heritage, Beijing Artistic Museum and Liaoning Provincial Archaeology Institute together held an exhibition in Beijing—“Time Travel: Unearthed Hongshan Jades Exhibition”. Altogether, they exhibited 107 Hongshan jades unearthed over the years and published a coloured album bearing the same title as that of the exhibition. The album represented the latest research in mainstream circles. For instance, the previous section of “Hooked cloud-shaped jade” was divided into two categories, those with a double spiral design called “Toothed beast-faced jade” (Fig. 18.8) according to Deng Shuping’s opinion, and those with singular spiral design or with a singular hole being called “Hooked cloud-shaped jade”. This division shows a conscious academic effort to admit and correct the previous mistakes and will help counteract misguidance and be beneficial to future study. It is an attempt to respect the truth to include two different opinions and to change the previous “hooked cloud-shaped jade pendant” to “hooked cloud-shaped jade object” (These type of articles were placed on the chest of the deceased with the back upside, so it could not be a pendant worn before death) (Beijing Art Museum 2012, 35). However, it seems to be a simplified and arbitrary act to name the artifacts with double spiral design “toothed beast-faced jade”, as this will confuse people further. The following is the account in question in the album: Some scholars regard “toothed beast-faced jade” as included in the category of “hooked cloud-shaped jade” and claim that both belong to the same design, but the two do have obvious differences. A typical “toothed beast-faced jade” has a pair of pierced round holes and a pair of pieced curved lines in the middle, three, five or seven pairs of teeth in the lower part, and a pair of hooks curving outward on each side. Some have tile lines ground on the

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obverse side but no design on the reverse side, and some bear a comparatively simplified form. The abstract design of the “toothed beast-faced jade” has ignited heated discussions, and there have emerged varied interpretations, including the beast with ferocious teeth, the primitive monster, the bird and beast combined, and the diving eagle. (Ibid., 31)

Regarding a difficult case like this, it is useful to describe the object dispassionately and to list all the different interpretations of the image so that viewers and readers can make their judgements. However, it is difficult to take into account the views when naming, hence the name “toothed animal-faced jade” is acceptable. But this is still open to discussion, and the most controversial point is whether the projections in the lower part are teeth or not. Once “toothed” is used in the name, this excludes all other possibilities. For instance, the so-called “teeth” might well be the tail feathers of a bird. Therefore, it would be preferable to use a more abstract or inclusive name to avoid arbitrariness when no consensus has yet been reached. There is no doubt that prehistoric people worshiped the teeth of ferocious beasts, but was the xiphoid part carved on the “hooked cloud-shaped jade” meant to represent teeth? As mentioned before, Northeastern scholars such as Tian Guanglin and Xu Qiang have made an overall iconological observation of the standard “hooked cloud-shaped jade” of the Hongshan culture unearthed in Niuheliang, and against all dissenting views proposed that it be the flat carving of a large bird with spread wings. The bird’s two big round rotating eyes were emphasized and so were the tips of its wings and tail feathers in the lower part. With their theory in mind, and after careful observation of the object itself, one can safely confirm that the so-called “teeth” part should be considered the wings and tail of the deity owl. Unfortunately, such an interpretation has not yet been widely accepted. Instead, the “hooked cloud” theory and the “teeth” theory still dominate. There is also the “bird of prey” theory put forth by Sun Ji. In the 1990s, he researched bird imagery on Longshan jade artifacts and wrote a paper entitled Longshan Birdshaped Jade, which was later included in the book Sun Ji’s View on Cultural Relics (2005) published in Taipei, with the title changed to Bird-shaped Jade. In this paper, Sun Ji examined eagle-shaped jade carvings in different periods of prehistoric China and differentiated among the vortex eyes on deity-faced objects of the Hongshan Liangzhu and Longshan cultures. He compared three different artifacts, namely the standing eagle-shaped jade of the Longshan culture housed in the Tianjin Artistic Museum, the deity-faced jade gui unearthed in Rizhao, Shandong Province, and the deity-faced jade gui of the Longshan culture housed in the Taipei Palace Museum, and pointed out that they all have vortex eyes. Moreover, deity-faced jade artifacts of the Liangzhu culture can be divided into two categories, one with long teeth and usually shuttle-shaped eyes, and the other with no teeth and mostly vortex eyes. Though they are all vortex in nature, the eyes of the second type have a slight difference in design from those of the standing-eagle-shaped Longshan jades. The groove that forms the vortex eyes of the Liangzhu culture winds from the outer to the inner corner of the eye, while the line to form the vortex eye on the standing-eagleshaped jade of the Longshan culture winds from the inner to the outer corner of eye, the latter being a shared feature of most deity-faced Longshan jades in Shandong.

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It should be noted that though different from those of the Liangzhu culture, the eyes on the deity-faced artifacts of the Longshan culture resemble those of the Hongshan culture (Sun 2005, 10–11). Sun Ji was greatly influenced by Deng Shuping of Taiwan, but by addressing the connections between three different prehistoric cultures, he managed to figure out that the deity face and vortex eyes are features of Hongshan culture’s “hooked cloud-shaped jade” and detected the inheritance and representation of this style of design in the jade objects of later eras. This has helped draw an explicit line of connection between the Hongshan culture in Northeast China and the Longshan culture in Shandong Province. This line bridges two different theories on the origin of the Shang culture, namely the origin-inNortheast theory and origin-in-East theory, and at the same time confirms two physical sources for the Shang people’s worship of the xuan bird, one being the eagle-owl image and the vortex eyes on the jade gui of the Longshan culture, and the other being the vortex eyes on the owl-shaped jade plaque of the Hongshan culture at an even earlier era (Figs. 18.9 and 18.10). Fig. 18.9 A hooked cloud-shaped jade of the Hongshan culture. Photographed at the Defu Museum in Liaoning in 2019

Fig. 18.10 A toothed beast-faced jade of the Hongshan culture, unearthed from Tomb 22, Group 1, Locality 2 in Niuheliang, housed in the Liaoning Provincial Antiques and Archaeology Institute. It strikingly features two “vortex eyes” in the middle. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

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18.3 Longshan Culture “Eagle-Owl Patterned Jade Gui” In the analysis of the owl-patterned copper wine vessel unearthed from the Fu Hao Tomb of the Yin Ruins, one has seen that two mythical images—the dragon and the phoenix—were born from a deity owl. Hayashi Minao proposed that the jade phoenix of the Fu Hao Tomb was produced during the Longshan culture period. In Studies on Ancient Chinese Jades, he mentioned the beast faces on Type B jade cong of the Liangzhu culture could be divided into those with circular eyes and those with oval eyes (Hayashi 1991, 202–203). According to the classification of Chinese scholar Wang Wei, Hayashi called them “simplified beast face pattern vs pictographic beast face pattern” without considering the possibility of a bird pattern. In A General Survey of Ancient Chinese Jades, he mentioned Hongshan culture hooked cloud-shaped jade by the names “cloud-shaped jade” and “double cloud-shaped jade”. He also noticed the pictographic depiction of eyes and dismissed as unconvincing the theory that the vortices represent a pair of birds (ibid., 163). As a sinologist devoted to the study of Chinese prehistoric jade, he detected the religious beliefs reflected in Longshan jade gui, but unfortunately did not notice the newly proposed theory of the eye goddess and that of the owl goddess in the archaeological field. Thus, he did not break away from the cloud-shaped pattern theory popular in the traditional epigraphy and failed to grasp the mythological connotations of the vortex eyes. According to the record of “the emperor granting Yu the xuangui” in The Book of Documents: The Tribute of Yu and The Records of the Historian: Annals of Xia, jade gui used to be a key token in the mythology of ancient emperors. As the Xia Dynasty overlapped the period of the Longshan culture, one may infer that legends about the jade tablet in the Xia Dynasty are not sheer fiction. They can be supported by plenty of archaeological evidence, especially by unearthed Longshan jade gui, and must have reflected elements of the historical reality related to ritual jade vessels in ancient China. Should the xuangui granted to Yu, the First Emperor of the Xia Dynasty, be interpreted then as the gui made of black jade or the jade gui with vortex eyes or bearing sacred bird imagery? This question could not have been raised before any Longshan jade gui were excavated. Now that one has accepted that the xuan bird is a bird with rotating eyes or a wheel-eyed owl, what follows naturally is to address the issue of reinterpreting the xuangui. Below is the caption for Longshan eagle-lined jade gui housed in the Taipei Palace Museum. This is a ritual vessel symbolizing the status of rulers, called “gui” in the ritual system, and held with the blade end upward in the ritual. It was made some 4300 to 3800 years ago in the Haidai region where the ancestors lived who were called “eastern barbarians” in the literature. So, in the middle part of this gui, the picture of their god ancestor is carved, though with very shallow lines in relief. On one side of the gui is carved the god ancestor with big vortex eyes and roof-shaped tops, on which phoenix feathers are added. On the other side is an eagle flying upward, the whole bird forming the roof-like structure which symbolises access to heaven. On the narrow flank, about 1 centimetre wide, is carved a long-haired woman wearing earrings, maybe their queen mother Changyi (常仪). But Emperor Qian

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Long did not know the mystery of the design and he further inscribed his poem on the gui while putting the blade part downward. (Deng 1993)

Careful observation of this especially exquisite jade gui will lead to a realization of the two factors the jade craftsmen four thousand years ago tried to emphasize— the bird (god) and the vortex eyes. One is unsure whether, as Deng Shuping said, the woman on the narrow flank was Changyi or not, so one may simply be able to regard it as a goddess image corresponding with the eagle and the owl. Further interpretation follows. On the one side of the jade gui is an eagle with its head upward and on the other side a vortex-eyed owl with its head downward. This is an example of the principle of combining the positive with the negative, which originates from the mythological concept of the life goddess or goddess of rebirth. In the daytime, the bird goddess appeared as an eagle, symbolizing the king of diurnal birds on the yang side of the universe, and at night she became an owl, symbolizing the king of nocturnal birds on the yin side of the universe. The upward head of the eagle and the downward head of the owl symbolise the alternation of day and night and the power of this rebirthing cycle. As the sacred ritual vessel symbolizing the king’s power, this jade gui needs to be renamed “eagle-owl patterned gui” rather than “eagle patterned gui” to truly reflect the different shapes on its two sides. A more explicit iconological feature is that at the same height as the woman’s image on its narrow flank is carved a decorative band pattern below the eagle and the owl, the most noticeable part of which are two evenly distributed vortex eyes, typical of Hongshan culture artefacts. Understanding the visual metaphor present here in the iconological sense will naturally lead one to make the following judgment. Vortex eyes are a symbol of the bird goddess representing the whole with only the partial feature, and the archetype of this image is the owl’s eyes, which rotate freely. The image of the owl and that of the eagle, depicted in jades of the Hongshan culture and Liangzhu culture, were carved on the two sides of one ritual vessel in the Longshan Culture. The jade gui of the Longshan culture, with their combination of the eagle and owl, together with the decorative design of vortex eyes constituting a metaphorical correspondence with the divine bird image, have provided iconological evidence for the origin of the name of “xuangui” in the Xia Dynasty, recorded in inherited literature. Based on the above analysis, xuan (玄) in xuangui, as in xuan bird, has the same meaning as 旋, 漩 and 碹, all of which are pronounced as xuan and mean “rotating”. That is to say, xuan is intimately related to the vortex eyes design, with the owl’s eyes as the archetype. The tradition of design on the eagle-owl-patterned jade gui was seemingly inherited from the turquoise-inlaid deity owl copper plaque, an example of which was unearthed in Erlitou (cf. Ye 2007b; 2008c; Sun 1998), and was then passed on through the Shang culture in the Central Plain. The vortex eyes evolved into the shape of a wheel which was applied to owl images carved on stone, bone and ivory, and into a further simplified wheel shape, which appeared frequently on bronzes in the Shang Dynasty. Figure 18.11 is a deity owl image in delicate relief discovered

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Fig. 18.11 A bone-carved xuan bird with a hooked beak unearthed from the Yin Ruins, with simplified wheel-shaped eyes. Photographed at the Museum of Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, in June 2009

on bone objects unearthed in the Wangling district of the Yin Ruins. Its exaggerated wheel-shaped eyes are the focus of the whole design. Figure 18.12 shows the deity owl image in round carvings and reliefs unearthed from the Yin Ruins. The owl carved on marble has a pair of double-circled simplified wheel-shaped eyes. The tiger-handled ivory cup from Tomb Fu Hao is top-class among the ivory antiques that have survived from the Shang Dynasty and have been unearthed thus far. The owl on it has a pair of eyes like multi-spoked wheels, very similar to the wheel-shaped eyes on the bronzes, thus providing a cross-reference that warrants interpretation. Fig. 18.12 An Owl with wheel-shaped eyes in relief on an ivory cup unearthed from Tomb Fu Hao of the Yin Ruins. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

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Among archaeologists, Crawford was the first to associate the eye design in prehistoric art with the goddess in religious worship and to propose the theory of the “Eye Goddess” (1957, 44; 68). In her book The Eye Goddess, she presented a great number of illustrations of relics with the eye design discovered across Eurasia. She deemed various vortex patterns and wheel patterns on prehistoric cliff paintings and gravestones to be modified representations of eyes. The vortex pattern and quatrefoil-shaped eye pattern are frequently seen on bronzes in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. Whether these patterns share any symbolic meaning with the vortex eyes and wheeled eyes has yet to be further investigated. This is a distinct possibility, but one must refrain from giving judgment too early. Though it is true to say that owls have rotating eyes, there might have been other rotating objects or images, such as the millstone, the spinning wheel and the flame, etc. that served as the archetype of these ancient design. One should not therefore simply copy Crawford’s theory and apply it to the interpretation of prehistoric artifacts of East Asia. Chen Zhongyu, an art historian in Taiwan, wrote the article “The Eye Design in the Decorative Art in the Shang Dynasty” (1979), in which he mainly made his generalizations and classifications based on the patterns found on unearthed bronzes. At that time, the Hongshan jades had not yet been discovered by archaeologists, so he could not determine the origin of the eye motif in the Shang Dynasty artworks. The religious belief of the sacred owl gradually declined and was forgotten after the Shang Dynasty, and the sacred names of xuan bird and xuangui became ambiguous terms such that when the proposition emerged in the Warring States Period that the xuan bird was the swallow, which replaced its original meaning through the orthodox interpretation of The Book of Poetry, little trace was left of its origins. In addition, in ancient Chinese literature, there grew an increasingly clear moral opposition between the owl and the phoenix, so the ancient tradition of bird goddess worship gradually disappeared from history. The fictitious phoenix then became the favourite deity bird among the “descendants of dragon”, and the notion of pairing the dragon with the phoenix became rooted in Chinese people’s hearts. Without the excavation of ritual jades of the Hongshan culture and the subsequent series of discoveries, there may have been no reinterpretation of the xuan bird’s name and origins. To conclude, it is due to misinterpretations regarding this design that this most mysterious and abstruse category of Hongshan jades discovered in the late twentieth century was named “hooked cloud-shaped jade”. Through the systematic comparative analysis and meticulous observation of the standard form of these artifacts, they can be identified as the plane image of an owl with two dynamic vortex eyes as their shared basic feature. Other jade designs of singular vortex eyes are a simplified form of the standard one. Therefore, the name “hooked cloud-shaped jade” should be replaced by “owl-shaped jade plaque”, to set the record straight. The belief in the sacred owl originated from belief in the bird goddess, prevalent among the Stone Age peoples of Eurasia, in which the owl and the eagle were the most common image to represent the bird goddess. The most frequently presented animal image in Hongshan jades was not the dragon or the pig, nor the cicada or the

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silkworm, but the owl (Figs. 18.13 and 18.14). The comparative iconological analysis of unearthed relics and the background of the prevalent and profound tradition of the owl design in prehistoric Eurasia led to a tentative approach of combining the micro and macro views to settle this controversial question. At the end of this chapter, there will be more illustrations of Hongshan jades carved by peoples five to six thousand years ago to show the prevalence of owl goddess worship at that time and to give the reader a chance to better understand the connection between the double ring-shaped eye of the jade owl and the eye shape of the pig-like dragon. Fig. 18.13 A Hongshan turquoise owl with ear tufts, unearthed from the Dongshanzui altar site in Kazuo County, Liaoning Province, housed in the Liaoning Provincial Antiques and Archaeology Institute. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

Fig. 18.14 A Hongshan double owl jade ornament, unearthed from Tomb 26, Group 1, Locality 2 in Niuheliang, housed in the Liaoning Provincial Antiques and Archaeology Institute, measuring 12.9 cm long, 9.5 cm wide and 0.6 cm thick. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

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From Hongshan jades to Longshan jades, the sacred bird shape of the owl and eagle were passed on, along with their predominant features—their vortex and circular eyes. What were called Longshan “eagle-patterned jade gui” in the past should be called “eagle-owl-patterned jade gui” according to the different images on its two sides, so that one can seek the significant prehistoric source of the Shang people’s xuan bird worship and the source of the circular and wheel-shaped eye design in Shang Dynasty artworks. In a similar vein, based on the physical archetype found behind the iconological narrative of Longshan jades, one may reinterpret the legend of xuangui of the Xia Dynasty recorded in such books as The Book of Documents and The Records of the Historian of the later age. The following questions will serve as the concluding remarks of this chapter. Did xuangui get its name because it had black colour, or because the sacred xuan bird (the owl or the eagle) was carved on it? How can one maximize the interpreting potential of the fourth type of evidence to restore the historical facts hidden behind the xuangui narrative in the Xia Dynasty recorded in The Book of Documents: The Tribute of Yu? How can one bring back the long-lost connection between the xuan gui in the legend of the emperors of the Xia Dynasty, the xuan bird in the birth myths of the Shang Dynasty, and the xuanpin in the mythological philosophy in the Zhou Dynasty through the precious clues given from the iconological narrative of the cultural relics? By reference to the source of the images found on these most ancient of jade objects, painstakingly produced by prehistoric peoples, it may be possible for people today to gain more profound enlightenment from Laozi’s penetrating metaphor that xuanpin (玄牝, female bird or animal) is the base from which heaven and earth sprang (Figs. 18.15 and 18.16).

Fig. 18.15 A Hongshan green-clay figurine of pregnant woman, unearthed from Dongshanzui altar site in Kazuo County, Liaoning Province, housed in the Liaoning Provincial Antiques and Archaeology Institute. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

412 Fig. 18.16 A Hongshan conjoined double jade bi, unearthed from Tomb 1, Group 2, Locality 16 of Niuheliang, housed in the Liaoning Provincial Antiques and Archaeology Institute. Photographed at the Beijing Art Museum in April 2012

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Chapter 19

“Tiger-Devouring-Man” You Wine Vessel: The Image Narrative of Bronzes

As mentioned in the second chapter of The Goddess with a Thousand Faces (Ye 2004), there are two opposing representations of the “world mother” goddess myth revealed by the principle of comparative mythology, the “adoring mother” and the “frightful mother”. The latter is often an embodiment of death or the underworld. Examples of symbolic images representing this version of the goddess include the “tiger-devouring-man” you 卣wine vessel (hu shi ren you, 虎食人卣) and “tigerdevouring-man” bronze axe excavated from Fu Hao’s Tomb in the Yin Ruins. It has simply been explained that, “the use of horrific images of a tiger devouring a man to represent the goddess of death left its mark on ancient art. The images of the “tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessel and the bronze axe from Fu Hao’s tomb have not been well explained because of the lack of basic background knowledge of iconology too often present in comparative mythology”(Ye 2004, 78). That book mainly focuses on images and lacks detailed analyses from the perspectives of mythology and iconology. This present book, therefore, makes up for this missing part by means of providing a cross-cultural perspective, rooted in comparative mythology, with which to analyse the mysterious images of “tiger-devouring-man” you and ringfoot gong (觥, wine vessel) from Fu Hao’s tomb, which highlights the mythological connotations of images of the bronzes in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The aim is to promote a mythological perspective in the study of bronzes besides the traditional archaeological, art historical, and aesthetic perspectives. It is to attempt to combine formal analysis with functional analysis. It is important to note that researchers of culture and history need to integrate literature-based mythology and the newly excavated materials into their work to achieve mutual interpretation and interaction among the four types of evidence.

© Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_19

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19.1 Naming and Interpreting the “Tiger-Devouring-Man” You Wine Vessel “Tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessels (Fig. 19.1) are among the most high-profile rare bronze treasures of the Shang Dynasty known to the public. The two key artifacts excavated so far are preserved in two famous museums overseas (the Sumitomo Collection in Kyoto, Japan and the Cernuschi Museum in Paris, France), receiving Fig. 19.1 Two “tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessels preserved in Japan (the upper one) and France (the lower one) (Ye 2010e, 99)

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much more attention in the academic world than other artifacts. “Tiger-devouringman” you wine vessels made of jade with almost the same shape and characteristics can also be found in antique markets at home and abroad. The vessels preserved in Japan, with a height of 35.7 cm, are said to have been first excavated from the area near Anhua and Ningxiang in Hunan Province before drifting abroad. These two bronze vessels represent extraordinary imagination in their modeling the image of a crouching tiger seizing a man. The tiger is standing with the triangular support of its two legs and tail, its forepaws raised to grasp the man. The man is also holding the tiger, his head almost in the open mouth of the tiger and feet set apart on the hind paws of the tiger. On the shoulder of the tiger is the bale handle of the vessel carved with an animal head, cloud, and lightning patterns. On the back of the tiger is the oval mouth of the vessel, the lid of which is shaped like a fawn. Nearly a century ago Luo Zhenyu named the vessel “‘Taotie (饕餮, a ferocious animal)-devouring-man’ you”. Until today, the designation and explanation of the “tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessels have been quite controversial. Li Xueqin went to see these two bronze objects in Japan and France successively in 1985 and 1986 and then wrote an article “On ‘Tiger-Devouring-Man’ You Wine Vessels” (1987), in which he studied images of the same type and agreed with Fraser that the tiger in the ornamentation is also mythologized and differentiated from ordinary tigers. It is reasonable to think that the images of the tiger or Chinese dragon devouring a man symbolises the unity of man and these divine creatures. Early this century, Lin He published the article “‘Tiger-Devouring-Man’ You Wine Vessels: the Misinterpretation of Sexual Intercourse between Tiger and Woman” (2001). Before him, some scholars had theorized given five possible explanations for the vessels. With the recently proposed opinions and those of the sinologists overseas, there are now ten explanations listed below, of which the last four are, in this author’s opinion, particularly worthy of attention: (1)

(2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

It is a representation of the tyranny and ferocity of the ruler. As the tiger represents the master and the man represents the slave, the vessels were used to intimidate slaves. The relation between the tiger and the man can be seen as representative of human beings’ communication with heaven from earth, done using animals. The act of devouring symbolises the unity of man and divine animals, such that human beings can be protected by these animals. The image of the tiger devouring a man is a reflection of the myth of the “tiger devouring a ghost”. The tiger was used to expel evil spirits. The tiger represents nature. The image represents man’s fear of nature as well as his dependence on it, highlighting the weakness of man. The myth of sexual intercourse between a tiger and a woman: rather than being adversaries, the two are making love. The tiger is holding a woman. The “nursing-tiger” vessel or “tiger-nursing-man” vessel theory: Japanese scholars believe the vessels represent the Chinese theory of the unity of man and nature—man lives harmoniously with the tiger. They argued that only the name “nursing-tiger” or “tiger-nursing-man” vessel fits the connotation of the

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(8)

(9)

(10)

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artifact based on the story of “a tiger nursing a man” in The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming. The theory of the totem of the vassal state of Hufang (虎方; 虎 means tiger) in the Shang Dynasty. Its supporters believe that the theme behind “tigerdevouring-man” bronzes originates from the myth about how this state was founded. Man appearing in the mouth of the tiger is symbolic of how the people of that state came from tigers (Wang 2003). The theory of the Emperor of Heaven and spirits of ancestors ascending to heaven, represented by the famous Japanese expert of ancient artifacts, Hayashi Minao. He held that the animals used by different clans as the totems are the images of their supreme gods—the Emperor of Heaven, who appears on the bronzes as a tiger. The Queen Mother of the West, with the frightening features of tigers and leopards, was then personalized as a goddess. The human figure in the “tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessel has a relaxed expression, which a scholar must understand to study this theme adequately (Hayashi 2009, 15; 25). The theory of access to the underworld. The British Sinologist, Sarah Allan wrote in her book, The Shape of Turtle:

As K. C. Chang has observed, the open animal mouth occurs in many cultures as a symbol of passage to the other world. He further suggests that the man held by the tiger is a wu 巫, a sorcerer or ‘shaman’, as he interprets the term. The appearance of this motif above the blade on a yue-axe, however, suggests that the motif is not a representation of the shaman’s passage to the other world, but an allusion to the passage of death, the cult of which is, after all, the central concern of Shang ritual… In this light, the snakes and dragons which decorate the body or costume of the person in the tiger’s mouth and occur elsewhere on the vessel can be understood; they are an allusion to the watery underworld of the Yellow Springs. (Allan 1991, 154-157)

The scholars above have raised the ten informed opinions from different perspectives. Other explanations will not be mentioned here. The divergence of existing opinions rests on whether the “tiger-devouring-man” wine vessel is a reflection of the history of the Shang Dynasty or merely a myth. The “master daunting his slaves” and the “totem of the vassal state of Hufang” theories are based on the historic and geographic records of the Shang Dynasty. However, the ninth and tenth views are put forward from the perspective of the religious belief of people in the Shang Dynasty, seeing them as resembling the mythology of the age when artifacts were cast. This author believes that more study is needed to analyse the image more concretely and develop more references and interpretations from the perspective of comparative mythology. Regarding the bronzes of the Shang Dynasty, the image of tigers as the embodiment of deities instead of the beasts of nature is emphasized by Hayashi Minao, who is quite professional in supporting his opinion with detailed observations and a demonstrated understanding of prehistoric artifacts. Nevertheless, the religious background of bronze casting in the Shang Dynasty is distant from the societal context of today. More detailed analysis and proper references are surely needed to verify the connotations of the images of a certain given animal. The god represented by

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tigers on the relics of the Shang Dynasty is more like the representation of the underworld, the god of death, or more accurately the mother goddess in charge of death and reincarnation. Sarah Allan incisively recognized the connection between the “tiger-devouring-man” image and the underworld, known as the kingdom of Yellow Springs in the cosmology of Chinese mythology. The imperfection of her theory lies in the lack of further explanation of the inseparability of the beliefs in death and reincarnation in the prehistoric conceptualization of life. Death is, rationally, the end of life. In mythological thinking, it is, however, a gateway from the present life to a new form of life. Therefore, access to death equals reincarnation and new life, or even immortality. The key point is how to make sure that the spirit of the dead can reincarnate like the rise and fall of the sun. Chapter 4 of this book has made the fundamental cross-cultural comparison and explanation of the view of the afterlife as manifested in the jade mask in the tombs of kings in the Mayan civilization, with the focus on the journey to immortality and the worship of the sun embodied in the jade articles. This chapter will continue to discuss the connection between the image of tigers and the view of the afterlife in mythology. Since prehistoric times, religious and mythological views of how to achieve reincarnation and immortality of the dead have motivated the production of funerary and burial objects. From this perspective, the shapes and ornamentations of many articles in the high-ranking tombs in the Shang Dynasty can be systematically recognized and interpreted in comparative mythology based on the belief in reincarnation. The notion that the tomb and womb are symbolically identical, as revealed by Western archaeologists and psychoanalysts, is universal and provides realistic guidance and reference for the research on the images on burial objects. Generally speaking, certain divine symbols such as the representation of the West (where the sun descends) and the underworld, originate from the symbolic genealogy of the prehistoric goddesses of regeneration. Common images of animals like snakes, cicadas, owls, and frogs on the decorative patterns of bronzes have prehistoric religious origins. A number of goddesses worshipped in civilized societies still retained their animals archetypes from prehistoric times. For instance, the owl symbolises Athena and the bear represents Artemis in Greek mythology. There is also Hecate with the head of a frog, Taweret with the body of a hippopotamus and Sakhmis (the goddess of war and revenge) with the head of a lion in ancient Egyptian mythology. Unlike the worship of ancient goddesses in the ancient Egyptian and Greek civilizations, goddesses were less personalized in Chinese civilization and were more often embodied in various symbols. This author notes that the images of pigs, frogs, bears, owls, and eagles also have connections with the beliefs of prehistoric goddesses after systematic research (Ye 1998; 2004; 2007a; 2008b). Although the connections are often not so evident, their deep foundations in mythological thinking are worth follow-up studies. Marija Gimbutas has concluded that although there is no trace of tigers in “the language of the goddess”, it is reasonable to see tigers as divine in Chinese mythology as bears and lions on Western cultural relics, and to explore the inner connection between the core of belief in the tiger myths and the goddess religion, taking into account the unique ecological environment and species distribution that defined these beliefs. Deduction and inference, from the viewpoint of

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modern people, in the study on the “Tiger-Devouring-Man” wine vessel is not reliable. A better way to interpret such vessels is to gain inspiration from mythological “thinking rules” based on generalizations through cross-cultural comparison, and then to go back to indigenous cultures to carefully testify to the validity of the rules in deductive interpreting. Chang Kwang-chih has come up with a unique deductive interpretation of the vessel from the perspective of the Shamanic mythological view, which used to prevail in Europe, Asia, and America. He held that none of the images of several “TigerDevouring-Man” wine vessels that he observed show the exact theme of a monster eating a human. The only position associated with this theme is that the man’s head is at the mouth of the beast, which certainly does not refer to eating humans, an action involving chewing and swallowing the human body. If there were an image of a beast swallowing the head or half of the body of a man, then the connotation of eating a human being would be more evident. Instead, the two vessels show the image of a man hugging a beast. Denying the feature of the tiger as “eating humans”, he continued to argue that someone pointed out that the open mouth of a beast is a symbol to separate two different worlds (e.g. life and death) in many ancient civilizations around the world, which is consistent with the view that the beast patterns were understood to assist in the communication between heaven and man (or between life and death). The human figures on those vessels may well be shamans who could practice magic, speak to gods and use animals constantly as assistants, who would open their mouths to blow winds to assist the shamans in going up to heaven. This is different from the traditional view that the images of animals are in fact images of the shamans themselves or their masks, but is consistent with the explanation of the animals’ patterns above and is highly supported by tales in The Classic of Mountains and Seas (Chang 1982, 332–333). Among those burial objects, even some open-top vessels had the symbolic function of receiving the spirits and guiding them to return to the mothers’ wombs. In particular, in the excavations of the tombs of Shang Dynasty more than one open-top bronze vessel containing a head has been found. But Chang’s view that the man in the mouth of the tiger is a wu rather than the prey, and that the tiger is an assistant to the shaman, is not entirely accurate. It is more like a deductive over-interpretation. It is imperative to reinterpret this by referring to the pictures of real objects. The shaft in the Western Zhou Dynasty also shows the image of a tiger devouring a man, with the whole head of the man being swallowed. This image narrative shares the similar theme of “tiger-devouring-man” in the late Shang Dynasty, and obviously cannot be interpreted as a wu and his assistant in the mode of Shamanism. To explore the connotation of the ancient relic in the picture above, the method of contextual restoration can be adopted. The inner connection between the shapes and functions of the “Tiger-Devouring-Man” you wine vessels may be explained more effectively if they are analysed within the burial practices of the Shang Dynasty. In other words, the vessels are burial objects produced and used for the dead. Although the existing two “Tiger-Devouring-Man” you wine vessels were not found in official excavations, there are many other artifacts of the same “Tiger-Devouring-Man” theme, such as the bronze axe from the Fu Hao Tomb in Anyang, Henan Province

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Fig. 19.2 The “DoubleTiger-Devouring-Man” bronze yue-axe from the Fu Hao tomb in the Yin Ruins. Photographed at the “Early China: the Formative Period of Chinese Civilization” exhibition in the Capital Museum in September 2009

(Fig. 19.2) with the image of a tiger opening its mouth ready to swallow the head of a man. From the perspective of design evolution, the precursor to the bronze yue-axe was the prehistoric jade axe, a symbol of dominion and military power that was significant in gathering the spiritual strength of social groups. Evidence from ethnology also shows that the “tiger of the underworld” worshiped by people in central India echoes the terrifying image of the Queen Mother of the West with “the tail of a leopard” and “the fangs of a tiger” in Chinese mythology. The tiger from the underworld would open its mouth to welcome all the dead into the dark netherworld. Similarly, people in Malaya imagined a tiger city in the forest radiating phosphorescence from human bones; a place where the walls are made of human skin and rooves made of human hair; within this city live the tigers (Borges and Guerrero 1974, 58). The notion that the tiger or the mouth of a tiger is the entrance to the other world is helpful in explaining systematically some of the special tiger-shaped burial objects made by ancient Chinese peoples, such as: the Liangzhu jade with the image of a sorcerer riding on the back of an open-mouthed tiger; the tiger-shaped jade huang found in the high-ranking tombs in the Lingjiatan culture in Hanshan, Anhui Province; the jade tiger head in the Shijiahe culture in Tianmen, Hubei Province; the tiger-shaped jade cravings commonly seen in the tombs of nobles of the Yin-Shang and Western Zhou Dynasties; and the ring-foot Gong from Fu Hao’s tomb with the image of the combination of tiger and owl (with detailed explanation later). It is also useful to reveal the tiger-like features of some Kunlun mythical creatures in the West recorded in literature, such as Luwu (陆吾) with “the body and paws of a tiger, nine tails and the human face”, and Qiongqi (穷奇) in the ancient Gui State on the north, “with the figure of a tiger and a pair of wings and eating a man from his head”. The previously dominant view was that the unsavory image of a tiger devouring a man represented power and threat. However, by comparison with the mythology of the tiger of the underworld in India and South America, and closer observation of the tiger-man relationship carved on the vessel, one cannot be deceived by the theory of terror and threat. The small man, faced with the huge open mouth of a fierce tiger, holds the head of the latter with both hands and leans on his side with a calm smile. This is a representation of what Laozi and Daoism promoted as “facing death calmly like going home”. The Sinologist, Hugo Munsterberg stated that the tiger symbolises the West in the Chinese view of the world and tiger-shaped jades were commonly

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used as burial objects set westwards on the right side of the deceased (1986, 68). Munsterberg has cited an example of a jade object in the Western Zhou whereby the mysterious image of a giant tiger and a small man is a shared tradition not only in the ritual bronzes but also in other objects. Here is a jade object of the Western Zhou Dynasty preserved in the Seattle Art Museum in the United States. The main carving on it is an image of the mother tiger and her son; below the paws of the mother tiger is a small kneeling man. From the perspective of the transition between life and death, if the small man under the paws implies the return of the dead to the mother’s womb of the underworld, then the cub disgorged from the mouth of the mother tiger is just the projection of the reincarnation of life. This jade object contains the same divine implication, of the tiger being the intermediary between life and death, and can thus be renamed the “Mother-Son Tiger Grasping Man” jade pendant to indicate dialecticism in the mythological view of life. On the back of the “Tiger-Devouring-Man” wine vessel is a fawn-shaped lid, which is often neglected by researchers. The fawn on the tiger implies the same belief of regeneration through a transformation like that of the tiger. By contrast, many other burial objects emphasize the devouring and death implied by the entrance to the netherworld, which easily triggers highly negative associations and a partial understanding of this kind of burial object. Take for example the bronze blade of the Shang Dynasty, part of a collection in the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., the United States, as an example. At the back of the blade is a tiger opening its mouth to bite the head of a man with a frightened facial expression. The Simuwu ding or cauldron excavated from Anyang, Henan Province has ears shaped as two tigers eating a human head, similar to the pattern on the Fu Hao bronze axe. The image of a tiger devouring a man in this type of burial object can be explained through classification as the image narrative of the guidance to the netherworld with the religious function similar to that of The Book of the Dead. More myths of the transformation between tiger and man can be enumerated by extending the process of comparative research. For instance, the Jaguar Baby in Maya civilization provides some analogical explanation for the divine role of the jaguar as the transition between life and death. According to the description in the book, Gods of Sun and Sacrifice: Aztec & Maya Myth, since the very beginning of the Mesoamerican civilization, the jaguar played an essential role in the Oimec religion. Common sculptures of the “were-jaguar” indicate the belief that the leader of the religion had the power to transform into a jaguar. One of the Aztec and Mayan gods was also a “Jaguar Baby” who could take on human form in the open mouth of a jaguar (Allan et al. 2003, 82). This shows that the jaguar god, not only “swallows” (implying death) with its huge mouth, but “disgorges” (implying new life). A dialectical understanding of the seventh and eighth theories (the theory of tiger nursing man and the theory of man originated from a tiger) listed above can be achieved, if not regarded as isolated and exclusive, but related to the imagination of returning to the mother’s womb. In the logic of mythology, to die and to regenerate are part of the same process. Therefore the question in comparative literature may be raised: is there any mysterious logical connection between the stories of “birthed

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from the mouth” and the stories about “transforming into the tiger or jaguar” around the world? A picture in Gods of Sun and Sacrifice: Aztec and Maya Myths (ibid., 82) shows an Aztec stone carving from the sixth century AD. A new god, whose most conspicuous features are over-sized circular earrings twice the size of his ears, is born from the mouth of a jaguar, on the head of which is a figure of a god wearing the bird-shaped crown and a pair of earrings. There is also a picture of Tezcatlipoca, a major Aztec deity wearing jaguar skin, an image interpreted in that book as that of a powerful god, an invincible enemy, and a formidable fighter (ibid., 66). According to the research of anthropologist E. C. Krupp, the image of the mouth of the jaguar in Aztec and Mayan civilizations also embodies mythological cosmology. The entrance to the underworld was carved on a giant stone to imitate the shape of the mouth of a beast. A shaman can enter the world of spirits only through the gate in the shape of the mouth of a beast. In this context, the cave behind the mouth is the origin of the reproductive power of the world (Krupp 1997, 114). The underworld, as the origin of the fertility of Mother Earth, enables the unification of the summoning of death and regeneration. The belief in death and regeneration revealed by archaeologists and mythologists helps explain some of the unearthed mysterious beast-face images. A hat-shaped jade carving was excavated from a Liangzhu cultural site: on top there is a god wearing a huge feather crown, whose face is sculpted as an inverted trapezoid with round eyes and a garlic-like nose, mouth open and arms crossed at the chest; at the bottom, there is a face of a beast, much bigger than that of a man, with oval eyelids, triangular canthi, a wide flat mouth sculpted under a broad nose and four distinguishable strong sharp fangs in the more amazingly hollowed-out open mouth. There is still no academic consensus as to the interpretation of the archetype, functions, and symbolic meaning of this “god-and-beast-face motif”. In the light of the comparative mythological perspective, one can verify that the hat-shaped artifact is a burial object, with the same function of guiding the spirits to regeneration as that of the “tiger-devouringman” you wine vessel. The archetype of this beast’s face is, therefore, a fierce feline, whose open mouth stands for the entrance to the netherworld. The emblazonment of a bird at the two top corners highlights the implication of the underworld as the matrix for regeneration. The mythological meaning involved in combining a beast’s face and birds on the same object can be best interpreted through knowledge of the images of the cultural relics of later generations and their ceremonial functions. In the third chapter of the book Inside the Neolithic Mind, David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce drew a map of the universe as conceived in Mesoamerican civilization in pre-Columbian times when discussing the tiers of the mythological model of the universe (2005, 65). The connotation of the “tiger-devouring-man” or “tigerswallowing-man” image can be interpreted concretely and vividly from with the fact that the map of the universe is in the shape of a tiger. The entire land is in the shape of a female tiger lying on her back and opening her mouth, which acts as the gate to the underworld. Her body is the underworld, above which is the mortal world, with mountains and trees, in the centre and heaven or the world of gods at the top. This map of the universe shows clearly the mythological imagination of these ancient

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people by which the tiger is seen as the mother goddess of death and reincarnation, thus providing a reference for the interpretation of the similar mythological images.

19.2 Interpretations of the Ring-Foot Gong Wine Vessel from Fu Hao’s Tomb During the process of naming and interpreting the “tiger-devouring-man” wine vessels, many scholars cited the images of tigers eating a man on other objects in the Shang Dynasty as examples to support their explanation. However, they neglected another important piece of evidence, the exquisite ring-foot gong excavated from Fu Hao’s Tomb in the Yin ruins in 1978 (Fig. 19.3). This artifact, rich in mythological implications, is especially helpful in providing references for the interpretation and confirmation of the nature of the images of tigers on the Shang bronzes. Although there is no human form, the combined figure of the tiger and owl connotes the mythological idea of death and reincarnation. Marija Gimbuta (2008), after analyzing images of excavations from the Neolithic Age (around 10,000 years ago) in Eurasia, asserted that owls are crucial among the significant symbolic representations of the prehistoric goddess religion. She believed that raptors, like vultures and owls, represent the mother goddess of death and regeneration. The ecological conditions in eastern Asia are not only suitable for owls but also for tigers. Therefore, the combined images of owls and tigers and those of owls and bears on Chinese burial objects correspond to the common mythological manifestation of the combination of bird and beast images. A systematic understanding can be achieved by referring to the image of the griffin, the combination of an eagle and a lion, in the Western world, while the combination of an owl and a bear or an eagle and a bear is more common in Chinese culture. The carving of wheel-eyed owls is also found on an excavated object from the tomb of Fu Hao, the ivory cup with a tiger-shaped handle on which the head of a big bear is joined to a small tiger. As recorded in inherited literature, the Fig. 19.3 A drawing of the ring-foot gong from Fu Hao’s Tomb (side view) (Ye 2010e, 105)

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man-eating creature paoxiao (狍鸮) in the Gouwu Mountain in the third volume of The Classic of Mountains and Seas: The Classic of the Northern Mountains contains in its name the names of an owl and a roe deer (pao is a roe deer; xiao is an owl), corresponding to the mythological imagination of combining the bird with the beast. The paoxiao is depicted as a monster with a human face and a goat’s body and is characterized by “tiger fangs and human hands and feet” (Yuan 1980), suggesting some associations between owls and tigers. The top view of the ring-foot gong shows that the handle which is joined to the owl on the back of the object has the shape of a small bear. The ears of a bear, different from the round ears of a tiger, are more pointed and its rhynchodaeum, not as wide and flat as that of a tiger, is cuspidal like that of a canid, in accordance with what is known as the “black bear”. Thus, the combination of animals on the gong is not limited to the tiger-and-owl form, but a big tiger, a big owl, and a small bear rolled into one. What does this complex motif imply in terms of mythological imagination? The same question can be asked about the image of the “tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessel, with the motif of many other animals besides the most conspicuous tiger, man, and fawn. For instance, there is a snake motif on the arm of the man and a pair of snake motifs on his leg and crotch, as well as the pattern of a Chinese dragon and a fish at the bottom of the outside of the artifact. It is quite intriguing that such a group of animals—tiger, fawn, snake, fish, and a Chinese dragon—are carved on the same object. This author has answered this interesting question when explaining the “threein-one” shape of the bear head, deer horn, and snake body of the jade dragon from Fu Hao’s Tomb: it is the combination of several animals that symbolise death and reincarnation, a new imaginary creature (Ye 2007a, 209). The rules of mythological imaginary construction in ancient Chinese art originated from the traditional modeling of jades in the northern Hongshan culture and the southern Liangzhu culture in prehistoric times. They passed through the civilized society of the Shang, Zhou, Qin, and Han Dynasties, and remain alive. A relief pottery, a funerary object in the Han Dynasty, preserved in the Five Continents Museum in Munich, depicts ascension to heaven, which as a notion evolved from the belief in reincarnation after death. In the centre of the image is the head of a deer with gigantic horns, under which are the sequential images of three tigers proceeding one after another. Above are two groups of motifs: the top one comprises five animals—a pair of owls and a pair of cicadas surrounding the face of a bear in the centre; the one below consists of three animals, two tigers on the left, and on the right side a bare face. Between the horns of the deer and under one side of a horn are two owls and a cicada. There are, in all, fifteen images of five distinct animal species on the pottery sculpture, a deer head, two bear faces, three cicadas, four owls, and five tigers. Seen from the spatial framework of the three realms, the deer horn is growing upwards across all three realms, representing the central image of ascending to heaven. The four images below the deer horn—the bear, tiger, owl, and cicada—are supplementary symbols of becoming immortal. Is this not the evolution from the trinity of tiger, owl, and bear on the ring-foot gong in the Shang Dynasty into a “five-in-one” image narrative? The reforming effect of patriarchal society led to the fundamental transformation of the

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figures of the goddesses into just their animal symbols, from the pottery sculptures of prehistoric goddess worship excavated from the Niuheliang Goddess Temple in Liaoning Province to the images of groups of divine animals from the Han Dynasty. Whilst ancient images of animals are common, it is rare that they are depicted alongside a goddess. Hence, it is vital that scholars rediscover the mythical symbolism of these animal images through careful interpretation. It is not only the ring-foot gong from Fu Hao’s tomb in the Shang Dynasty but also the religious art of the ancient West Asian civilizations that effectively highlights the symbolic system of the mother goddess existing across the three realms implied by the fusion of owls and large felines. For instance, surviving Mesopotamian images provide explicit and complete cross-references for the analysis of goddesses and their animal symbols. Figure 19.4 is a Babylonian pottery sculpture carving created around 4000 years ago: Inanna (or Ishtar in Babylonian) with a human body and the claws and wings of a naked bird, arms raised, holding divine measuring tools (similar to the gauge held by Fuxi and Nüwa in some images) in both hands, a crown on her head and a pair of lions under her feet, two big owls standing solemnly beside the lions. The general connotation of the image narrative of the carving can be understood in light of the knowledge that the status of the lion in ancient West Asian civilization was equal to that of the tiger in East Asia, that Inanna, the goddess of war, killing, regeneration, and reincarnation, held power over heaven and the underworld, and that the most famous Sumerian work about her is entitled “Inanna’s Descent into the Underworld”. It is evident how the lion, the king of beasts, and the owl, the Fig. 19.4 The comparative mythological evidence for tigers and owls as symbols of the goddess of death: the goddess with human body and eagle claws and the double lion and owl pottery sculpture carvings in Mesopotamia, around 2000 BC (Ye 2010e, 106)

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night-vision raptor, became the symbols for the belief in the goddess of death and reincarnation. Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, experts on Western goddesses, have mentioned (1993, 216) that the wings of Inanna resemble those of a pair of owls. And owls are called ninna in Sumerian, which is the origin of “Nin-ninna”, another name for Inanna, with the meaning of “divine Lady Owl”. The goddess Akkad is named “kilili”, a name shared by Inanna and Ishtar, also associated with the owl. Is it appropriate, therefore, to draw some inferences from above to interpret the combined imagery of tigers and owls, though without the image of a goddess as a dominating or accompanying figure, on the ring-foot gong in the Shang Dynasty? Since the late Paleolithic Age, owls and large beasts have been the main avatars of goddesses in prehistoric mythological imagination. Different ecological conditions in East Asia and West Asia have led to slightly differing combinations, of tigers and owls and of lions and owls, being depicted in the initial stage of the two civilizations, thus revealing a thought-provoking phenomenon in comparative mythology. As Li Xueqin (1987, 43) noted, “Archaeology calls for extensive comparisons and references to the research methods and findings of many other disciplines, such as art history, cultural anthropology, and mythology, to inspire one to explore the problems without a literature basis. The research into the ‘tiger-devouring-man’ wine vessels proves this point of view and follow-up studies will eventually uncover the secrets behind the objects.” It has been more than thirty years since he put forward this view. Will one’s efforts to combine the perspectives of comparative mythology and comparative iconology find answers?

19.3 Western White Tiger: From the Queen Mother of the West to “Tigress” Mircea Eliade has mentioned in his work Yoga: Immortality and Freedom, “At Udyana, the yoginis were imagined under the form of tiger-women, feeding on human flesh and able to transform themselves into birds when they had to cross a river” (1958, 194). He has particularly noted that this kind of mythology about sorceresses has a shamanistic structure. The jades of the Liangzhu culture cited above are often interpreted as the image of the immortal man, the tiger, and the bird. However, from the perspective of mythological fantasy, the relationship between the immortal man, the tiger, and the bird can be a transformative one. Metamorphosis in mythology is usually the embodiment of reincarnation or rebirth. The special identification between women and tigresses is particularly clear through the hallucination hints of the Indian yogis. Tigers, as animals with strong mythical associations, were often seen as mounts for man or the gods. According to the thoughts of the Gorakhanatha (the Indian yogi and theologian) school, the salvation of individuals can be achieved by integrating with gods through yoga. Yogis enjoy great fame as healers and sorcerers and are believed to have the power of praying for rains and taming wild beasts. It is said

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that they live in the jungles and are sometimes surrounded by their tigers, used for riding. Eliade believed that certain themes within yogi culture originate from ancient shamanism, “for the tiger is the ‘master of initiation’; in Central Asia, in Indonesia and elsewhere, the tiger or other wild animals appear and carry the neophytes into the jungles on their backs (symbol of the beyond)” (ibid., 172). The chief god of the yogis is Siva, whose wife is the goddess on or beside the tiger, called Kali in Hindu mythology. Kali is in charge of battle and killing and also represents the fertility of women; thus, she is often called the goddess of slaughter and destruction and is commonly depicted carrying a head in hand and wearing a necklace of skulls, which shows her violence and role as the “frightful mother” in goddess myths. Kali is undoubtedly another “Queen Mother of the West” type figure, from the perspective of her personality and functions. Besides the characteristics of riding on a tiger and administering punishment and killing, the Queen Mother of the West was the goddess of reincarnation, goddess of the moon, goddess of jade, and goddess of the earth, who holds the secret of the medicine of immortality (Ye 1992). Although her image is re-molded as a peaceful fairy in the paintings from Han Dynasty tombs and she gradually took on the role of a “mysterious mentor” in the later literature, her original relationship with the tiger is revealed in images (Fig. 19.5). As stated by Mary Esther Harding in her work Woman’s Mysteries: Ancient and Modern, the original image of the moon goddess is extremely ferocious and savage, often represented by a lion or leopard, but that image was gradually transformed in the age of civilization and began to show more features of nursing and rebirth represented by an ox horn (curved) and rabbits. Compared with the painting of the Han Dynasty, the character of the Queen Mother of the West contained echoes of the archetype of the tiger-lion goddess who often roars, with “leopard’s tail and tiger’s teeth” in the key literature of the pre-Qin period, The Classic of Mountains and Seas. She is “in charge of the catastrophes from the sky and the Five Destructive Forces”, as Fig. 19.5 The brick relief excavated from a Han Dynasty tomb in Chengdu, Sichuan Province: the picture of the wonderland where the Queen Mother of the West is riding on the back of a tiger (Ye 2010e, 107)

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recorded in “The Classic of the Western Mountains”, annotated by Guo Pu, which suggests her connection to the netherworld and death. Cross-references with the image narratives of the burial objects with the “tiger-devouring-man” theme enable one to grasp some clues relating to the transformative process of the Queen Mother of the West emerging from the original image of beast goddess. After all, there is much leeway for discussing cross-references between the image narratives and the text narratives, especially in the great difference between the ferocious tiger with a huge open mouth of the underworld fit to swallow lives, and the auspicious beast, the white tiger, representing the ascent to heaven. The process of the tiger goddess being remolded into the gentle beast, the zouyu (驺虞), by new beliefs like the immortality of Daoism and the morality of Confucianism, particularly exhibits local characteristics. From the perspective of archetypal variations in literature, this transformation can be traced from the ancient imagery of the tiger goddess, originating from ancient belief, into the “tigress” theme present in later literature. Good examples include the “Mistress Gu, the tigress,” in Chap. 49 of The Water Margin (Shui Hu Zhuan, 水浒传) and the heroine of The Golden Lotus (Jin Ping Mei, 金瓶梅), Pan Jinlian, both of whom are associated with the archetype of the Queen Mother of the West (Ye 1997b). Rebellious women in a patriarchal society are often given names like “tigress”.

19.4 Myths About Huwei and Zouyu The relationship between humans and the tiger has evolved over a lengthy period. Comparatively speaking, the life of the ancient peoples that lived in the hunting era before agricultural production was more associated with tigers than their descendants (Fig. 19.6). An interesting phenomenon is that beasts like bears and bison had long been prey and food sources for hunting-gatherer people, but almost no one in a community would prey on tigers. The robust and ferocious tiger is a formidable and intimidating creature. In the totem table of the Indian clans listed in the work of L. H. Morgan, the founding father of American anthropology, titled Ancient Society, only a few clans chose the tiger as their totem, while other wild animals like bears, wolves, foxes, bison, crows, grouses, toads, snakes, porcupines and beavers were more often chosen. For instance, among the 22 Muscogee Creek clans among the North American Gulf Coast Indian tribes, the clan of tiger is ranked seventh, while the rest, the clans of wolf, bear, deer, bird, corn, potato, walnut, and salt all took their food sources as their totems. The tiger was worshiped as the totem ancestor of clans in honor of their transcendental kings, while the others were cherished by society as divine because people fed on them. Tribal hunters seldom preyed on tigers in environments where tigers were often seen. They would seek revenge only when humans were attacked by tigers. The principle of revenge was then recorded accurately into the “Pentateuch” in the Old Testament of the Hebrews. It is stipulated in the code, for instance, “If an ox gores a

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Fig. 19.6 A tigress goddess statue of an African tribe. Photographed at the Museum of the Tropics in Amsterdam in 2003

man or a woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner of the ox shall not be liable. But is the ox has been accustomed to gore in the past, and its owner has been warned but has not kept it in, and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned, and its owner also shall be put to death.” (2008, 120). In the Jewish code of law, the penalties for animals killing man are referred to as a general law of revenge. For example, after the flood, Jehovah revealed to Noah the law, “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed” (ibid., 12). In his book Folklore in the Old Testament, the great anthropologist James George Frazer (1923) cited the example of revenge on tigers by the Kookies or Kukis in Chittagong in northeastern India when expounding on revenge laws. If a tiger eats one of them near the village, the whole tribe will take up arms to hunt down the tiger. If the tiger is killed, the families of the dead man are permitted to feed on the tiger to seek revenge for the dead. If it is not killed in the first hunt, the families of the dead should continue to hunt it until that tiger or another one is killed and eaten; thus they restore their honour. Similarly, if a group of hunters or warriors are eaten by a tiger, then the remaining men cannot return decently to the village unless they kill the tiger. Based on known myth narratives, killing tigers is key to the sustainable existence of human beings. In the Anal tribe of the Assam in India, a legend of a flood has been passed down. A long time ago, the flood overwhelmed the world and only a couple had survived. They climbed up a tree on the highest peak of the Cold Mountain. The tree was near a big pond that resembled the clear eye of a raven. They rested on the tree at night and were surprised to find themselves transformed into tigers in the morning. The Creator, Pathian, having seen the woeful spectacle of the world, summoned a man and a woman in a cave on the mountain top in order to reproduce

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human beings. However, when they saw the pair of giant tigers at the entrance of the cave, they were so frightened that they prayed to the Creator for strength. They killed the tigers and lived happily ever after. Their offspring continued to reproduce in the desolate world. Out of the same fear of the tiger, a folk ritual performance called the “Tiger Daegam (god) Opera” is performed in the Gyeonggi Province of Korea. In the annual sacrificial ceremony, held in the administrative office every third lunar month to ward off evil spirits and pray for fortune, the Tiger Daegam Opera is a special occasion: chickens and dogs are sacrificed to the Tiger Daegam and the tiger dance is performed. The purpose is, first, to avoid being threatened by tigers, and second, to comfort the spirits of people who were killed by tigers in order to ward off calamities. Similar tiger operas are performed in the farewell Ceremony for gods in the villages on the east coast of Korea, although these differ in form from the administrative office ceremony. An actor, wearing a colorful tiger mask and yellow clothing like a tiger’s skin, imitates a tiger, jumping and dancing to the beats of the sorcerer’s music. When the “tiger” is dancing joyfully, a group of masked people step on the stage and expel the “tiger” with torches. The tiger opera can be seen as a ritual behavior of vengeful tiger hunting and fear-driven sacrifices to tiger, which symbolises the call to eliminate the tiger threat and avoid conflicts between man and tigers so that harm will not be done to either man or tigers. In many other nations which do not challenge the tiger’s strength, the worship of the tiger is prevalent for various reasons. In ancient Vietnamese cosmology, tigers are in charge of the four corners of space. The red tiger takes charge of the south, representing the summer season and fire. The black tiger takes charge of the north, representing the winter and water. The green tiger takes charge of the east, representing the spring and plants. The white tiger takes charge of the west, representing autumn and metal. Above these four tigers, there is a fifth, yellow one in the centre. Its position implies its leadership. Vietnamese sorcerers use prayers to these tigers to exorcise evil and subdue the world. The five tigers with their different colors in Vietnam all stem from the archetypes of the five animals in ancient China which represent the five directions, though the animals were changed into tigers in Vietnamese culture. The mascot of the Seoul Olympics in 1998 was a stylized tiger representing the Korean people. The tiger is the most popular creature in folk tales and paintings, expressing mystery and majesty, or honesty and amiability. The Koreans’ respect for tigers originated from the profound hunting traditions of the ancient Korean people and the Manchu-Altaic ethnic groups. Their ancestors had lived in the three-river valley and the areas from the Great Khingan Mountains to the Changbai Mountain where tigers were commonly seen. However, the tigers were not prey for them but, instead, a god revered in shamanism. The Manchu-Altaic ethnic groups did not usually call the tiger by its name, “tasha”, but only in honorifics like “grandfather” or “lord”. Generally, the tiger was regarded as the god of the mountain in local beliefs. A myth about Gang Ho-gyeong, the first and oldest ancestor of Taejo who established the Goryeo Dynasty went like this. A group of ten hunters went to the mountain and rested in a cave at night where a tiger came roaring. Everyone threw their hats out of

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the cave and let the tiger choose whom to eat. The tiger only picked the hat of Hogyeong. As he stepped outside, the cave collapsed and all the other nine people died inside. The tiger turned out to be the incarnation of the widowed mountain goddess who was there to marry Ho-gyeong. After their marriage, Ho-gyeong became the male god of the mountain. Comparing it with the myths of the ethnic groups in northeastern China like “The Mountain God” of the Hezhe and “The Requital from a Tiger” of the Ewenki, one can see that the worship of the tiger as the god of the mountain was a common belief. A popular narrative motif is therefore derived from this belief—the transformation of a god or a human into a tiger. Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, was transformed into a tiger to attract a goddess, who crossed a wide river with the help of the tiger. Later, the river Tigris in Mesopotamia, was given this name in memory of the love story of Dionysus and the goddess. The forest was not only the environment upon which the hunting-gathering people depended on for existence, it was often also the birthplace of the ancestors of their tribes or people of their ethnic group. The tiger, as the mountain god, or the incarnation or the messenger of the mountain god, dominated over other animals in the forest. The ancient Turkic Khan would annually gather with the chiefs of other tribes to sacrifice livestock at the entrance of the cave where their ancestors used to live. This was called “sacrifice to the divine mountain”. The hunters of the Oroqen and Ewenki peoples believed that the animals were raised and governed by the mountain god. What they could gain from hunting was dependent on the generosity of the god. Folk legend would have it that the god could transform into a tiger to help directly or indirectly with the livelihood of the hunters; thus, the hunters needed to worship tigers reverently. For example, they had to keep quiet when hunting in the mountain to avoid offending the god and prayed every time they passed a virgin forest. The bark of the tree at the mouth of the mountain was often peeled off, and a portrait of the mountain god in a human figure was painted on it for the hunters to worship and offer sacrifices to. The gratitude for tigers among the northern hunting-gathering people is in sharp contrast to the revengeful killing of tigers practiced by the Indian Kukis. These two examples attest to the variety of relationships between man and tiger that have arisen through the natural process of cultural evolution. This kind of ethnological information is reasonably beneficial for the recognition of the cultural diversity of human beings and for the enhancement of the awareness of protecting wildlife through the resources of traditional culture. There are numerous records of kings hunting tigers in the Shang Dynasty on the newly excavated texts on the oracle bones and tortoise shells of the Shang Dynasty, most concerning the divination of hunting, which suggests that the habits of the hunting era persisted among the people of the Shang Dynasty, in an agricultural society. At that time, many tigers lived in the Central Plain, whereas tigers are now nearly extinct in Asia due to ecological changes and human hunting. After the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, the intellectual monopoly of the feudal government ended and knowledge was made available to the public. Tigers in the physical world were first seen as harmful beasts in the writings of the ancient philosophers at that time. Tigers are mentioned twice and are equated with si (兕, rhinoceros) in Laozi. The Analects of Confucius talks about tigers three

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times, all referring to tigers in the physical world. The chapter entitled “Ji Shi” ( 季氏, also known as Ji Kangzi, an official in the Lu State in the late Spring and Autumn Period)” records that Confucius used to put tigers and rhinoceros into the same category: “For if a tiger or rhinoceros escapes from its cage or a precious ornament of tortoise shell or jade ware gets broken in its box, whose fault is it?” (Waley 1999a, 185, slightly modified). The chapter “Tan Gong (檀弓)” in The Book of Rites tells the story that “Tyranny is Fiercer than a Tiger”, which illustrates the severity of the threat and harm brought by tigers in people’s minds at that time. Wang Zijin has, in particular, mentioned the threat and devastation of tigers during the Qin and Han Dynasties in a section of his work, A Study on the Ecological Environment from Qin Dynasty to Han Dynasty (2007), a book which provides references to readers interested in this topic and restores the realistic ancient ecological background for folk tales like “Wu Song Fights a Tiger” and “Tyranny is Fiercer than a Tiger”. In the Spring and Autumn Period, there was an old city named Hulao (虎牢, cage of the tiger) under the jurisdiction of the Zheng State, the site of which lies in Sishui town, Xingyang County in Henan Province today. Because of its dangerous surrounding terrain, it was regarded as a significant military post. The name came from the fifth volume of The Biography of King Mu. There used to be a tiger in the reeds. The king was arriving. One of the officials offered to fight the tiger. The tiger was captured and presented to the king, who appointed someone to build a cage, hence the name of the city. Although tigers posed a threat to the lives of people, they also provided a model for the ancient people to imitate. The five animal exercise, based on the principles of bionics, was invented with the “tiger exercise” as the first section. It is said to have been invented by Hua Tuo, the famous physician in the late Han Dynasty, and deemed to be a sport to strengthen the body and prolong life. The five-animal exercise passed down through later generations and remains popular today. Trace of this sport can even be found in some of the movements in different schools of the Chinese martial arts, which makes it a treasure of both Chinese martial arts and physical health. The observation and utilization of tigers by ancient people are also manifest in symbolic acts of exorcism. In the book Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters the tiger is defined as “the lord of mountain”, that is, the god of the mountain because it became the king of beasts as the successor of the bear in folklore, with the mighty power of exorcising evil spirits. People chose the tiger as the door-god on their buildings because of their belief that “evil spirits dare not enter a room with a tiger on the door”. Gan Bao in the Jin Dynasty wrote in his novel Anecdotes about Spirits and Immortals: In today’s custom, people decorate their house with a doll made of peach wood and ropes of weeds. They also paint tigers on their doors with two lights installed on either side, simulating a sleeping tiger to exorcise evil.

Beliefs in the door-god persist until today, with people pasting New Year’s prints of tigers on their doors on New Year’s Eve in the hope of warding off evil ghosts. A folk mythological belief, called “huwei” (虎威, tiger’s might literally), can be found

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in the records of the Sui and Tang dynasties, which indicates that a certain kind of tiger bone has special effects. Duan Chengshi, a novelist in the Tang Dynasty, depicted this in his chapter “Animals with Fur”, in the novel, Youyang Notes (You Yang Za Zu, 酉阳杂俎): The shape of the “huwei” is like the Chinese character “乙”. They are beside the ribs beneath the skin and at the tail end with the length of one cun. They are suitable ornaments for officials; ordinary people who wear them are envied.

Because they were believed to ward off disasters, it is little wonder that tigershaped symbols were highly valued in traditional Chinese culture. For example, the door of the living palace of the king in ancient times was called “the tiger door”. Images of tigers were painted on army flags during war. Engraving a tiger motif on drinking vessels and ritual vessels was called “huyi” (虎彝). There were magic items with tiger motifs for priests to wear called “hulu” (虎箓) in Daoism. There were also innumerable things related to tigers like tiger-head shoes, tiger-head bellybands, and tiger-head pillows in everyday life. The recognition of the tiger in the Ming and Qing Dynasties appeared in two forms. One was the inclusion of documents about tigers in official books; the second was the expansion of tiger-related subjects as the novel became a popular literary form. For instance, the 429th volume of the giant encyclopedia edited in the Qing Dynasty, Categories for In-depth Reference (Yuan Jian Lei Han, 渊鉴类函) listed literary references to tigers. The entry “Zouyu” (驺虞) is specially listed as occupying a place between the foreign lions and native tigers, which suggests a vague distinction between real animals and mythological beasts in Chinese natural history with equal emphasis given to both categories. The book also includes the poems “The Envoy Shooting the Tiger” by Li Mingjun in the Yuan Dynasty and “The Tiger is Coming” by Shen Zhou in the Ming Dynasty. The Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio (Liao Zhai Zhi Yi, 聊斋志异) by Pu Songling (1640–1715) includes a tale of a man transforming into a tiger. There is also a chapter on the “Tiger God” in The Notes of Yuewei Hermitage (Yue Wei Cao Tang Bi Ji, 阅微草堂笔记) written by Ji Yun (1724–1805), a famous scholar in Qing Dynasty, which suggests that men of letters at that time were still interested in discussions about the tiger mythology of antiquity and that some of the conceptions of tigers in Chinese culture persisted from ancient mythological times. When reading the record that zouyu visited Bishan County followed by two deer in the third year under the reign of Yongping of Shu Kingdom in The Historical Records of the Five Dynasties (Wu Dai Shi, 五代史), one should not consider it fiction. Nor should one be surprised to see the records of the white tiger and zouyu during the reign of Yongle and Xuande in Veritable Records of Ming Taizong (Ming Tai Zong Shi Lu, 明太宗实录). Chinese history books are naturally coded with mythology. The scientific knowledge introduced under Western influence has brought about a different understanding of tigers for modern Chinese. They can be understood in the standard zoological classifications given by textbooks and zoos: mammals and felines. They can also be understood in the names and distributions of different kinds of wild tigers. Due to the worsening ecological environment, wildlife on earth is now facing extinction, including the Manchurian tiger and the South China tiger.

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Fortunately, public awareness and campaigns of environmental protection are on the rise. Some bases for domesticating and rearing tigers, like the gardens of Manchurian tigers, have been built in places like Heilongjiang Province. From the perspective of cognitive anthropology, the Chinese people of today have simplified their knowledge of the tiger into scientific classification and definition. The related characters in modern Chinese have been reduced to only one: “虎” (hu, tiger). The Chinese characters related to tigers used to be numerous, of which the most important ones included “虢” (guo) and “虞” (yu). After thousands of years, these two significant names in ancient times have lost their symbolic meanings, which are now the exclusive knowledge of experts in paleography and unknown to the public. The character 虞 is important, as it symbolises an ancient dynasty—the Yu-Shun period. Besides the general title of the three dynasties, “Xia, Shang, Zhou”, there exists another version including four dynasties “Yu, Xia, Shang, Zhou”. Yu (虞) is almost the earliest dynasty the Chinese can remember in history, its name coming from the name of “Youyu” (有虞). Like the name Youxiong (有熊) of the Yellow Emperor, the name Youyu (有虞) of Shun implies traces of totem worship. Here is a brief explanation of the belief of the tiger god implied in the character 虞. People in ancient times used to have the wording of “Yuxia (虞夏)” combining the two characters. They deemed the Xia Dynasty to be a cultural continuum of the time of the “Youyu” clan. It is written in The Book of Rites: Records of Signposts: The plain and simple ways of (the dynasties of the line of) Yu and Xia, and the multiplied forms of Yin and Zhou were both extreme. (Legge 1885b, 343)

Why, then, is the ancient dynasty called “Yu” in people’s minds? The character 虞 has the same radical as the character 虎. Is it related to the tiger myth? The name “zouyu” can be found as an alternative name for “tiger” in Alternative Names of Things edited by scholars in the Qing Dynasty. There is a poem called “Zouyu” in The Book of Poetry: Southern Shao. According to The Mao Commentary on the Book of Poetry, zouyu is a white tiger with black stripes which eats no living creatures. From what one can understand, the zouyu is a mythical animal rather than a real one. It is a wonder that the tiger-like animal characterized by ahimsa should exist in China before the introduction of Buddhism. Why, then, is there extra emphasis placed in Confucianism on zouyu as a benevolent and auspicious beast? Two lines from The Inscriptions on the Tombstone of Taibao Cao (Tai Bao Cao Gong Shen Dao Bei, 太保曹公神道碑) by Qian Qianyi (1582–1664) in the Qing Dynasty provide some references: “Zouyu doesn’t kill and the phoenix doesn’t fight, so they are benevolent”. As is well-known, tigers and eagles are extremely fierce, thus zouyu and the phoenix, which do not kill and fight, are the best gifts contributed by the Chinese tradition to the world mythological zoo. This is the result of the reconstruction of raptors and beasts through the Chinese values of moderation and peace. Zouyu, as the ideal mythical animal in Confucianism, became the title of a position during and after the Zhou Dynasty in charge of the animals in the hunting grounds of the king. The term can be further split into 驺 (Zou) and 虞 (Yu) for a clearer explanation. 驺, with the radical of 马 (ma, horse), indicates that the Zou officials

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were involved in horse breeding. 虞, with the radical of 虎 (hu, tiger), suggests that the Yu officials were involved in hunting. As written in the article Mozi: Threefold Argument: “Later King Cheng of Zhou followed suit and the composition he added to was called ‘Zouyu’” (Wang and Wang 2006, 39, slightly modified). Judging from this, the name “Zouyu” is related to ritual music composed by the kings of the Western Zhou. The ancient pieces of music were gradually lost after the Han Dynasty, and thus, later generations had no chance to appreciate the beauty of the refined music of that time. Zheng Qiao in the Song Dynasty said in the preface of General History (Tong Zhi, 通志) only four out of three hundred pieces of music in The Book of Poetry were still alive at the end of the Han Dynasty, among which were Luming ( 鹿鸣), Zouyu (驺虞), Fatan (伐檀) and Wenwang (文王). The so-called poems like Luming and Zouyu in The Book of Poetry are lyrics that have lost their musical and ritual background. With a better understanding of the belief in the zouyu in the Zhou Dynasty, one can now answer the question—why is “Yu” the reign title of an ancient Chinese Dynasty? Xu Shen simply defined “Yu” in The Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters as “Zouyu”. In the inscriptions found on bones or tortoise shells and on ancient bronzes, the character appears as the name of a family or a kingdom, and later generations continued the use of the character. It is said that in the early West Zhou Dynasty people of the Yu and Rui States were engaged in territorial disputes and appealed to Ji Chang, the King Wen, for judgment. It is written in “Major Odes” in The Book of Poetry: The states of Yu and Rui stopped strife/When Lord Wen roused their faith in life. (Wang 2008, 525)

What, then, is the common symbolic meaning of the shared title for the Yu Sate and the Yu Dynasty? Ye Yusen, an expert in paleography, proposed: Ancient Yu officials were in charge of the hunting ground. In hunting, they sometimes wore the head of a tiger to intimidate the other animals. Therefore, the character 虞 has the radicals 虎 and 大. 大 takes the shape of the figure of a man. (Ye 1924)

With further references to the tiger masks and the sorcerer’s dances in tiger costumes, the worship of the tiger god concealed in the character 虞 (yu) can generally be restored. According to the doctoral dissertation of Wang Xianzhao (2006) with the Minzu University of China, Study on the Motifs of Chinese National Mythology, there are more than ten ethnic groups that worship the totem of the tiger god (including the black tiger spirit and white tiger) besides the Han ethnicity in China, among which the most famous are Yi (彝) and Naxi (纳西). Liu Yaohan, an anthropologist, has related the tiger totem of Yi to Daoism and made a comparison between them, with the conclusion that both of them are the origins of the Chinese civilization (1985). As this strays a little from the present topic, there will be no detailed discussions here.

Chapter 20

The Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi: Western Zhou Mythistory

20.1 The Western Zhou Dynasty, Xiyi and Qizhou The name of the Zhou Dynasty is in a sense similar to the names of the Xia and Shang Dynasties—all stem from the name of a place. According to the annotations of The Records of the Historian: Annals of Zhou, the king lived in the plains of Zhou (周) and consequently, the state was given the same name, Zhou. “Long and Continuous” (mian, 绵) in The Book of Poetry was the first poem used to describe the plains of Zhou. One sentence of the poem reads: “On plains outspreading like a sheet, wild plants and violets grew so sweet” (Wang 2008, 521–523). One can see from this sentence the willingness of the Zhou people, who moved in from outside, to live in the plains of the Zhou. In the Old Testament, when the Jews first came to Palestine, they described it as a land flowing with milk and honey, deeming it a land sent by Jehovah. The Western Zhou was named to be distinguished from the Eastern Zhou. It was founded in the land of Qizhou, a place in Qi County, Shaanxi Province. It is written in The Mencius: Lilou II (Meng Zi: Li Lou II, 孟子·离娄下): Mencius said, “Shun, a native of the Eastern Tribes, was born in Zhufeng, moved to Fuxia, and died in Mingtiao. King Wen, a native of the Western Tribes, was born in Qizhou, and died in Biying. Their native places were more than a thousand li apart, and their times were separated by more than a thousand years. But when they achieved their ambitions in the Middle Plains, they tallied each with what the other did. The principles of the two sages were the same though one came earlier than the other. (Zhao et al. 1999, 175)

Zhao Qi annotated that at the foot of Mount Qi lies the old county of Zhou. Qizhou was a western region far away from Shandong where Mencius lived. The judgement that the first ancestors of Zhou lived in Xiyi was not made by the people of Zhou themselves. In Huainanzi: Summary of the Essentials, the dimensions of Qizhou governed by King Wen was documented: King Wen’s and his descendants had accumulated kind deeds for four generations in a row, improved their virtue and extended great righteousness. They stayed in Qi Zhou with a © Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_20

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territory of no more than a hundred square li, nonetheless, two thirds of the population of the world submitted to his authority. King Wen intended to stop brutal conduct by dint of his mean and weak forces, and rid the tyrannical king harming people of the world to unify the world and apple the right policies to govern it, so, Duke Tai’s strategies came into being. (Zhai and Mou 2010, 1593)

As the cradle of the Kingdom of Zhou, Qizhou (岐周) was once a small state in the west of the Shang Dynasty. The Plain of Zhou (周原) is still used as a place name in modern Chinese, sometimes even referring more broadly to China. Contemporary archeologists have explored the culture of Zhou and have discovered that Zhou’s tribes grew strong in the areas of the Jinghe River and Weihe River, and moved frequently between the river valleys of Gansu and Shaanxi. In the western region of the central Shaanxi plains, including Baoji, Mount Qi, Fufeng, and Xi’an, Western Zhou bronzes have often been discovered. Oracle bone inscriptions were also unearthed. Though fewer than those from the Yin ruins in Anyang, they are important new materials with which to explore the history of the Western Zhou. In May 2004, walls and huge graves belonging to the Western Zhou were discovered at the first ridge on the east side of the Phoenix Mountain (east of Duke Zhou’s Temple) by an archaeology team organized by the Shaanxi Archaeology Institute and School of Archaeology Museology of Peking University. In July 2004, 192 medium-sized graves of the Western Zhou were discovered at the third ridge on the east side of the Phoenix Mountain. On the level ground, beside Duke Zhou’s Temple, there were discovered over 40 foundations of buildings and 4 pits of oracle bones in which more than 7500 bones and shells were excavated, including over 700 pieces with characters on them. Among these, one can identify the names of kings and dukes such as文王 (King Wen), 周公 (Duke Zhou), 召公 (Duke Shao), 毕公 (Duke Bi), and the names of places and states, such as 周 (Zhou), 新邑 (Xinyi), 沣 (Feng), 商 (Shang), 崇 (Chong), 繁 (Fan), 蜀 (Shu) and微 (Wei). In Fengchu (凤雏) of Mount Qi, a brilliant palace built in the early Zhou was discovered. It has been identified as where King Wu of Zhou lived before he dispatched troops to attack King Zhou of Shang. In 1046 BC King Wu of Zhou assembled troops and went east to destroy the Shang and establish the Zhou Dynasty. The people of Zhou inhabited the Central Plain, and their culture has influenced Chinese civilization for three thousand years. The culture of the Western Zhou effectively embodied what would develop as the Chinese view of divine providence, the Chinese feudal system, and the Chinese rules of rites and music. This chapter, rooted in the quadruple-evidence method, analyses the myth of “the Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi” created by the people of Western Zhou to consolidate the idea of the “divine right of kings”. It is hoped that it can shed light on the ideological and cultural legacy of the Western Zhou in the formation of Chinese civilization.

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20.2 Interpreting Phoenix Myths Humans worshiped birds in the New Stone Age. Gimbutas advanced the theory of “the civilization of the goddess” and concepts such as the “bird goddess” according to the myths and beliefs of Eurasia in prehistoric ages which formed over ten thousand years. This enlightens the study of the origins of all civilizations. The belief in birds as goddesses in the prehistoric age continued and developed in various regions and countries across the world throughout the history of civilization, resulting in a range of colorful myths and the worship of birds as goddesses in various regions. In China, the belief in birds as goddesses as manifested the form of images can be found in almost all cultures of the New Stone Age, including the Hemudu, Dawenkou, Yangshao, Hongshan, Lingjiatan, Liangzhu, Longshan, Shijiahe, Majiayao, and Qijia cultures. It most often took the form of bird-like pottery and jade bird figurines (Fig. 20.1). The ancients divided deity birds into two categories according to the shape of their tails. The short-tailed birds were named zhui (隹), while the long-tailed were called niao (鸟), the latter of which means bird in modern Chinese. According to Explaining Fig. 20.1 A bird-like pottery gui (鬶, cooker), unearthed from a Longshan site in Shandong, photographed at the Weifang Museum, Shandong Province in 2015

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Graphs and Analysing Characters: Section Zhui (说文解字·隹部隹): “Zhui, the name of short-tailed birds.” Duan Yucai (1988, 141) explained with annotations, “The division between zhui and niao takes place only when one tries to distinguish them. If not, they can be mixed up”. 隹 (zhui), as well as惟(wei) and唯 (wei), is a typical pictographic character in the shape of a standing bird. It originated in the big tradition of belief in birds as goddesses in the prehistoric age and reflected the idea that the song of a bird symbolises divine providence. At first, the character 隹 was used in the context of people communicating with deities, and represented the image of “the spirit in the shape of a bird”, when the deities or the spirits of ancestors came to earth. It is the first character used in religious narratives found carved on bones, tortoise shells, or ancient bronzes. However, as time went by, the context of these early characters was forgotten, and people considered隹 or 唯 as lacking cultural meaning, calling them “functional words at the beginning of an article” (Ye 2010b). In addition to the short-tailed bird, Chinese people favored a long-tailed bird—the phoenix. It was, effectively, one of the greatest inventions of local myth after that of the divine dragon. Though myths of the undying phoenix are common in ancient civilizations, no other country has favored this imaginary creature as much as China. The “phoenix” has many alternative names, penetrating all levels of culture, both refined and popular (Fig. 20.2). In the Alternative Names of Things, there are 26 different names for the phoenix given. For example, the name “king of birds” comes from one of Li Shangyin’s poems. Idioms such as “descendants of the phoenix and the dragon or the qilin” Fig. 20.2 Baked cakes made of wheat flour depicting a hundred birds paying homage to the phoenix. Photographed at the cultural festival of Xianyang during the Spring Festival in 2009

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were used by the ancients to describe the nobility of their offspring. “Phoenix hue” is used to describe the beauty of a color. Mountains, towers, and pools named after the phoenix can also be found across China. The famous bloodstone found in Changhua is called “the stone with phoenix blood”. When an ancient emperor went out, the honor guards before him carried flags and weapons which were called “phoenix cover”. One of the head ornaments worn by ancient women was called a “phoenix hairpin”. Boy-girl twins are called “dragon and phoenix twins”. One’s eyes can be described as “phoenix eyes”, with their outer canthus upwards, which, according to traditional physiognomy, are the features of people with good fortune. “Phoenix eyes” also refers to the marvelous capability of one’s eyes. As the proverb goes: “the eyes of a dragon tell pearls, those of phoenix tell jewels, while those of cattle only tell grass.” The marvel surrounding the phoenix’s eyes comes from worship of xuan birds—owls, the archetype or one of the predecessors of the phoenix. It is the rotating eyes of the owl and its ability to see in the night that has brought forth the motif of mysterious wisdom represented by mysterious eyesight in the mythological canon. The phoenix myth functions as an archetype from which the ritual and music system, and more broadly the musical culture of China, drew heavy inspiration. A type musical clappers are called “phoenix clappers”. A famous heptachord tune in the ancient Music Bureau is named “Feng (凤, the male phoenix) chasing after Huang (凰, the female phoenix)”, which is in turn taken from a poem written by Sima Xiangru, a literary giant in the Western Han Dynasty, to a girl he loved, Zhuo Wenjun. In the Romance of West Bower (Xi Xiang Ji, 西厢记), Zhangsheng, the hero, says to Cui Yingying, the heroine: Oh, mu lute! I remember an ancient scholar wooing a beautiful lady played a tune called Phoenix Seeking His Mate. Though I cannot presume to compare myself to the ancient sage, Miss Oriole, you are in every way a worthy rival of the beautiful lady. So I will play this tune in accordance with the original score. (Wang 2000, 171)

A more classic story still tells of how those who commanded music in the imperial palace were called Ling officials, whose ancestor was Ling Lun (伶伦), who lived at the time of the Yellow Emperor. He imitated the sound of the phoenix to create tones of music, which was thus called by the ancients “the tones of phoenix.” In The Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei there is a story about the origin of music: After that, he made twelve pipes altogether and brought them to the foot of Yuan Shu Mountain to listen to the singing of the phoenixes there. Accordingly, he set the tones of the twelve pitches. The female bird sang six times and so did the male. Their singing was in harmony with the ‘Gong of Huang Zhong’. (Lü 2005, 173)

Listening to the singing of the phoenix reflects the legendary bionic principle behind the origin of Chinese music. The phoenix and jade, as the subjects of myth, are related to each other in the tone names of “Yize” (夷则) and “Yuheng” (玉衡) from visual and acoustic perspectives, because jade can make sounds, too. According to The Guodian Chu Slips to feel the “sound of jade” is indispensable in the process of a gentleman becoming a sage. The story that Ling Lun, the legendary founder of music, learned to create music from the phoenix tells one that the sound of the phoenix was a key element in the

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construction of the phoenix myth. In The Biography of Various Immortals: Xiao Shi (Lie Xian Zhuan: Xiao Shi, 列仙传·萧史), it is said that Xiao Shi taught Nongyu (弄玉, Xiao’s wife) to make phoenix-like sounds. Years later, she could create a sound like a phoenix when playing the xiao (萧, a vertical bamboo flute). Due to the close relationship between the phoenix and bamboo in popular belief, some musical instruments were made of bamboo and their sound is compared to that of the phoenix, such as xiao and sheng (笙, a reed pipe wind instrument). This concept originates from mythology, though it obviously contains elements of bionics. Given these myths into which the phoenix is encoded in Chinese culture, people cannot help but ask how the phoenix became a sacred animal in mythology. How did it enter into the tradition of Chinese civilization and continue to develop until today? Research into the phoenix—a fictional bird—helps one to know better the legendary nature of Chinese culture and the reproductive system of local myths. This chapter focuses on the relationship between the great changes of culture and politics between the Shang and the Zhou and the myth about the “sound of the phoenix” and “scripts carried by the phoenix” created by the Zhou people. The idea of fate or the mandate of heaven since the Western Zhou has interacted with phoenix myths, leading to the popularity of the images of the divine phoenix and the auspicious phoenix in official ideology. The construction and evolution of phoenix myths since the Western Zhou reflects the gradual replacement of the owl image, which was worshipped from the prehistoric age to the Shang Dynasty. In The Master Who Embraces Simplicity: Extensive Analogies (Bao Pu Zi: Bo Yu, 抱朴子·博喻), Ge Hong wrote (1988: 169) that the qilin and the phoenix are so noble that people cannot have enough of them; foxes and owls are so noisy that people dislike them. One can learn of the contrast between the auspicious qilin and phoenix on the one hand and ordinary foxes and owls on the other. Yet, if one does not know the context of the construction of the myth of the phoenix singing on Mount Qi by the Western Zhou people, one will not understand how the worship of the phoenix has replaced that of the owl, which had lasted for thousands of years in the Chinese tradition. Before the Shang Dynasty, the owl was still a divine bird; after the Western Zhou Dynasty, replaced by the phoenix, the owl was degraded by Confucianists, viewed as a vile bird or a bird lacking filial piety. It is hard to identify the reasons behind this change without knowing and understanding the national political campaign that led to the construction of the phoenix as a new object of worship by the Western Zhou people (Fig. 20.3).

20.3 Myth of the Phoenix Singing on Mount Qi Tradition is, initially, created and then developed by people. Each dynasty in Chinese history has created myths of its own. In early ancient history, the Zhou’s conquest of the Shang was an incredibly important event, and the cultural tradition of the Zhou has had a profound influence until today. Important cultural ideas such as heaven’s mandate, heaven’s virtue, the system of enfeoffment, and the making of rites and

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Fig. 20.3 A zun of the Ba State, decorated with a phoenix pattern, unearthed from the tomb M1017 of the Western Zhou at Dahekou, Yicheng County, Shanxi Province. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing

music are all associated with phoenix myths. They have dominated the development of ideology since the Western Zhou and became key sources on which Confucianism drew. Mount Qi is related to many allusions. For example, the Romance of the Three Kingdom makes it known to all that Zhu Geliang sent troops to Mount Qi six times. However, Mount Qi is well-known to Chinese people as the place that the phoenix sang in myth. It is recorded in The Discourse of the States that the Zhou’s rise was accompanied by the singing of the phoenix on Mount Qi. So, Mount Qi was also called the Wild Land of the Phoenix. This author went to the Duke Zhou Temple to research in January 2009. The yellow land was enveloped in a layer of fog that winter, adding to the mystery of the temple. The statue of Duke Zhou in celebration of the foundation of the Western Zhou stood in the park. In the temple, a horizontal stele was inscribed with the words “male and female phoenix singing together.” Other temples include the Jiangyuan Temple (姜嫄, Jiangyuan, the female ancestor of the Zhou people), and Houji Temple (后稷, Houji, the son of Jiangyuan, in charge of agriculture). These demonstrate how people of later generations remember Western Zhou history. Zhou Culture and Duke Zhou’s Temple (Guo 2003), a book compiled by local scholars, combines the historical events that happened three thousand years ago with oral traditions, putting forward a popular and vivid local version of the myths. These folklore materials, which were not taken seriously before, are used as the third type of evidence. Owing to the bad reputation and chaotic situation of the Shang Dynasty, many dukes and princes went to Xiqi, the ruling place of Zhou. After the death of King Wen of Zhou, King Wu came to the throne, governing his state well, adding to the great power of the state. Since King Wen did not achieve his ambition to suppress the Shang Dynasty, King Wu decided to do it. One morning, King Wu heard a bird singing on top of a mountain. He listened carefully, and knew that the bird said, “Overthrow the Shang Dynasty and King Zhou!” Putting on his clothes, King Wu went out of his room and took a look at the mountain. He saw a big beautiful bird there. It was a phoenix intending to assist King Wu of the Western Zhou. King Wu viewed it as a great opportunity to take action. With the help of Jiang Ziya he united other vassal states to fight against the reign of King Zhou of Shang, which is a well-known event in history. It is said that when King Wen was born, the phoenix sang in the Phoenix Mountain 7.5 miles to the southwest of downtown. The narrative that ‘The phoenix sings a joyful air, on the

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lofty mount o’er there. The plane trees rise into the air, on the southern slope o’er there’in The Book of Poetry (Wang 579) tells this story. Duke Zhou’s Temple was built in the Tang Dynasty, increasing the fame of the scenery here. (Guo 2003, 135–137)

Phoenix folklore passed on by the local people differs from the myths recorded in text known by scholars. For example, in regards to the event of the phoenix’s singing in the Book of Poetry, the locals explain it as a sign that King Wen was to be born, while the traditional annotation is: “Duke Zhaokang persuaded King Cheng to be ambitious”. The reason why King Wu of Zhou suppressed King Zhou of Shang relates to the divine will conveyed by the singing of the phoenix. One must admit how great the folk imagination is. It can be explored further with the understanding that historical narratives often contain myths, and that this indigenous cultural mechanism generates mythistory. Besides the Duke Zhou’s Temple, there is a mountain called Phoenix Mountain. In the southeast of Baoji City, there is a “Phoenix Girl Tower”, abbreviated as “Phoenix Tower”, which is said to be used by the people of Qin to hold a memorial service for Nongyu, the wife of Xia Shi and daughter of Duke Mu of Qin. It is not surprising that the folklore about the phoenix happens in one cultural region, from the myth of the phoenix singing in the Zhou to that of the phoenix being attracted by the Qin people playing the xiao. Fengxiang County (凤翔, flying phoenix), between Baoji City and Mount Qi is famous for the “West Phoenix Wine”. The concentration of so many places of interest in the name of phoenix should be taken seriously. Local scholars believe that the Phoenix Mountain is north of Duke Zhou’s Temple. One may also learn something about the phoenix mountain from the Illustrated Book of Famous Historical Sites in Central Shaanxi (Guan Zhong Sheng Ji Tu Zhi, 关中胜 迹图志): 15 li north of Qi County lies the Phoenix Mountain behind Duke Zhou’s Temple. In general record books, it is the place where the phoenix sings. At the foot of the mountain, there is a cave named Rising Sun Cave.

To the South of Phoenix Mountain lies a basin surrounded by mountains on three sides. Quantities of trees grow there, and in the centre, a famous spring has been there since ancient times—Runde Spring. According to geomancers, this basin provides a good geomantic omen. For many years, Phoenix Mountain has been a place for the public to “burn incense” to ask deities to cure infertility. In Anthology of China’s Local Chronicles: The Record of Qi County (Zhong Guo Di Fang Zhi Ji Cheng: Qi Shan Xian Zhi, 中国地方志集成·岐山县志) (compiled by Hu Shengyou in the Qing Dynasty), the place where the Phoenix Mountain lies is documented: It lies 15 li to the Northwest of the county, also to the southwest of Crawling Mound. The mountain is also called Fengming Mountain (Fengming means “phoenix sings”). In The Book of Poetry, one can find the following sentence: “The phoenix sings on the top of the mountain” (The soil in the mountain is said to be colorful with the trace made by the claw of phoenix).

Thus, scholars adopting this view found the real place where the phoenix sings, as recorded in The Book of Poetry. Even the colorful soil is related to the phoenix.

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The concept of “History” in literature may give one some clues to obtain real cultural information. Zheng Xuan, who annotated The Book of Poetry: the Crawling Mound, viewed the event of the phoenix singing on the mountain as a metaphorical background to this poem. In terms of notable “local scenery”, many place names of Mount Qi County contain the word “phoenix” such as Fengchu (little phoenix), Fengming (phoenix sings) County, Fengming Channel, Fengming Village, Fengming Mountain, Fengxin (the heart of phoenix) and Longfeng (dragon and phoenix) Terrace. In short, memories related to sacred things here originated three thousand years ago, when the Zhou Dynasty was founded. Researchers have a long way to go to see history from the new perspective of mythistory and to find more elements of geographical myths in respect of local records. The building of power in the Western Zhou is a key to constructing the Chinese myths of the phoenix. However, this does not mean that there were no phoenix myths before the Western Zhou. Oracle bone inscriptions indicate that the characters 凤 (phoenix) and 风 (wind) could originally be used interchangeably. This comes from the ancient legendary understanding of meteorology: airflow within the universe is not a natural phenomenon, but an imagined supernatural biological phenomenon— the beat of the great wings of the phoenix makes the “wind” (Ye 1994). In the oracle bone inscriptions, deities in four directions correspond respectively to four kinds of wind. Another mention of wind in the inscriptions is “the Emperor dispatched phoenix (wind)”. The reason behind the wind coming from four or eight directions was explained as a result of the Emperor’s order by which the phoenix flies and moves its wings. In the Collected Oracle Bone Inscriptions Scripts No. 14225 and No. 14226 one finds: Two dogs for wind, the messenger of the Emperor Burning cattle for wind, the messenger of the Emperor

The former script asks people to sacrifice two dogs for wind, the Emperor’s messenger, while the latter asks them to burn cattle. “The two scripts show clearly that the wind is the messenger of the Heavenly Emperor, that is, in the mind of the people of Shang, the wind is divine” (Chang 2010, 67). The phoenix myths before the Western Zhou are thus certainly connected with the myths of the Shang Dynasty, which mixed up the wind and the phoenix. Since the phoenix was the messenger of the Heavenly Emperor in the Shang Dynasty, its divinity and auspicious features are clear. However, the Shang people believed the phoenix to be less divine than the owl, as shown in the artistic images found on Shang objects, such as the owl zun discussed in Chap. 15. One must now turn to the image narratives containing the phoenix myths, for these represent the most important evidence among all the materials about the worship of the phoenix before the Western Zhou.

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20.4 Image Narrative of the Origins of Phoenix Myths It will be instructive to look at nine examples of image narratives that have been newly excavated, arranged in chronological order. Together they reveal how the image of the divine phoenix developed in China. (1)

(2)

The butterfly-shaped ivory carved with the image of double birds flying to the sun (Fig. 20.4) was excavated in the ruins of Hemudu in Yuyao, Zhejiang Province, 1977 (Hemudu Site Museum 2002, 63). Some scholars suggested that this is a representation of the worship of divine birds and the sun, while others regarded the double birds as double phoenixes. If the latter is true, the image on the ivory carving can be said to be the oldest phoenix image in China. Wang Hailong (2007, 137) put forward another explanation: the image shows the worship of reproductive organs. He believed that the “sun” in the centre is a vagina, while the function of two “birds” either side is obvious. Whether the concentric circle in the centre is the sun or the egg of a bird is arguable. Sun Qigang, in the light of bird totem worship of the Hemudu people, maintained that since there is a point in the centre of the egg, this egg must be a fertilized ovum, and the whole image thus represents the worship of birth (cf. Lin 1992, 231–234). A flat jade carving in the form of a bird was excavated from the fourth tomb in the sixteenth tomb group found by archeologists in the Niuheliang ruins in October 2002. Some saw it as a jade goose, while others called it a jade eagle (Zhou 2006, 95–108). However, scholars represented by Guo Dashun regarded it as a phoenix (2009, 83). To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, an array of national treasure-level cultural relics were displayed at an exhibition called “Early China” held by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the Capital Museum in 2009. It was

Fig. 20.4 An ivory carved with the motif of double phoenixes flying to the sun. Photographed at the Hemudu Museum in 2009

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Fig. 20.5 A jade phoenix of the Hongshan culture unearthed in Liaoning. Photographed at the Capital Museum in Beijing in 2009

fortunate that this author has been able to photograph a close-up of the jade phoenix of the Hongshan culture (Fig. 20.5). This jade is a “must-see” if one wishes to know what the jade carved in the form of a phoenix looked like in the North five thousand years ago. The caption of the exhibit reads: “Among the bird-shaped jades in Liaoxi, only this one can be called a jade phoenix. It lies on its stomach, turning its head back, with its beak a little curved. It has a bulging warty forehead. The feathers on its back turn upward; the broad short tail hangs down. The whole image is realistic, resembling the features of a goose or vulture. This jade phoenix was found under the head of the tomb owner, so it may have been used as a medium for the owner to ascend to heaven.” Guo Dashun (2009, 83) called the owner a shaman or dawu. Jade birds are thus seen as religious instruments used to communicate with deities. This jade was displayed once again at an exhibition named “Through Time and Space: Jades from the Hongshan Culture” in Beijing in April 2012. The Beijing Art Museum published a catalogue in which the jade bird was named officially “jade phoenix” (2012, 28–29). Both dragon and phoenix images were found on the jades of the Hongshan culture, which mark a milestone in the history of Chinese mythology. (3)

(4)

A phoenix-headed pottery cup belonging to the Zhaobaogou culture was housed in the Chifeng Museum in Inner Mongolia. Made nearly 7000 years ago, it was referred to by the local media as “the first phoenix in China”. It was not excavated but rather was collected from Ongniud Banner in Chifeng City. There is a slightly incomplete crest on top of the phoenix’s head. It has been seen by some as the image of an eagle deified into a phoenix. A phoenix-shaped jade pendant was excavated from the 14th tomb of the Sunjiagang ruins, Pengli County, Hunan Province, belonging to the Shijiahe culture. This is a fine jade of openwork carving dating back 4000 years. This jade phoenix shows that although the Chinese character system had not appeared before the Xia Dynasty, the image of the phoenix very clearly had. From the same tomb, there are jade pendants with dragon images, revealing that

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(6)

(7) (8)

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the concept of the combination of the dragon and the phoenix was initiated in prehistorical times and developed through the jade objects of the Western Zhou Dynasty. A phoenix-shaped jade ring was excavated in Tianmen, Hubei Province, belonging to the Shijiahe culture (Gu 2005). Its form and style are related to that of the jade phoenix unearthed from the Yin Ruins in Anyang City. A jade phoenix of the Shang Dynasty excavated in the tomb of Fu Hao in the Yin Ruins. Dating back three thousand years, it is the only unearthed jade phoenix belonging to the Shang Dynasty. It seems that the people of Shang had little interest in the phoenix, which contradicts the opinion of Wen Yiduo that the xuan bird, that the Shang people worshiped fervently, was a phoenix. The couple Lü Jianchang and Yang Jianfang put forward the view that it did not belong to the Shang, but was a prehistorical Chu jade obtained by Fu Hao. It, therefore, belonged to the style of jade phoenixes used in the Shijiahe culture (Lü 1996; Yang 2006, 185–186). The you wine vessel with the handle carved with a phoenix pattern excavated in Western Zhou’s Yanxiadu ruins, on Liuli River, Fangshan District, Beijing. The Western Zhou bronze collected in the Poly Art Museum in Beijing—he ( 盉, the three-legged bronze vessel) for heating liquor in the shape of the phoenix head. Pengji phoenix-shaped zun of the Western Zhou housed in the Poly Art Museum in Beijing (Fig. 20.6).

Fig. 20.6 Pengji phoenix-shaped zun of the Western Zhou. Photographed at the Poly Art Museum in Beijing in 2009

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The nine examples of image narrative above are witness to the development of civilization from the Zhaobaogou culture in the North and the Hemudu culture in the South 7000 years ago to the Zhou Dynasty. The relatively standardized image of the phoenix can be found on carved jades of the Shijiahe culture over 4000 years ago, which, according to the legendary history, should be the dynasty of Yao and Shun. Taken together with the story of the phoenix coming to the palaces of Emperor Yao and Shun recorded in inherited literature, along with the cultural relics excavated, there is little doubt that the myth of auspicious phoenix appeared at that time. The ancients believed that when an emperor was capable and virtuous, the phoenix would come to sing and dance. The Book of Documents: The Counsels of Gao-Yao has spoken of Emperor Shun: When the nine parts of the service, as arranged by the Emperor, have all been performed, the male and female phoenix come with their measured gamboling (into the court). The various animals lead one another to dance. (Legge 2013, 55)

Xie Zhaozhe in his book Investigations on the Five Categories of Things: (Wu Za Zu, Wu Bu Si, 五杂俎·物部四) wrote: “When the Tians hold the political power in Qi, the virtue is declining. Even though the music of Yu is played from day to night, there is no wind from four directions, phoenixes do not come and animals do not dance”. This statement emphasizes the connection between the wind and the phoenix and how the rites of listening to the wind in ancient times are related to the origin of music in China. The practice of listening to the wind, and the imagination of listening to the phoenix have given rise to colorful myths. One may infer from the jade phoenix of the Shijiahe culture that Chinese people were familiar with the imagined arrival of the phoenix on earth 4000 years ago. Phoenix myths in the inherited literature regarding a period earlier than the time of Yao and Shun can be found in the words given in memory of Shaogao or Shaou-haou (少皞). It is said in legend that Shaogao was the leader of the group of Eastern Yi. He was also called Zhi (挚) or Jintianshi (金天氏). Eastern Yi used birds as a totem. It is said that Shaogao used the name of a bird as his official title. After he died, he became the god of the west. In The Commentary of Zuo Qiuming: the Thirteenth Year of Duke Zhao, Yanzi said, When my ancestor Shaou-haou Che succeeded to the kingdom, there appeared at that time a phoenix, and therefore he arranged his government under the nomenclature of birds, making bird officers, and naming them after birds. There were so and so Phoenix-bird, minister of the calendar. (Legge 2011, 667)

Later, the “phoenix calendar” was used to name a calendar; “Phoenix-bird” was used to refer to an official in charge of the calendar. Literary men like using dragon diagrams and phoenix calendars in antithetical lines, extolling the orthodox origins of China.

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20.5 Descent Myths of the Phoenix and De of Heaven: Legitimacy Granted from Heaven Since the beginning of the twentieth century, new knowledge has been brought to the study of early ancient history with the development of Chinese archeology. Compared to the archeological findings of the Shang Dynasty’s capital in Anyang, Henan Province, the archeological report of the Western Zhou, though sufficiently rich, does not include royal tombs. Scholars of Western Zhou history expect to dig into the unsolved myths using new findings, since the written records are absent. In other words, scholars of the humanities take an interest in changing the conception of history that is fettered by writing. If one looks at the catalogue of The Complete Works of Guo Moruo (1982), one may find articles such as “I Hope that More Iron Objects can be Discovered”. In 1951, Guo Moruo wrote an article “Discussion of Zhou Dynasty Society”, in which he argued that the Zhou should be seen as a slave society the same as the Shang, rather than a feudal society—an idea put forward by Fan Wenlan. Although the number of people buried alive with tomb owners in the Zhou Dynasty was far less than in the Shang (only six people in 156 graves), Guo Moruo and other scholars have argued that this cannot indicate that the two dynasties had different systems. He claimed that the excavated tombs of the Shang Dynasty are royal tombs, while those of the Zhou Dynasty are not. This means that the tombs of the two dynasties cannot be compared. The debate between these two famous historians took place half a century ago, though royal tombs of the Western Zhou have still not been discovered Nowadays, historians are more curious about what led to the rise of the Western Zhou culture than they are the question of whether it was a slave society. There is a Chinese saying: “He who gets the Central Plain gets the world”. The Zhou, a small state in the west of the Central Plain, replaced the Shang, which had governed the Central Plain for six thousand years. Later generations refer to this change of dynasties as a “revolution”. The religious and mythological concepts used by the Western Zhou to overthrow the Shang were also revolutionary. Discussions on these aspects will be of cultural significance in order for one to understand the overall history of Chinese civilization. The most important cultural features of Western Zhou history are heaven, heaven’s mandate, and heaven’s virtue; title granting; formulating rules of ritual and music. They can be summarized more concisely as follows: heaven’s mandate, enfeoffment, ritual, and music. Modern scholars have some new understanding of the cultural changes brought by the Western Zhou (cf. Wang 1959; Fu 2005). In the beginning of his article “On the Systems of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties”, Wang Guowei (1959, 453–454) wrote that the period between the Shang and Zhou experienced the sharpest political and cultural changes in China and that the system of the Western Zhou was different from the Shang in three respects. The first was the patriarchal clan enfeoffment system. The second was their ancestral temple system. The third was the prohibiting of marriage

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between people with the same surname. Wang believed the purpose of these systems was to form a moral community with rulers, officials, and common people. Wang Guowei focused on the change of systems that occurred from the Shang to the Zhou. Cultural anthropologists believe cultural inheritance should be seen from three aspects: material, system, and ideology. Compared to materials and systems, which are easier to change, it is harder and a slower process to change ideology. Wang Guowei demonstrated this ideological change based on system change, which inevitably led to misunderstandings. The ritual and music culture of the Western Zhou are thus mistakenly interpreted based on modern moral ideas. The best way to understand the fictitious moral representations of the Western Zhou is to start with inherited literature passed down from the Western Zhou, such as The Book of Poetry, The Book of Documents, or inscriptions on ancient bronze objects, which can be used as the most appropriate original materials. Modern scholars have tended to answer questions about ancient times in terms of morality, which misled later scholars. The contemporary scholar Chao Fulin criticized himself: “In The Book of Documents: The Announcement of the Duke of Shao, Duke Shao believed that ‘the Xia and Shang Dynasties fell for not respecting de’, so he tried to persuade Duke Zhou to cultivate it. I saw de here as people’s moral state, a view shared by many other scholars. However, one has overlooked that de in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties is different from that of later generations” (Chao 2007, 105). In fact, de originally does not belong to people, but heaven. Only by understanding that “heaven” in ancient times is a mythological concept can one understand that “heaven’s mandate”, “heaven’s son” and “heaven’s morality” are all concepts of mythological thinking. Atheistic discourse dominated the academic field, so the religious and mythological dimensions of the history of the Western Zhou were largely neglected. Discussions on the nature of society (slave society or feudal society) dominated the twentieth century, and focused on social systems rather than the history of ideology. Representing the big tradition of Chinese civilization, which was seven thousand years, the phoenix is the most important mythical animal related to the concept of heaven’s mandate as it was understood in the Western Zhou. The compilers of The Cambridge History of China: The Ch’in and Han Empires believe that the Zhou kings may have come from a different ethnic group (compared to the Shang Kings) and they worshiped a different deity—heaven. They were subject to heaven because it was heaven that gave them the authority to rule (Cui and Lu 1992, 707–708). This Western Zhou kingship can be understood from the perspectives of religion and mythology, that is, to put the secular political issue in the context of sacred conceptions of three thousand years ago. The literary materials closest to this context are The Book of Documents and The Book of Poetry. However, the newly excavated literature as the second type of evidence—the inscriptions on bronze objects of the Western Zhou— are even closer to the context of the unity of religion and government. The following examples are used to analyse the religious belief at the time. The article “The Prince Shi” in The Book of Documents is said to be the response of Duke Zhou to Duke Shao’s questions when Duke Zhou assisted King Cheng in

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the early Zhou Dynasty. The topic of the response is the transfer of heaven’s mandate from the Shang to the Zhou, in which Duke Zhou made dim mention of the singing of the phoenix, which takes the form of the interrogative sentence: If you draw yourself up without an effort to supply my deficiencies, no good will flow to the people from our age and experience. We shall not hear the voices of the phoenixes, and how much less can it be thought that we shall be able to make (the king’s virtue) equal (to Heaven)?(Legge 2013, 297)

Normally the ministers assisting the king should have both virtues and talents. However, Duke Zhou indicated another important condition: whether a king can communicate with deities. He gave an example of kings’ ministers in the Shang Dynasty. These ministers were not normal officials, but more like the clergy, with the ability to communicate with heaven, which can be seen from the names “巫贤” (wuxian), in which the wu means “shaman”. Thus one can understand why the political concepts of the Zhou people should be understood as concepts of mythological politics (or politics of religious authority). One can also understand why the singing of the phoenix represents heaven’s mandate. The inability to hear the sound of the phoenix means the king cannot communicate with heaven, and cannot ask for de of heaven to descend. De was a key word in Western Zhou culture, where governing the country with virtue was promoted. It is also a key term in later Confucianism, a phenomenon that deserves systematic exploration. However, before undertaking such an exploration, let one first analyse the variations that exist between surviving phoenix myths of the Zhou. Apart from the myths about the sound of the phoenix, which focus on the auditory senses, the Zhou people also constructed another myth focusing on the visual senses—the phoenix holding scripts in its beak. It is written in The Blossom of the Original Mandate (Chun Qiu Yuan Ming Bao, 春秋元命苞), an apocryphal text of the Spring and Autumn Annals, “Huoli, which means the phoenix, flies around the city of King Wen with a script in its mouth. Consequently, King Wu received the appointment of Heaven”. Like the phoenix singing on top of Mount Qi, the phoenix holding scripts gives a promise to the appointment to the throne for the king. In a Han Dynasty divination manual, Forest of Changes (Yi Lin, 易林·泰之益), Jiao Gan wrote, “The phoenix holds scripts, and sends me black jade, leading to my appointment as marquis”. Two auspicious signs, the scripts held by the phoenix and jade symbolizing the legitimate right of the marquis, came directly from the traditions of the Xia and Zhou Dynasties. For ancient emperors and dukes, this kind of proof was indispensable. These stories should thus not be seen as literature, but as mythistory. Another version of the phoenix holding scripts myth is called “the red crow holding scripts in its beak” or “the red bird holding a jade in its beak”. It is recorded in The Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei: The Beginning: “Then a red crow carrying a red paper was seen perched on the roof of the ancestral temple of Zhou Dynasty (Lü, 2005, 429). The crow and scripts here are described as red. In Dragon-carvings and the Literary Mind: Emendation of Apocrypha (Wen Xin Diao Long: Zhengwei, 文心 雕龙·正纬), Liu Xie summarized the auspicious omens: the white fish, scarlet crow,

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yellow silver and purple jade (2003, 45). Four auspicious colors are mentioned here. “The scarlet crow” has the same meaning as “the golden crow”, which is the bird of the sun, a metaphor for the sun. Another example can be found in Mozi: Condemnation of offensive warfare III: One day, a red bird landed at the altar on Mount Qi of Zhou, holding in its beak a piece of jade on which the following words were inscribed: ‘Heaven orders King Wen of Zhou to overthrow the Shang Dynasty and take over all its territory’. (Wang and Wang 2006, 163)

It combined the myth of black jade given by heaven and that of the singing of the phoenix. When one refers to “the phoenix gathered on Mount Qi” (Wang 2005, 236) in the first year of King Wu of Zhou in the new version of The Bamboo Annals, one can see that although the phoenix and the red crow belong to different categories, they have the same function as divine signs. There are two reasons for the scarlet crow, the red bird, and the fiery phoenix being connected. The first is that the scarlet crow is a metaphor for the sun, and the phoenix is also the bird of the sun. The second is that the phoenix is red since one has words like “red phoenix” and “red cavern”, which can be found in the following literature. In the annotation of鸾 (luan, mythical bird like the phoenix) in The Classic of Birds (Qin Jing, 禽经), Zhang Hua claimed the red phoenix has a red head and red wings. In The Classic of Mountains and Seas: the Classic of the Southern Mountains, it records: 500 li further east is a mountain called Danxue (red cavern) where there are rich deposits of gold and jade. …There is a bird called phoenix which looks like a rooster and is draped with colorful feather. The patterns of the feather on its head, its wings, its back, its chest and its belly are like the Chinese characters “德”(de), “义”(yi), “礼”(li), “仁”(ren), “信” (xin), …… respectively. The bird eats only natural food, and often sings and dances. Whenever it appears, there will be peace and order over all under the sky. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 17. The words in the brackets are added.)

This description is filled with a sense of Confucian morality. Since the phoenix in the description appears on the mountain of the red cavern, later generations call the phoenix “red phoenix”. The scripts brought by the red phoenix are called red scripts, or phoenix scripts, which are auspicious omens for the appointment of ancient emperors. Another symbol of the divine right of kings given by heaven in the inherited literature is the dragon diagram. The dragon and phoenix together often represent the ambition of the king. In the later period of feudalism, the dragon and the phoenix became gender-specific. The former stood for the emperor, while the latter stood for the empress. These metaphors became so commonplace that later generations forgot that the myth of the phoenix singing, created by the Zhou people, was initially an allusion to King Wen of Zhou receiving the mandate of heaven. Probably only the people living on Mount Qi remember that the phoenix was a metaphor for King Wen. The following is the legend told by Guo Huaizhi, a male, aged 70, living in Beiguo Village, Fengming (Phoenix sings) Town, Qi County. The phoenix sang on top of Mount Qi. The phoenix represents the rise of Zhou Dynasty. When it refers to a person, it is King Wen, also known as Jichang (姬昌). When he was the

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Duke of Northwest, he was dissatisfied with King Zhou because the ruler was obsessed with the imperial concubine, Daji. Therefore, Dukes of Northwest, Northeast, North-south, and North-north all gathered to discuss national affairs. They wanted to get rid of Daji, but King Zhou disagreed. Jichang criticized the king most severely, leading to his imprisonment by King Zhou in the capital Chaoge (now Anyang City) for seven years. Jichang, the later King Wen, was then a capable and virtuous minister, the pillar of the country. Jichang had five children, the first son Yikao, the second Jifa, the third Guan, the fourth Duke Dan of Zhou, and the fifth Cai. To save his father, Yikao sent King Zhou 3,000 treasures of Xiqi. The first was Qixiangju (a cart with seven aromas), which were made by the Yellow Emperor. It was also called Ruyiju (a cart that can drive anywhere according to one’s wishes). The second was the felt that can help one to sober up. Other ministers also pleaded with King Zhou, so that the King promised to release Jichang. However, Daji had fallen in love with Yikao. King Wen started to turn back to Xiqi from Yin. When one passed Tongguan, one came to Xiqi. There is a mountain in Tongguan called Rabbit Mountain. Once Jichang went into Tongguan, he thought of his son whom he was forced to eat by King Zhou. He vomited the flesh of his son, which then became rabbits once the lumps of flesh dropped to the ground. Hence the name of the mountain. After Jichang came to Xiqi, he proposed four terms: ren (仁), yi (义), li (礼) and rang (让). To be more specific, ren means peaceful coexistence with other dukes and their people. Yi means to govern the country following what is right and reasonable, to harm nobody, and treat them well. Li means to respect each other, with King Wen himself setting an example. Rang means to yield one’s position to someone more capable regardless of his status. These four terms produced a good effect in the Western Zhou. There were also particular measures. The first was to encourage and reward farming, sericulture, and filature… In the end, the Zhou State became the most powerful one among the four greatest duke states. King Wen, Jichang, thus resigned the throne, and his son Jifa came to it. After King Wen resigned, he studied the Eight Diagrams in the Information Tower, where he explored both astronomy and geography. When the Information Tower started to be built, human bones were found when the ground was dug for a foundation. After the tower was built, King Wen dreamed of Jiang Ziya in the tower, who was the later Duke Zhou, also named as “Flying Bear”. This is the story of “dreaming the flying bear at night”. King Wen was the title given by King Zhou to Jichang, who was cordial, frank, deferential, temperate, courteous, and was thus called “Wen” (文), which means “civilized”. After Western Zhou was established, Jifa was named King Wu. The rise of Xiqi enabled the people of Zhou to be powerful enough to attack King Zhou. In history, this event was called “the phoenix singing on top of Mount Qi”, in which King Wen was the phoenix, and “to sing” means to develop. In The Book of Poetry, the phoenix is documented as singing on top of a mountain. However, no one has ever seen a phoenix. It is imagined by man, like the dragon. The rise of the Western Zhou was a real event. There is not a particular event corresponding to the singing of the phoenix. (Zhao 1997)

The folklore above shows the original intention of the myth, that is, to use the sound of the phoenix to establish a causal link between heaven’s mandate and human efforts. Besides The Book of Documents and Mozi, more examples can be found in the inscriptions on ancient bronze objects. How did de “descend” from the world of deities and ancestral spirits? Two articles inscribed on bronze objects, a xing bell (兴钟) and a qiang basin (史墙盘) contain the following sentence: “The emperor of heaven sent down excellent de”. It shows that the subject of de is the supreme

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deity. These two articles can effectively prove the origin of de and its religious and mythological meaning. Inscriptions on bronze objects often start with such a sentence “The king says”. However, recently this sentence is said to have some deeper meaning. As some scholars point it out, it means “the king says in the name of deities” (Wang 1998, 353).This shows that the kings in Western Zhou were viewed as being capable of communicating with the gods. In respect of the third type of evidence, there are accounts of people possessed by the divine phoenix. The following is narrated by Guo Zhilin, primary school education, male, aged 76, and Liu Jinglian, illiterate, female, aged 72, living in Beiguo Village, Fengming Town, Qi County. Halfway up the Phoenix Mountain, there was once a big green rock, where a phoenix was born and flew out. Later, the phoenix flew to Fengxiang County and came back. The divine phoenix possessed some people here — some females, old and young, with their arms waving like the wings of birds. Someone said that her home was here and that she had come back from Fengxiang County. This myth has nothing to do with King Wen of Zhou. Sometimes the deities will descend and the person who is possessed will say many words related to the phoenix. However, one cannot remember so much.

One can better understand some key concepts that were important to the civilization of the Western Zhou, such as “revolution”, “ritual and music”, and the important cultural measures of the Western Zhou rulers like “enfeoffment” and “governing the country with de” once one acknowledges and understandings the background of mythological beliefs that governed life in the Western Zhou period, which included communication with deities and a belief that deities, heaven’s mandate, and de, could all descend from heaven. The manufacture, awarding and inheritance of bronze objects were conducted in the context of communicating with deities in temples. Their system of ritual and music was a means to link heaven and man. The system was strengthened to establish a steady relationship between them, to ensure that de descends from heaven, and people get protection from deities and ancestral spirits rather than receive moral education. Enfeoffment seems like the granting of power and wealth, but this action is dominated by belief. In short, the system of “dividing incense” in popular religion observed in field research represents more or less the religious nature of enfeoffment of the Western Zhou. As “the son of heaven”, the kings of Zhou represented the most powerful communicator with deities. The objects and symbols (official titles and names) awarded by him connoted the distributing of power from the deities, after communicating with them in the main temple, to his subjects in the small temples through the media of dividing incense. Since de descends from the divine world in times of mythological belief, there is normally a medium for this—a more concrete object, usually in the form of jades, bronzes, or legendary animals. It is written in The Book of Rites: Interchange of Missions twixt Different Courts: “Jade gui and zhang stand out conspicuous as the symbols of rank—representing de”. Kong Yingda annotated: “When betrothing, you should take the jade without other money so that you show your rank. It means if one has de, he will be successful in doing everything he wants to and need not use other objects. The jade is compared to one’s de” (Ruan 1980, 1694). Later generations used it as a metaphor for persons who are talented or virtuous. In the times before

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the appearance of Chinese characters, jade objects had appeared in the Longshan culture, representing the mandate of heaven and the de of heaven. In addition to jade instruments, divine animals also represent de descending from heaven. The phoenix even has a name with the word “de” in it: “demu” (德牧). The flight of the phoenix means the rise of virtuous and capable monarchs. Even the decorative patterns on the head of the phoenix were called “de”. In The Classic of Mountains and Seas: the Classic of Areas within the Seas, there is one sentence about it: The wonder bird is singing freely and the phoenix is dancing happily. The markings on the head of the phoenix look exactly like the Chinese character ‘德’, which means virtue, while those on her wings look like the Chinese character ‘顺’, which means obedience…. Wherever it appears, there will be peace overall under the sky. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 317)

This idea was passed on, almost becoming mythological common sense. One important question should be addressed, however, concerning the cause and effect of the symbol de. The decorative patterns on the head of the phoenix are called de. Did the name come from the descent of the de of heaven, or did it lead to the phoenix being called the king of birds? In ancient Chinese, there is a phrase “德辉” (dehui, de shines). One example from The Book of Rites: Music is “When de shines and acts within (a superior), the people are sure to accept (his rule)” (Legge 1885b, 126, slightly modified). Another example form the Book of Han: Biograph of Jiayi goes like this: “The phoenix flies high in the sky and descend only when it beholds de shine”. An element of auspiciousness can be seen in these examples. The ancients believed that the phoenix had a particular habit. Normally, it flies high in the sky. Once it sees the de shine, it will descend. The book Dao De Jing inherited the concept of heaven’s de from the Western Zhou. Even though Laozi constructed de (德, virtue) as a philosophical concept, the Confucianists reconstructed the idea in a moral sense. Consequently, the original meaning of de can only be found in numerous inscriptions on tortoise bones and bronze objects. One can find out that de means to gain (得, de) from deities or heaven in the context of communicating with deities. Here得means to “be granted” by heaven or ancestors, rather than “gain” by themselves, which is different from the meaning of this word as understood by later generations. Explanations on the Culture of Laozi notes that the “de” of Daoists is different from the “morality” of the Confucianists. For the Daoists, “de” means primitive life, similar to “supernatural power” or “mana” in primitive belief (Xiao and Ye 1994, 115). For an individual, de means the vitality given by heaven. For a kingdom or a society, it means legitimate governance given by deities or ancestors. Even though de in this sense is closely related to heaven’s mandate, it is not equal to heaven’s mandate. Another key term of Western Zhou culture is “enfeoffment”, or “title granting”, which first appeared in the context of communicating with deities in The Book of Poetry: Hymns of Shang: The Warriors of Shang:

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When the king inspected the land, the people were awed by his command. They dared not commit any crime; they dared not idle away the time. The prince states were at his command; their happiness by granting titles was in his hand. (Wang 2008, 727, slightly modified.)

One can see that the original meaning of the word is related to the distribution of the great power of the supreme deity in human society. This meaning was then extended, referring to the son of heaven, the supreme governor dividing his divine power to his subordinates governing surrounding places. Ancient kings rewarded their relatives or subjects who made contributions with titles of nobility, treasures, and lands which surrounded the central royal area. These lands then became subordinate states. It is said that the Yellow Emperor, the first ancestor of mankind, was also the first to implement enfeoffment. However, in the Xia and Shang Dynasties, apart from the system of “conferring rui (jade symbols)”, title granting was not obvious. This system did not develop into maturity until the Western Zhou, when the system extended into large parts of the whole country. In The Book of Rites: The Rule for Royal Regulations there is a record about this: According to the regulations of emolument and rank framed by the kings, there were the duke; the marquis; the earl; the count; and the baron—in all, five gradations (of rank). There were (also), in the feudal states, Great officers of the highest grade—the ministers; and Great officers of the lowest grade; officers of the highest, the middle, and the lowest grades—in all, five gradations (of office). The territory of the son of Heaven amounted to 1000 li square; that of a duke or marquis to 500 li square; that of an earl to 79 li square; and that of a count or baron to 50 li square. (Legge 1885a, 209)

Originally, the granting of titles or the dividing of property was intended to protect the Zhou State, but the subordinate power began to grow in the Eastern Zhou, such that central theocracy gradually lost its appeal, the system of rituals and music declined, and the subordinated powers started to fight with one another. The conflicts during the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period were the negative results of “title granting”. Confucian ideals, which called for the restoration of Zhou rites, emerged to resist the disintegration of Western Zhou’s central authority. In addition, the history book The Spring and Autumn Annals came into being in the Lu State, declaring the difference between Hua (Han) and Yi (non-Han) in order to maintain the orthodoxy of “China”. The system of governing a country with lands divided came to an end with the Qin Dynasty in 221 BC However, the religious activity of dividing incense continues to this day. In the spring of 2009, this author went to a Mazu Temple in Dajia District, Taiwan, to experience the annual incense-dividing parade. In this fanatical atmosphere, this author learned about the spreading of divine power. According to anthropologists, the supernatural power in the process of spreading can be called mana (divine power), which was called de by the Western Zhou people. The inscriptions “for the use of later generations” are very common on Western Zhou bronzes. This saying now can be explained in respect of “dividing” the mana. The various examples with de are useful as references when seeking to clarify the original meaning of the states governed by de in the Western Zhou Dynasty. Lastly, one must focus on King Wen of Zhou, the object of the metaphor of the myth of

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the phoenix singing on the top of Mount Qi. It is said that before he was born, his mother, Tai’ren (太任), had abdominal pain for two days, but still could not deliver. When the sun was setting, people suddenly heard the loud sound of a bird. They saw a colorful phoenix flying from the Northeast, which then descended on a great parasol tree at the back of the west chamber where Tai’ren was to give birth to her child. Immediately the auspicious light glowed with overflowing fragrance. Duke Gu said, “Now that the phoenix is singing on top of Mount Qi, a capable and virtuous monarch is about to emerge. I wonder if our clan, Zhou, will rise because of this boy. I will give him the name ‘Chang (昌, flourishing)’”. This baby was Jichang (姬昌), King Wen of Zhou (Guo 2003, 117–120). The name “Chang” illuminates clearly and vividly that de was valued and longed for by the Western Zhou rulers. From a comparative mythological perspective, the story of the birth of Jesus potentially shares some similarities with the myth of Jichang being born to the singing of the phoenix—both Jesus and Jichang were destined be to kings by heaven. Such a comparison warrants further investigation.

Chapter 21

Jade Bi, Imperial Jade Seals, Jade Burial Suits: Mythistory of the Qin and Han Dynasties

In 221 BC the Qin conquered all the other six states and established a unified empire in China. In the Qin Dynasty and the following Han Dynasty, the unification of Chinese civilization was achieved in a broad sense. From then until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1911, the political system and geographical territory established in the Qin and Han Empires survived with little change and eventually evolved into a super-stable structure of archetypes typical of the everlasting Chinese civilization. The aim of this chapter is to probe the cultural genes of the state ideology of the Qin and Han Dynasties, and to ascertain how the mythological belief in the unity of heaven and man in the big cultural tradition helped create a new cultural coding system during the political unification of the Qin and Han, which led to the formation of the official mythical historical narratives of the period. Two topics will initially be covered in this chapter, a reinterpretation of Qin Shi Huang’s imperial jade seal, and a macroscopic cultural analysis of the three national projects of the Qin Dynasty: The Great Wall, the Straight Road and the Epang Palace. The final part of this chapter is a mythological interpretation of the jade burial suit as a wonder of the Han Dynasty, which will mark the end of this exploration into Chinese civilization. It is hoped that through the fourth type of evidence, like jade bi and seals in the Qin and Han Dynasties, one will be able to reveal significant messages relating to mythistory and the core values of Chinese civilization. Analysis of historical documents like The Records of the Historian will be conducted in such a way as to show how elements of the big tradition implicitly dominated the narrative of the small tradition and then set the writing paradigm for the Twenty-Four Histories1 in later ages.

1

It is collective term to describe 24 officially-compiled history books, covering a period from 3000 BC to the Ming dynasty in the seventeenth century.

© Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_21

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21.1 Imperial Jade Seals and Jade Bi in the Narratives of Qin History After the collapse of the Western Zhou, the Chinese society that had existed since the Xia Dynasty controlled the Central Plain broke apart politically. There then followed the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, when the various states ruled separately and fought each other for hundreds of years. Finally, the state of Qin from Guanzhong, Shaanxi, conquered the other six main states by force of arms and unified the country, establishing an empire which was the largest and most powerful in the eastern world at that time, and which became an example for later dynasties to follow (Fig. 21.1). Lasting for merely fifteen years, the Qin Dynasty left to the later ages an important and impressive material heritage, including the imperial jade seal, 12 bronze statues, the Great Wall, the Straight Road, the Epang Palace in Xianyang and the Mausoleum of Qing Shi Huang at the foot of Mount Li. Regarded as works of art or architectural projects today, they were originally designed on the basis of Chinese mythological and geomantic conceptions. The term Li’e (骊阿) was even coined in the literature and recorded in the Chinese dictionary to specifically refer to Mount Li and the Epang Palace. In Ancient Literary Collections (Gu Wen Yuan, 古文苑) Yang Xiong wrote: “The Qin built Li’e, and then the Ying (surname of Qin Shi Huang)’s regime was overthrown”. Zhang Qiao annotated that the Qin ordered laborers to work at Mount Li and then constructed the Epang Palace, which was unfinished when the Qin Dynasty collapsed. Yang Xiong’s intention of drawing lessons from the collapse of the Qin was implied. He seemed to have attributed the fall of the Qin Dynasty to the two projects in Mount Li and Xianyang, which completely drained the empire. According to The Book of Han: Biograph of Liu Xiang (Han Shu: Liu Xiang Zhuan, 汉书·刘向传), Qin Shi Huang was buried underneath Mount Li, where three layers of ground water were dug through. A grand tomb was constructed above, which was over 50 zhang (about 166 m) high and over five li in circumference. In The Records of the Historian, the interior view of the tomb of Qin Shi Huang was depicted thus: “Mercury was used to simulate the hundred rivers, the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, and the great sea … Above were representations of the heavenly constellations, below, the features of the land. Candles were made from the fat of Fig. 21.1 The royal seal of an empress of the Western Han Dynasty, unearthed in Xianyang, Shaanxi Province. Photographed at the Xianyang Museum

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“man-fish”, which was calculated to burn for a long time” (Takigawa 1986, 172). This was a wonderous microcosm of the mythical afterlife world. Qin Shi Huang was a firm believer in mythology, and his selection of Mount Li as his burial site was based on myths. A legend of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties stated that there was a woman of Mount Li revered as the offspring of heaven. After the Tang and Song Dynasties, the woman was transformed into an immortal female and honored as Mother of Mount Li. People who have been to Lintong may well understand the significant geomantic pattern of Mount Li. Zhang Yue, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, described the scenery at Mount Li and emphasized the significance of the hot spring there in a poem. After the construction of the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, Mount Li was more than ever a place where men of letters were inspired to write lines of sorrow and regret. The seventh volume of The Primary Anthology (Chu Xue Ji, 初学记) contains a poem “A Record of My Trip (Shu Xing Fu, 述行赋)” written by Cao Zhi of Wei in the Period of the Three Kingdoms. Its first two lines indicate that the vast tomb under Mount Li was, in the eyes of the poet, a perpetual monument for the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty. From the Han Dynasty to the Tang, countless rulers came there to linger and sigh over the historical events and fell into meditation over death and life. By initiating the system of absolute monarchy, the Qin Dynasty exerted a most profound influence on the Chinese political system of later ages. It also left two innovative legacies: the designation of the highest ruler of the country as Huangdi ( 皇帝, emperor), and a system of administrative division in the form of commanderies and counties. 皇帝 is composed of two characters extracted from the legend of the Warring States Period about the ancient sage-kings, namely the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors. The following is the dialogue between the monarch and the ministers, as recorded in The Records of the Historian: Annals of Qin Shi Huang: The king told his prime minister and chief counselor, “insignificant as I am, I have raised troops to punish the rebellious princes; and thanks to the sacred power of our ancestors all six kings have been chastised as they deserved, so that at last the empire is pacified. Now unless we create a new title, how can we record our achievements for posterity? Pray discuss the question of an imperial title.” The prime minister Wang Wan, the chief counselor Feng Jie and the chief justice Li Si returned this reply: “In the past the Five Emperors ruled over a thousand square li of territory, beyond which were the barons and barbarians. The barons were free to pay homage or not as they pleased, for the emperor had no control over them. Now your Majesty has raised an army of justice to punish tyrants, subjugating the whole empire so that all lands within the seas have become our provinces and countries and all the law-codes have been unified. This is something never before achieved, which not even the Five Emperors could match. We have consulted learned men and, as in ancient times there were the Heavenly Sovereign 天皇, Earthly Sovereign 地皇 and Supreme Sovereign 泰皇, of whom the last named was paramount, we presume to suggest the exalted title Taihuang or Supreme Sovereign. Your Majesty’s commands should be known as ‘edicts’, your orders as ‘decrees’, and you should refer to yourself as ‘our royal self’. ” The king replied, “ ‘Supreme’ may be omitted and ‘Sovereign’ adopted with the title of ‘Emperor’ used since ancient times. Let my appellation be Huangdi, Sovereign Emperor皇 皇 帝. ”(Sima 2008, 19-21)

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Qin Shi Huang accepted the other three proposals put forward by his ministers, but rejected the designation of Taihuang (泰皇, Supreme Sovereign) and used Huangdi (皇帝, Sovereign Emperor) instead. He changed only one character, but this should not be ignored because it manifested his serious considerations. The kings of the Western Zhou Dynasty called themselves “Sons of Heaven” to deify their rule with the mythical power. Qin Shi Huang went further and added to his appellation the character 帝 (di) which had been exclusively reserved for the supreme god in heaven since the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The title of Huangdi (emperor) came into being from then on and was adopted by the first Qin Emperor himself and all the following monarchs until Pu Yi, the last emperor of the Qing Dynasty. This should be labelled as a wonder of symbolism in human history. According to Qin’s ministers, Tai (泰) is ranked only behind heaven and earth and can be called the most honored title for man. They thought the designation of “Taihuang” was enough to show the dignity and glory of their king. However, Ying Zheng (the personal name of Qin Shi Huang) himself preferred Huangdi, a title that raised him above all other humans and contained more mythical implications. After that, Qin Shi Huang abolished the practice of giving honorific titles after the death of a monarch. In order to legitimatize his rule of an unprecedentedly big empire with symbols, Qin Shi Huang left his inscriptions on erected tablets and stones wherever he went. Moreover, he directed a drama on the historical stage to unveil his imperial regime, i.e., he ordered the creation of a founding jade seal, an unparalleled sacred treasure, out of fine jade bestowed by heaven. This precious jade seal was to be held by different owners at different times, experiencing the vicissitudes of the following dynasties, and leaving a variety of legends. The founding emperor of the Qing Dynasty in the seventeenth century followed his example in producing a magnificent imperial jade seal for the newly unified country. As Emperor Qianlong especially loved jade, the production of jade objects came to a climax during his reign. The Royal Workshop mass produced jade objects out of Hetian jade, so that not only the emperor himself took possession of different types of imperial jade seals, but members of the royal court could own jade seals as a symbol of power as well. In the Qing Dynasty exhibition hall, a part of the Exhibition of Ancient China in the National Museum today, a square grey jade seal inscribed “Seal of Emperor”, from the Palace Museum collection, is on display. At the 2010 Sotheby’s Hong Kong Auction in spring, Emperor Qianlong’s round white jade seal with the inscription of “Taishang Huangdi” (太上皇帝, the title for the emperor’s father) was sold for 95.86 million HKD (over 12 million USD), setting a new world auction record for any jade object. This imperial jade seal had doubled in value within three years, as it was sold for 46.25 million HKD at the 2007 Sotheby’s Auction. On December 8, 2011, the same jade seal appeared at the Beijing Baoli Autumn Auction and was sold at a price of 161 million HKD, setting a world record for a second time. Meanwhile, another imperial seal from the former Summer Palace was sold for 90.85 million HKD. The year 2011 marked the 100th anniversary of the overthrow of the feudal imperial system in China. As the public was commemorating the Xinhai Revolution,

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which symbolised the end of the imperial system, it happened that the jade seals from the Palace of the Qing Dynasty broke world auction records time and time again. This could have hardly been imagined by Qin Shi Huang, who started the tradition of making imperial jade seals over two thousand years ago. The purchasers, who lavished a large fortune on the jade seals, may not have perceived the emperor’s dream that had run through the two thousand year feudal history in China. The Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung (1875–1961) suggested that the myth is the collective dream of a nation. As a token of sovereignty carved with the inscription of Chinese characters, Qin Shi Huang’s founding jade seal embodied the small tradition of regarding oracle bone inscriptions as a way of communicating with the gods. Meanwhile, made of jade rather than gold, silver or bronze, this symbol of power of the first empire in China manifested the big tradition of attaching mythical value to jade objects. In other words, both the big tradition of cultural values and the small tradition of mystified script helped to define the symbolic connotations of the imperial jade seal. It is a one-sided view to note only the inscription on the imperial jade seal or only the material of the seal, thus separating the big tradition from the small tradition. Rather, a comprehensive perspective will ensure the revelation and full understanding of the multi-level cultural implications of this symbol of Chinese civilization. According to popular belief, the imperial seal was made of a superior quality jade believed to be unique in the world, the well-known He Shi Bi. Throughout history, the legend of the disc has been of the most mystical renown, and profoundly significant. The story of this precious jade was recorded in such documents as Hanfeizi: He Shi (韩非子·和氏) and New Tales: Varied Matters V (Xin Xu: Za Shi Wu, 新序·杂 事五) by Liu Xiang (77–6 BC), a famous scholar in the Western Han Dynasty. The story goes that in the Spring and Autumn Period, Bian He, a person in the state of Chu, obtained a piece of jade stone at the foot of Mount Jing and made his offer to his king, named Li. King Li had his jeweller examine the stone, who said it was mere stone. King Li punished him by having his left foot cut off. After King Wu came to the throne, Bian He once again offered his grand stone to the king, but it was still deemed to be mere stone by the king’s jade worker. He was punished for the second time and lost his right foot. In 690 BC, when King Wen came to the throne, Bian He held his jade stone and cried at the foothill of Mount Jing until he ran out of tears and shed blood down his cheeks. King Wen sent his man to ask him about his grievance, and Bian He replied, “I am not grieving for my feet. I’m grieving for the wrong that a precious jade is called a stone and an honest man a liar.” Upon hearing this, King Wen had his jeweller cut open the stone, and finally found it was really a rare precious jade. It was called He Shi Bi (He’s jade disc) in honour of Bian He. How, then, could Bian He, an ordinary person, have found this rare treasure? If the jeweller working for the kings of Chu could not see the true value of the jade stone, why should Bian He have held firm belief in it? Answers to these questions can be readily found in the folklore, which recounts that one day, Bian He saw a phoenix resting on a stone singing and realized that the stone was precious jade. The previous chapter has discussed how the phoenix became an auspicious omen, a divine

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bird bringing messages from heaven. Similarly, the narrative of Bian He meeting a phoenix manifests how the will and mandate of heaven was delivered through the mythical animal so that the secret of the rare treasure was revealed. In 2009, the Special Exhibition of Chu Cultural Relics was held in the Hunan Museum. The catalogue issued for the exhibition edited by Chen Jianming, the curator of the museum, was entitled Phoenix Dancing High in Heaven (Chen 2009). There were many artifacts bearing the image or form of the divine phoenix, including a drum with rack in the shape of phoenixes and tigers of the Warring States Period unearthed from the Tianxingguan Tomb 2 in Jingzhou, Hubei Province in 2000, a great bronze phoenix with antlers from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in Suixian, Hubei Province in 1978, a silk painting of a woman with a dragon and a phoenix from the Chenjiadashan Tomb in Changsha, Hunan Province in 1947, and a phoenix jade pendant from the Pingliangtai Tomb 16 in Suiyang, Henan Province. The caption of the catalogue for this item reads as follows: In the eyes of the Chu people, the phoenix was a divine bird communicating between heaven and man. Only with its guide can a person’s soul be raised to heaven and free to travel. The phoenix was also believed to be an incarnation of their ancestor, singing melodiously and flying with dignity. Out of political and spiritual needs the Chu people respected and loved the phoenix, and integrated it into every aspect of their life so as to produce a large number of phoenix-shaped artifacts. (Chen 2009, 195)

As has been mentioned before, the only jade phoenix unearthed from the Tomb of Fu Hao was identified as from the Shijiahe culture in Hubei Province. This explains why prehistoric myths of the phoenix flourished especially in Chu. The Shijiahe culture preceded the Xia Dynasty and flourished before the area gained the name “Chu”. The unearthed jade phoenixes indicate that phoenix myths developed first in the area of Chu rather than in the Central Plain. What is more, many pottery phoenixes were unearthed from Shijiahe cultural sites. “The pottery phoenixes had very long tails and were called long-tail birds in the archaeological reports. Therefore, it is likely that the image of jade phoenix originated in the Shijiahe cultural region” (Zhang 2008, 10). It was said that the He Shi Bi was discovered on Mount Jing in the state of Chu, but up till now no jade mine has been detected in this area. Some contemporary scholars proposed that the jade stone discovered by Bian He was not a local product. Instead, it should be seen as a Hetian jade, which began to be brought to the Central Plain in abundance during the reign of King Mu of the Zhou Dynasty. Jingzhou was at the crossroads of the north and the south, so it is possible that the unparalleled He Shi Bi was made of Hetian jade. This idea was further supported by the physical evidence of the recently unearthed artifacts of Chu. Jades unearthed from the Tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in Suixian, Hubei Province, and a large amount of jades from Xiongjiazhong in Jingzhou, Hubei Province, are all similar to the Hetian jade of Xinjiang judging from their composition. If the nature of the material used for the Shijiahe jades can be confirmed, this may bring about a breakthrough in the research of the origin of jade materials in the early Chu. Most Shjiahe jades are yellowish green, which is different from the varied hues of Hetian jade. According to the tests of the Department of Geology in Beijing

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Fig. 21.2 Two dragons carrying a man to heaven depicted on a carved jade unearthed from the Chu state of the Warring States Period. Housed in the Jingzhou Museum, and photographed at the Jingzhou Museum, Hubei Province

University, the artifacts of the Shijiahe culture have an exterior hardness of less than 5.5 degrees, and an interior hardness of more than 5.5. Scholars hold different views as to their place of origin. Some say Nanyang jade and others say Xiu jade (ibid., 12), but nobody has yet proposed Hetian jade. The tentative conclusion is that in the earlier period local jade materials were mostly used, but from the Western Zhou Dynasty Hetian jade was imported on a large scale. Jades excavated from the Xiongjiazhong tomb, among all the tombs of Chu, are of the highest quality. Archaeologists have speculated that the tomb belonged to the royal family of Chu. The large number of exquisite jades exhibited in the Jingzhou Museum now fully demonstrate the fine craftsmanship of jade works created in the state of Chu in the Spring and Autumn Period (Fig. 21.2). Both the workers’ skill and the jade materials used match those in the Central Plain. During the reign of King Wei of Chu, the prime minister Zhaoyang rendered outstanding service by defeating the state of Yue and was awarded the He Shi Bi by the king. One day Zhaoyang entertained a group of guests to appreciate the precious jade. Then a person shouted that there was a very big fish in the pond, which drew all the people outside. By the time they returned, the He Shi Bi was gone. Zhang Yi was accused of stealing the jade disc, so he was captured and interrogated, but nothing was found. Zhang Yi was indignant and left first for the Wei State and then Qin. In the tenth year of the reign of King Huiwen of Qin, he was appointed prime minister and travelled to other warring states seeking their subordination to Qin. Later he went to the state of Chu as a messenger, successfully breaking the alliance between the states of Qi and Chu. The state of Chu then declined and Qin seized the chance to obtain the Hanzhong district of Chu. During the Warring States Period, King Huiwen of Zhao acquired the He Shi Bi from a eunuch named Ying Xian. King Zhao of Qin learned about it and sent a message to the king of Zhao, offering 15 cities and their citizens in exchange for the jade disc. As Qin was much more powerful than Zhao, King Huiwen of Zhao was afraid that the state might never get the promised cities even if they gave the He Shi Bi to the king of Qin. At that time, the minister Lin Xiangru offered to take the jade to Qin. He later successfully returned to Zhao with the jade intact, as is described in

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a popular story. In 228 BC, leading the army himself, Qin Shi Huang captured the capital of Zhao, and seized the He Shi Bi from the palace of Zhao. Seven years later, he conquered all the six opposing states and became the First Emperor of the unified realm. He then ordered Sun Shou, a jade jeweller in Xianyang, to carve the He Shi Bi into the founding jade seal, later called the heirloom jade seal of the realm. The chancellor Li Si was ordered to inscribe on it eight Chinese characters “受命于天, 既寿永昌” in small seal script. The eight characters served as an official sign of the national policy of “systematic unification of carriages and writings”. The first four characters 受命于天 (shou ming yu tian, having received the mandate from heaven) were taken from oracle bones inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty and inscriptions on bronze objects of the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, showing a continuation of the traditional belief in the divine right of kings. The next four characters 既寿永昌 (ji shou yong chuang, may the emperor lead a long and prosperous life) demonstrated the emperor’s fond dream of longevity and prosperity for himself and the empire. Therefore, the eight characters on the founding jade seal echoed the First Emperor’s political expectation that his regime would be passed down to his offspring forever. Up to now, four types of Qin jade seal script have been preserved, namely the script of Bi Jingru, the script of Xiang Juyuan, the script of Cai Pingzhong, and the script of the Lantian County Annals. The Xiang script and Cai script looked like the “bird-worm script”, a variant of the seal script. As one of the six scripts officially identified after Wang Mang usurped the throne of Han, it got its name because of its bird-like strokes and began to be used widely in the Spring and Autumn Period, usually cast or carved on the weapons. One of the eight scripts in the Qin Dynasty was the “worm script”, used especially for banners and tallies, and sometimes for seals. In the preface to Explaining Graphs and Analysing Characters, Xu Shen (ibid., 761) stated there were six scripts, among which the sixth was the bird-worm script. Duan Yucai claimed the bird-worm script, or worm script, refers to a script which looks like birds or worms, as birds are also called feathered worms. People today can find that the Xiang script of the Qin jade seal contains characters which look like the phoenix. This cannot help but remind one of the auspicious phoenix which Bian He is said to have seen when he discovered the He Shi Bi. Beyond the imagination of Qin Shi Huang and his ministers, however, the dream of “longevity and prosperity” was challenged only two years after Qin Shi Huang’s heirloom jade seal was created. In the twenty-eighth year of his reign (219 BC), Qin Shi Huang made an inspection trip to the south. As his ship was sailing near Dongting Lake, a storm came up unexpectedly. The huge waves were about to overturn the ship when the emperor in haste took out his jade and threw it into the lake in the hope of asking the favour of the water god to save him from the impending disaster. He was eventually spared misfortune. According to history books, what he threw into the water was a jade disc, but the legend goes that it was the Heirloom Seal of the Realm. In any event, the king’s life was saved after he sacrificed a precious piece of jade to the god. This again is a reflection of continued belief in the pre-historic big tradition notion that jade was

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protective. This jade religion was to last for thousands of years in China, resulting in many mythical narratives related to jade, including The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin in the Qing Dynasty, in which Jia Baoyu was said to be born with a precious piece of jade. With the establishment of the unified empire of Qin, the imperial jade seal was created, but only two years later this ritual jade was sacrificed to save the emperor from trouble. However, what happened eight years later was quite unexpected by Qin Shi Huang. In the fall of that year, as a messenger of the Qin passed the Pingshu Road in Huayin County at night, a person unknown gave him the jade seal and asked him to return it to the emperor. Hence, what was lost was regained, but the return of the jade seal was not an auspicious omen. A year later, the emperor died. Throughout his life Qin Shi Huang was especially fond of leaving his inscriptions on stones and tablets. With the approach of his death, heaven unfolded a fatal omen for his life by way of a stone inscription and the return of the jade seal. These were critical messages in Sima Qian’s mythistory of Qin, deserving meticulous examination and analysis. One will look at the prophesy of the stone inscription first. It is written in The Records of the Historian: Annals of Qin Shi Huang: In the thirty-sixth year (221 BC) Mars approached the Scorpion’s Heart. A meteor fell at Dongjun and became a stone when it hit the ground. Someone inscribed the stone with these words, “After the First Emperor’s death the land will be divided.” Upon learning of this, the First Emperor sent an Imperial Scribe to investigate. Since no one admitted to it, all those in the vicinity were executed and the stone was destroyed by fire. The emperor was depressed. He ordered the court scholars to write poems about immortals and pure beings, and wherever he went he made musicians set these to music and sing them. (Sima 2008, 55)

Hidden in the above historical narrative is a cause-effect relationship: the inauspicious star image revealed the mandate of heaven to the people. Mars was believed to be the spirit of fire and, as Mars is sometimes difficult to see, it is thought to be perplexing and inauspicious. What came next was the fall of a meteoric stone. As it fell from the sky, it was believed to be a “fallen star” sent by deities, another inauspicious omen. The inscription on the stone enraged the emperor, and he cruelly ordered all the residents near the stone to be executed. What is more, he destroyed the stone by fire against the mandate of heaven. With his stubborn defiance, the First Emperor of China represents a striking contrast to Oedipus, who in Greek myth tried hard to avoid his fate as revealed to him by the oracle at Delphi. In accordance with the logic of mythistory, there was no doubt that Qin Shi Huang’s ignorance and arrogance would draw revenge from deities. The stone inscription that caused his depression was just a prelude to a harsher retribution. Eventually, the First Emperor who had conquered the world paid the ultimate price. Poems about the immortals written by the emperor’s court scholars could be sung everywhere, but the emperor’s destined death could not be avoided. Next, one will explore the return of the jade bi, which occurred just after the incident of the stone inscription: In the fall, a messenger from east of the pass, travelling down the Pingshu Road by night, was stopped at Huayin by a man with a jade bi who said, “Please give this for me to the Lord

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of Haochi.” He continued, “This year the Primal Dragon will die.” The messenger asked what he meant, whereupon he suddenly vanished, leaving the disc behind. The messenger brought the jade disc back to report on it in detail. The emperor kept silent for a good while, then said, “A mountain spirit can only foresee one year ahead.” Retiring from the court, he said, “The Primal Dragon means the primogenitor of human beings.” He had the Imperial Storehouse official examine the jade disc. It turned out to be the one which he had dropped into the water as he was crossing the Yangtze in the twenty-eighth year. Then the emperor consulted divination, through which he obtained the advice that the time was auspicious for travel and removal. Thirty thousand families were moved to Beihe and Yuzhong. Officers were promoted one rank. (Takigawa 1986, 169)

The bi mentioned here is said to be the Heirloom Seal of the Realm made from the He Shi Bi. The stranger who returned the mystical jade is believed to be a god in disguise, a person who could “suddenly vanish”, and his words were like an oracle. “This year the Primal Dragon will die” was a prophesy that the death of the First Emperor was approaching. The emperor could sense there was something wrong when his lost jade was returned and resorted to divination, but he could not know the mandate of heaven. Even though he moved thirty thousand families, he could not avoid the impending doom. The stone inscription and the return of the jade recounted above clearly foreboded the approach of the end of the First Emperor’s life. The emperor’s death was narrated in The Records of the Historian by Sima Qian as a cause-and-effect event, following the logic of Chinese mythistory. The evidence of the heaven’s mandate was the cause and what happened to man was the effect. The gods of heaven could dominate and impose happiness, success and death in the human world and control the destiny of an individual and a community, as did the oracle and gods in the Homeric epics. What differs is the means of presentation. In ancient Greece, it was a matter of consulting the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi; in China, it was observing the auspicious or disastrous omens from heaven through divination. Qin Shi Huang sacrificed the jade seal to mollify the anger of the celestial gods, and its reappearance indicated that the gods of heaven were no longer satisfied and had returned the seal to signify this. This narration by Sima Qian illustrates that, in the view of people of his time, supernatural forces existed and dominated the human world, and though indistinct, they could not be neglected. They implicitly foreboded the impending doom of the emperor. His death happened the following year. The jade bi in the narrative chain of The Records of the Historian plays a role similar to the oracle at Delphi in the narrative chain of Homer’s epics. Though no verbal message was carved on the jade disc, its loss and return exposed the blessings and impending disasters from heaven. Therefore, the jade disc’s cultural symbolic meaning in the Qin and Han Dynasties displays an inheritance of the prehistoric belief in the big tradition, that is, jade as a token of the mandate of heaven. Is there, then, any material evidence from the Qin and Han Dynasties that can verify the belief shown in the jade bi legend narrated by Sima Qian? And what physical evidence can illustrate a sacred belief in the jade disc? One may answer the first question in the affirmative. The picture (Fig. 21.3) on the brick shows two dragons flying with cloud patterns in the corners and interspaces, which indicate the dragons are in the sky. Between the curved body of dragons are

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Fig. 21.3 A motif of two dragons passing through bi on a Qin Dynasty hollow brick unearthed in Xianyang. Photographed at the National Museum of China

three bi discs carved with grain pattern, which was a common pattern of jade bi from the Warring States Period to the Qin and Han Dynasties. The mythistorical interpretation reveals the creator’s intention in designing this brick, used in the emperor’s palace two thousand years ago. Neither the dragon nor the jade disc was a mere decoration. Instead, the dragon represents an intermediary that can fly from earth to heaven and the jade disc the entrance to heaven. The palace in Xianyang was the privileged place for the son of heaven, and its building bricks bore a mythical image of ingenious design and special skill, far from what common people could imagine in building their houses. As the old saying goes, it is better to be a broken jade than a complete brick. From this brick of the Qin Dynasty, kept intact after thousands of years with the picture of a dragon and jade disc on it, people today may be able to comprehend the spiritual inspiration that guided artists and craftsmen in this period. The Ebo platform in Shangqiu, Henan Province, was said to be where Ebo, the ancestor of the Shang people (also called Xie, the King of Shang) observed heavenly bodies in the Xia Dynasty. Signs of jade discs were carved on the steep stone steps, turning these steps into the road to heaven. It is stated in The Rites of Zhou (周礼): Gray jade bi was to be sacrificed to heaven; Yellow jade cong was to be sacrificed to earth. This shows the correspondence between the jade bi and heaven in the ritual system in the ancient times. Xun Yue in the Han Dynasty wrote in The Records of the Han Dynasty: Emperor Wu 6 (Han Ji: Wu Di Ji Liu, 汉纪·武帝纪六): “(The Emperor) erected a platform leading to the gods of heaven, created two canopies decorated with pearl of Marquis Sui and a jade disc of Mount Jing (i.e. the He Shi Bi)”. Two ancient rarities were used to express Emperor Wu’s spiritual pursuit in building the platform. The religious connotation of the pearl and jade was clearly illustrated. In the mythological imagination of the ancient Chinese people, a man had to draw support from heaven’s gift of jade as a medium to rise to heaven and attain immortality of the soul. The burial tradition of covering the face with jade in the Western Zhou Dynasty passed on to the Qin and Han Dynasties, and further developed into the practice of wearing jade burial suits, a practice reserved for deceased aristocrats like local governors. In the Han Dynasty tomb of the king of Nanyue unearthed in Guangzhou, archaeologists made an unexpected discovery about burial customs. There was discovered not only a jade burial suit, but also twenty-four fine jade bi discs made of Hetian

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Fig. 21.4 A jade burial suit unearthed from the tomb of the Nanyue King in Guangdong Province, with ten jade bi discs placed around it outside and fourteen inside. Photographed at the Museum of the Western Han Dynasty Mausoleum of the Nanyue King in 2010

jade, which reflected the mythological goal of helping the tomb owner rise to heaven (Fig. 21.4). The jade seal had started to be used before the Qin Dynasty was established, as a token of trust between the various states in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. Qin Shi Huang’s order that the jade seal could only be used by the emperor elevated it above all other ritual objects, even the jade burial suit. Consider the following line from The Records of the Historian: The king told his prime minister and chief counselor, “Formerly the king of Han offered us his territory and royal seal, begging to become our subject; but when he broke faith to ally with Zhao and Wei (403 BC-225BC) against us, we raised a punitive force and captured him. I consider this well done, for it led to the cessation of hostilities. (Sima 2008, 17-19)

It is obvious that the king of Han already used the jade seal as a symbol of power. Thousands of clay seals of the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties have been unearthed, illustrating clearly the popularity of mythological view about seals at the time. In ancient times, official documents were put in bamboo cases or silk bags strapped with a string outside, and on the knot a piece of clay was applied and imprinted with a seal to make it confidential and to avoid theft. This practice was prevalent in the Qin and Han Dynasties. The jade seal was used exclusively by the emperor since the Qin Dynasty. According to Dictatorship (Du Duan, 独断) by Cai Yong (133–192) in the Han Dynasty: The seal of the emperor is made of jade imprinted with dragon and tiger images. The jade seals were once used by people of all ranks … Since the Qin Dynasty was established, it was reserved only for the emperor, and the emperor’s jade seal was named xi (玺) instead of the usual yin (印). Neither the jade seal nor the character xi could be used by ministers.

Moreover, there is a term “xishou” (玺绶, imperial seal ribbon) that refers to the coloured silk ribbon tied on the imperial seal, implying the seal itself, as was used in The Book of Han: Annals of Emperor Gaozu 2 and in The Book of Jin: Biography of Wangzhou in Langya (Jin Shu: Lang Ya Wang Zhou Zhuan, 晋书·琅邪王伷传). It was recounted that the enemy offered to surrender once the imperial jade seal, which

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stood for the mandate of heaven and sovereignty, was presented. No doubt struggling and fighting for the imperial jade seal was a necessity when the old regime was to be replaced with a new one. “Xijie” (玺节) is another word used to refer to the official seal used for exit and entry, as recorded in The Rites of Zhou: Local Officials. From the Han Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang’s jade seal and the sword of Emperor Gao of Han were termed collectively “xijian” (玺剑, seal and sword) to refer to the heirlooms of the royal family, as used in Essays Written in the Western Capital (Xi Jing Za Ji, 西京杂记), Volume 1: What was passed down from one emperor to the next in the Han Dynasty was the imperial jade seal surrendered by King Ziying of the Qin Dynasty and the sword Emperor Gao used to kill the white snake, which was decorated with color pearl and lustrous jade.

The two imperial heirloom treasures have one thing in common: both are linked to jade. The sword of Emperor Gao of Han obviously bore a mythical implication similar to that of the heirloom jade seal. Its decoration of pearl color and lustrous jade demonstrated the traditional practice of combining jade with metal.

21.2 Great Wall, Straight Road and Epang Palace The use of ritual jades in the Qin and Han Dynasties demonstrates an inheritance of the ritual system of the prehistorical big tradition. However, the construction of such state projects as the Great Wall, the Straight Road and Epang Palace were initiated by Qin Shi Huang himself. One must interpret at a deeper level the concepts underlying and driving these construction projects. The Records of the Historian: Annals of Qin Shi Huang gave two accounts of the construction projects in Xianyang, the capital of the Qin Dynasty. Each was driven by the astronomical mythology of the Qin people, evidenced by the fact that tianji (天极, apex of heaven), an archetypal keyword of mythology, was mentioned each time. The first regards Qin Shi Huang’s construction of the Xin Palace in the twenty-seventh year (220 BC): In the twenty-seventh year the emperor inspected Longxi and Beidi, crossed Mount Jitou and passed Huizhong. The Xin Palace was built on the south bank of the River and the emperor decreed that it be the Paramount Temple, representing the apex of heaven. From the Paramount Temple a path led to Mount Li where a front hall of the Ganquan Palace was built, and the temple was connected with Xianyang by a walled road. This year officers were promoted one rank. Post-roads were constructed. (Sima 2008, 25-27)

The second regards the construction of the Straight Road and Epang Palace in the thirty-fifth year (212 BC): In the thirty-fifth year a highway was built through Jiuyuan to Yunyang. To make it straight, hills were razed and valleys filled. The emperor said, “Xianyang is overcrowded and the palace of the former kings are too small. I have heard that King Wen of Zhou had his capital at Feng, King Wu at Hao. The region between Feng and Hao is fit to be an imperial capital.” He had palaces constructed in the Shanglin Gardens south of the River Wei. The front palace,

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Epang, built first, was five hundred paces from east to west, and five hundred feet from south to north. The terraces above could seat ten thousand, and below there was room for banners fifty feet in height. One causeway round the palace led to the South Hill at the top of which a gateway was erected; another led across the River Wei to Xianyang, just as the Heavenly Corridor in the sky leads from the Apex of Heaven across the Milky Way to the Royal Chamber. Before the completion of this palace, the emperor wished to) choose a good name for it. But because of its proximity to the old palace, it was commonly called Epang, which means beside the palace. A labor force of more than seven hundred thousand-men punished by castration or sentenced to penal servitude-was drafted to build Epang Palace and the emperor’s tomb on Mount Li. (Ibid., 47)

Chosen as the capital of the Qin, Xianyang, by its name, bears the geomantic indicators of an auspicious site in the Chinese tradition. According to ancient people, yang (the masculine or positive principle of nature in Chinese philosophy) is south of a hill or north of a river. Located in the middle land south of Mount Beiban and north of the River Wei, Xianyang got its name from the doubly auspicious site it inhabited. Therefore, during the years of war, long before the Qin marched eastward to conquer the other six warring states, the Qin’s grand plan to unify the world demonstrated an adherence to the mythological view of the world in which the great universe corresponded to the little universe. The Qin people regarded the heavenly world as the ultimate archetype of the universe, and the earth as a projection of the heavenly world. The centre of the heavenly world was the apex of heaven, marked by the pole star, and was also called taiyi (supreme One), taiji (supreme apex), etc. This was where the supreme god Taiyi resided. The pole star was also called the imperial star, and the seven stars in the Big Dipper which revolve around the pole star were considered as the imperial chariot, based on the mythological imagination. The image narrative of the Han stone relief unearthed in Xuzhou, shown above, offers a view of the imperial chariot on a trip to heaven. The imperial star in the disguise of Youxiong (or the deity bear) is standing high on the chariot with its left hand pointing upward, holding a truncheon like a drumstick. The chariot is driven by three fierce tigers. Several tortoises and fish surrounding the chariot indicate that it is not a chariot for use by people on the earth. The monarchs of the Qin and Han Empires followed the heavenly model and used luxurious chariots to symbolise their majesty, and also tried to create a central point. As Xianyang and Chang’an were recognized as the centre on the earth, the north–south and west–east lines across the central point would be regarded as the coordinate axes and called ziwu lines (meridians) based on the astronomical myths. In today’s Chang’an County in Shaanxi Province, there exists Ziwu Town, Ziwu Road and Ziwu Pass, all a legacy of the mythical appellation used since the pre-Qin period. The Ziwu Pass, starting from the foot of Mount Zhongnan south of Chang’an County, is a pass connecting Guanzhong and Hanzhong, and is over 300 kms in length. Hence, it appears that both Ziwu Road and the Straight Road should not be interpreted merely from the perspective of their practical significance in the history of transportation. Instead, they should be placed in the context of the geomantic mythology of the Qin and Han and be interpreted from a more comprehensive perspective. Wang Zijin said in his History of Transportation in Qin and Han (1994,

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33), “Many relics of the Straight Road constructed in the reign of Qin Shi Huang were discovered in such places as Chunhua, Xunyi, Huangling, Fuxian and Ganquan in Shaanxi Province. They are mostly about 50 to 60 m wide.” What, then, is the geomantic implication of this broad road running through the territory from north to south? Viewed from the foot of Mount Zhongnan in Chang’an County in Shaanxi Province, the Ziwu Pass, opposite Ziwu Town, is in a sense representative of the integration between heaven and man. Ziwu Road started from Duling (southeast of today’s Xi’an), cut through Mount Nan (Qinling) and led to Hanzhong. It was the post road connecting Xianyang and Chang’an with Hanzhong and Ankang in the south of Shaanxi with cities in Sichuan. It was called Ziwu Road because it traversed the Ziwu Pass and ran north–south in its first section south of Chang’an. The road was first built in the Qin Dynasty and was mentioned in the “Ode to the Stone Gate” (Shi Men Song, 石门颂) by Wang Sheng in the Eastern Han Dynasty: “Having received the mandate from heaven, King Liu Bang rose up in Hanzhong, and expanded via Ziwu road”. In the war with Xiang Yu in the late Qin Dynasty, Liu Bang was once forced to give up Guanzhong and move to Hanzhong. He left for Hanzhong by following the north–south Ziwu Road. Liu Bang was called King Han because of Hanzhong and the Han River, which in turn was named according to Tianhan (the Milky Way) in heaven. This is the same that the way Ziwu Pass and Ziwu Road were named according to the ziwu line in heaven. The main peak of Mount Zhongnan is still known by its ancient name Peak Taiyi. According to astronomical mythology, this prominent site of interest in Guanzhong was imagined as the point closest to heaven. The name Taiyi reveals the geological mythology by which the highest peak on earth the middle of the Qinling Mountains corresponded to the apex of heaven in the centre of the celestial world. As discussed in Chap. 10, taiyi means the primary existence and origin of everything. The following accounts from the inherited literature provide a general idea of the related astronomical mythology associated with it: Tianji (apex of heaven) in the middle mansion is the brightest star reserved for Taiyi. (The Records of the Historian: Book of Celestial Offices) Four stars surround to the left and right, and Tianyi and Taiyi are the gateway. (Song of Stars, Bu Tian Ge, 步天歌) Taiyi star is half degree south of Tianyi star. It is the supreme deity of heaven in charge of sixteen gods. (Star Manual of the Masters Gan and Shi, Xing Jing, 星经)

As explained above, taiyi, an observation of ancient astronomy, was projected onto geological maps according to mythological rules. Therefore, the main peak in the middle of Qinling was marked as Peak Taiyi, and the axis across this point was important for the pattern of the locations of capitals of the Qin and Han Dynasties. What is more, taiyi was projected into the little universe of the human body as an acupuncture point in traditional Chinese medicine. The appellation of an acupoint, as taiyi clearly illustrates, again demonstrates the basic role of the mythical integration between heaven and man that permeated all levels of Chinese culture.

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Putting aside the acupuncture points and turning one’s attention to the Chinese map, it is clear that the Great Wall that Qin Shi Huang ordered to be constructed largely follows a line of latitude mostly parallel to the Qinling Mountains, the former being a great defence built by humans and the latter a magnificent natural defence. Moreover, the Straight Road follows a longitude (or meridian) line connecting the two latitude lines within the territory, the Great Wall in the north and the Qinling Mountains in the south. Seen together, they demonstrate Qin Shi Huang’s grand vision, and how he conceptualized the whole territory in his mind, which could hardly be understood without reference to the astronomical mythology of the time. As the ancient saying goes, heaven’s secrets must not be divulged. If one further adds the winding course of the Yellow River to the Great Wall and the Qinling Mountains, it will be easier to see that both Xianyang and Chang’an, close to each other, were protected by the defence of a natural river. Based on the above mythical map, one can better understand why the imitation of the heavenly world was of foremost importance when Qin Shi Huang constructed the Epang Palace, as illustrated by the text in the previous section. The intention was to build a heavenly paradise for the imperial rulers on earth. Both the Epang Palace in the Qin and Weiyang Palace in the Han were a direct imitation of heavenly places, as is clear from their appellations. In the past, it was known that Qin Shi Huang was a great historical figure because he unified China for the first time, and that he was a cruel monarch because he ordered books to be burned and Confucian scholars to be buried alive. Today, people have come to learn that Qin Shi Huang in fact had a creative imagination, unparalleled in history. He burned books written on bamboo and silk, but wrote a great book on the earth itself. The Straight Road cut through the Guanzhong plain to the Qinling Mountains and drew a central axis across Xianyang, the capital of Qin. It formed a man-made dragon vein and made Xianyang and the royal Xin Palace clearly correspond with the apex of heaven, at the central point of the celestial world. The professed “First Emperor” thus presented a large-scale manifestation of Chinese geomancy. He is long gone, but the mountains, rivers and constructions are still there, and so are their mythical names. The myth-inspired constructions of the Qin were to have great influence in the later dynasties, as shown by the Han Dynasty’s royal sacrificial ritual in homage to Taiyi (Ye 1992, 5), and the construction of Beijing, and the appellation of Zijin City, in the Ming Dynasty. Now, the Beijing municipal government is striving to ensure that the central axis of Beijing be included in the world cultural heritage list. Seen from the perspective of the big tradition, there is little doubt that the concept of the central axis originated not with the geomancers of the Ming Dynasty, but from the First Emperor in the Qin Dynasty, who was greatly inspired by ancient myths. How can it be known that Qin Shi Huang was deeply influenced by myths? Sima Qian’s account of the reasons for constructing the Great Wall are obvious evidence of this. As he followed the Straight Road to inspect in the north, Qin Shi Huang met a shaman named Lu Sheng in the former Yan state. Lu reported to the emperor matters concerning ghosts and gods, and presented prophetic graphs and writings which

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stated that the people who would overthrow Qin would be the Huns in the north (Takigawa 1986, 166). As Lu Sheng was believed to speak on behalf of the gods, the emperor, taking the opportunity, immediately had General Meng Tian set forth a troop of 300,000 men to attack the tribes in the north. Later, he created the Great Wall against the Hu. It is difficult to find out the mythological principles underlying the historical narratives without considering what the emperor had in his mind after talking with the shaman.

21.3 Jade Burial Suit One example of a unique invention of Chinese culture is the jade burial suit. What factors lay behind invention of the jade burial suit in ancient times? Today’s materialists may well regard the suit as a way for royal members and aristocrats to show off their wealth after death. But this is not the reason for their creation. Jade burial suits became popular in the Han Dynasty because of an adherence to ancient jade mythological beliefs. Though no words have been left to explain the concept, documents and unearthed objects have provided enough clues for people to restore a mythological interpretation. The Han Dynasty’s jade burial suits were categorized into gold-wired, silver-wired, copper-wired and silk-wired according to the status of the person buried. Examples of all these four types of jade burial suits have been excavated. In 1968, two gold-wired jade suits were unearthed from the tombs of Liu Sheng, Prince Jing in the Western Han Dynasty, and his wife in Mancheng, Hebei Province. Since then, over forty jade suits have been discovered. Only four of them remain complete, including the two suits in Mancheng, a silk-wired suit unearthed from the tomb of Zhao Mo, King of Southern Yue, in Guangzhou Province, and a silver-wired suit from the tomb of Liu He in Xuzhou. Some jade suits are almost complete, such as one discovered in the tomb of King Chu in the Western Han Dynasty in Mount Shizi in Xuzhou (Fig. 21.5) and one in the tomb of Liu Xiu in the Western Han Dynasty in Dingxian, Hebei Province. The latter has been exhibited at the National Museum as a national cultural relic. Fig. 21.5 A jade burial suit unearthed from the Han Dynasty tomb in Mount Shizi in Xuzhou. Photographed at the Xuzhou Museum in 2011

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The jade burial suit is a wonder of jade culture. They were generally made of Hetian jade, from Xinjiang. First, more than 2000 square jade plaques were made. Then they were joined by means of wire, threaded through small holes drilled near the corners of each piece. It is almost unimaginable how much rare jade was used and how long it took to complete one suit. During the wars of the Three Kingdoms Period, these jade suits were removed in vast quantities by tomb robbers, as recorded in historical books, in which they were called the “jade cases”. According to History of Three Kingdoms: Records of Wei: Annals of King Wen, many tombs of the Han Dynasty were robbed since the wars broke out, and tomb robbers burned the jade cases to melt the gold, and even destroyed the corpses inside. In today’s antique markets, jade plaques from these burial suits are often found, sold at a price of just several hundred yuan a piece. This author visited the Xuzhou Museum and learned that the usual work of the staff in the storehouse is to treat large piles of jade plaques, most of which have been calcified and no longer look like jade. In the Han Dynasty, emperors were not the only people who had the privilege of being buried in jade suits; indeed, ministers were often granted this honour by the emperor. This explains why a large number of jade suits have been unearthed in different places, giving modern people a chance to appreciate this luxurious burial custom. According to The Book of Han: Biography of Flatterers: Dong Xian (Wang 1983, 1560): “Even the coffin, bead burial dress and jade burial case were granted to Dong Xian”. And as is recorded in The book of Later Han: Etiquette 2: “Dukes, marquises, palace officials, princesses could be granted seals and silver-wired jade cases when they died”. What, then, was the motivation for being buried in a jade suit? Before it was called a “jade case”, there was the expression “a pearl in the mouth and jade scales on the body”, used to refer to the luxurious form of burial ceremony in such books as the Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei and Huainanzi. Calling the jade burial suit “scales” reflects a biomimetic concept in mythology, that is, by wearing a burial suit comprising thousands of jade plaques, it was expected that the deceased would resemble an aquatic animal with scales. According to the legend, the pearl of immortality was hidden in the dragon’s mouth, and animals with scales like fish and tortoises were seen as divine creatures which could live a long life or even revive after death. In “The Great Wilderness: the West” of The Classic of Mountains and Seas there is a line: There is a fish which is withered down one side and is called yufu. King Zhuanxu revives immediately after his death. When the wind blows from the north, the spring water will pour out from the sky and the snake will turn into fish. This is yufu. King Zhuanxu revives immediately after his death”. (Wang and Zhao 2010, 299)

Zhuanxu was the grandson of Emperor Yan and had the ability to revive after death because he could turn into a snake and then into a fish. Therefore, “a pearl in the mouth and jade scales on the body” was probably meant to imitate the dragon and fish, in hope of bringing the deceased back to life. In pre-Qin myths, the netherworld was called Huangquan (黄泉, yellow spring), and from the Han Dynasty on, it was also called Jiuquan (九泉, nine springs) or

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Fig. 21.6 An early from of jade burial suit unearthed from a Spring and Autumn Period tomb at Zhenshan, Suzhou. Photographed at the Suzhou Museum

Huanglu (黄垆, yellow soil), meaning a dark world surrounded by water. From this point of view, it seems reasonable that the dead should try to resemble aquatic animals like fish and dragons as they travelled to the netherworld. In The Spring and Autumn of Lü Buwei: Simple Funeral is contained the line: The stronger a state is and the wealthier a family is, the more luxurious the funeral ceremonies will be. Infinite precious things such as a pearl in the mouth, jade scales on the body, … are buried along with the dead. (Lü 2005, 325)

Gao You noted that jade scales refer to the jade plaques covering the body of the dead person, which look like scales. In Authentic History II (Xin Shi, 信史下), Zhang Binlin (1869–1936) explained that in an ancient burial ceremony, the deceased person had a pearl placed in his mouth and jade scales on his body. Jade scales were called the jade burial case. During the Zhou Dynasty, before the Qin and Han, there existed a burial custom of decorating the coffin with jade or bronze fish. This practice could be regarded as a primitive form of the jade burial suit (Fig. 21.6). The practice of wearing jade burial suits reveals the grand imagination of the ancient ruling classes in their pursuit of eternal life. Like the pyramids in Egypt, jade suits are an eternal testimony to the power of mythology in motivating human behaviour. The twelve bronze statues that Qin Shi Huang had built in Lintao County to imitate the legendary giants have been lost after so many centuries. But the jade suits buried deep underground in the tombs of the emperors in the Han Dynasty were finally brought to light again 2000 years after they were created, and thus have granted academics a chance to see with their own eyes the wonder of Chinese mythology.

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Zhuangzi once said, “You are not a fish. How do you know that fish are enjoying themselves?” (Wang 1999, 283). The aristocrats who were buried with jade scales on their body seemed to have attempted to experience what it was like to be a fish. Now, if one recognizes that jade and fish are homophones in Chinese, both pronounced as yu, one might be even more impressed or convinced by this ancient symbolic link.

Chapter 22

Conclusion and Future Directions

22.1 Summary The Chinese idiom “selling stones as jade” (xuan yu jia shi, 炫玉贾石) means something is unworthy of its name. At the end of this major three-year project, one must review the research objectives before summing up their findings in the hope of presenting something worthy of the name. The project “Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization”, one of the most important national social science projects, currently relies mainly on archaeology, along with astronomy, biology and other disciplines. But the role of the humanities remains relatively weak. This book thus proposes a mythological paradigm to explore the origins of Chinese civilization in the hope of applying the resources of the humanities as a complement to the original archaeological paradigm in order to reconcile the standing opposition between archaeological “empirical myths” and a humanistic interpretation of “mythistory”. Taking cultural anthropology as its reference point, this research transcends the boundaries of classical academics spheres of study in order to establish new conceptions of cultural history and a new research paradigm. Departing from the old perspective of the big tradition and relying instead on archaeological discoveries and the sacred symbols found in the earliest writings, it advocates a “quadrupleevidence method” which integrates multi-disciplinary knowledge, historical inheritance, evolution and the narrative chain of sacred symbols in order to resolve key questions from the period of ancient legends and lay the foundation for a reconstruction of Chinese mythistory. Cao Xueqin devoted 10 years to his novel about the communication of thoughts and feelings between stones and humans, which he entitled simply The Story of the Stone. The present book follows Cao’s lead in associating jade and stone, in order to explore the birth and dynamics of civilizations since the Stone Age. The book is divided into three parts and 20 chapters.

© Social Sciences Academic Press 2022 S. Ye, A Mythological Approach to Exploring the Origins of Chinese Civilization, Research Series on the Chinese Dream and China’s Development Path, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3096-6_22

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Part I covers theory and methodology, and mainly discusses the methodological significance of mythology in contemporary international humanities and social science research, giving credit to its pioneering role in interdisciplinary studies and proposing a fresh approach to the research paradigm of Chinese culture: a redefinition of the big tradition and the small tradition, a new concept of “mythistory” with which to reconcile myth and history, and its application in exploring the origins of Chinese civilization. The research methodology of this book is that of the quadruple-evidence method, which builds on the method employed by the literary anthropology school since 1978 and integrates elements of the Chinese and Western academic traditions. The method is useful in exploring the origins of Chinese civilization and resolving challenging historical puzzles. It integrates mythological and archaeological paradigms as a means of exploring the origins of civilization. In Part II and Part III, the core of the book, the analysis proceeds from a macro perspective to a micro perspective, transitioning from an overview to detailed analysis of evidence. The focus of Part II is the existence and role of the Jade Age in the origins of civilization. It argues for the first time that the Jade Age and Jade Road must to be studied from an international perspective. It also compares jade myths and religions that existed during the formative periods of the five great civilizations. It explores the earliest sanctification of obsidian, analyses lapis lazuli worship and myth-ideology construction in the Sumerian civilization and its extensive influence on other ancient civilizations. It also investigates the transition from jade worship to gold worship with the advent of the Bronze Age in the Mediterranean. After a global overview, the study narrows its focus to East Asia, exploring the emergence of the East Asian Jade Age in all its material and spiritual aspects with a preliminary classification of historical stages, while comparing the origins of jade culture in China, Japan and South Korea, as well as the connections between them. The focus of the study then narrows further to the Jade Age during the birth of the Huaxia civilization. By re-examining jade myths, it reveals how the prehistorical jade religion played the role of a primitive national religion and helped to shape the cultural and conceptual aspects of Chinese identity. For example, the “ascent-toheaven” concepts and connotations behind the creation of jade jue and ershe, jade huang, rainbows and dragons of northern and southern cultures, and how these ideas were unified in the culture of the Central Plain. Based on the beliefs in sacred jade, the interaction of corresponding prehistorical social resources and the formation of “from edge to centre” cultural patterns are investigated to show how they laid a foundation for the rise of the Central Plain civilization and a ritual jade system in the Xia, Shang and Zhou Dynasties. From the mythological perspective of “the unity of heaven and man”, and through a reinterpretation of new archaeological finds, the study analyses the relationship between emperors and sacred objects (jades) in the Chinese legendary era, elaborates on the corresponding unearthed artifacts from the eras from the First Emperor of Huaxia, the Yellow Emperor, to Yao and Shun, and applies a mythological analysis to these puzzling names and terms, such as “Xuanyuan”, “Youxiong” and “Banrui”.

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According to the second type of evidence—the Silk Book of Chu, which records the Youxiong creation myth, using xiong (bear) as names for the king of Chu and the Kingdom of Chu, combined with the fourth type of evidence, which are rare treasures like the bear chariot found in the tombs of the ancestors of Qin Shi Huang and the Hongshan culture’s three-hole jade with double bear heads, the study probes bear worship mythology and assesses its prevalence before the rise of dragon worship. It also explores the major tradition of narrative imagery in bear god manifestations from the Xinglongwa and Hongshan cultures to the stone reliefs of the Han Dynasty. Through an analysis of unearthed artifacts from the Taosi and Longshan cultures, especially the multitude of weapons, it is shown that state power struggles associated with the origin of civilization were bound to provoke armed conflicts and violence. Accordingly, it is confirmed that the myths of Yao and Shun’ abdications are traditions “invented” by later Confucianists. Part III focuses on the mythological history of the Xia, Shang, Zhou and Qin Dynasties, verifying the correspondence between historical and mythological narratives in chronological order. Based on the unearthed objects, this testifies to the authenticity of unresolved ancient myths and legends. For example, as ritual bronzes emerged far later than ritual jades, it can be confirmed that the myths of Yellow Emperor casting “ding” (tripod cauldrons) and Yu casting nine pieces of ding are later fabrications. Based on the fact that exquisite owl images, rather than swallow images, are common in the cultural ruins of Shang and Shang Dynasty royal tombs, it may be inferred that the notion that the xuan bird was a swallow is a far-fetched exegesis. The sacred bird worshipped by the Shang people was neither the swallow nor the phoenix, but the owl. In light of the major tradition of owl images in Eurasian prehistorical artifacts, the study probes the origins of owl worship and myths, and their connection with goddess worship and reincarnation myths. It is possible to find the archetypes of mythistory, based on the artifacts, for myths such as “Yu was granted a jade gui”, “Yu installed drums in the court”, “Jade Huang of Xiahoushi”, “Jie waged war on Mount Min”, “King Mu of Zhou travelled to the West Kunlun Mountains” and “the Queen Mother of the West”. Western Zhou Dynasty archaeology shows that after King Mu of Zhou took the throne, there was a large increase in jade production, notably Hetian jade. Therefore, the legend that King Mu travelled to the western Kunlun Mountains to seek jade is, in a sense, based on fact and not merely fiction. The image of the Queen Mother of the West is the mythological personification of the Central Plain civilization’s longing for jade resources in the distant Kunlun Mountain in the west. The fact that the jade gui were common in the Taosi and Longshan cultures indicates that the myth “Yu was granted a black jade gui” is not purely fictional but is supported by physical evidence of that era. Bear-shaped turquoise-inlaid bronze plaques unearthed at the Erlitou site and the narrative of the ancient bamboo book Rong Cheng Shi, where Yu posed five direction flags with a bear flag in the centre, allow mutual interpretation among the four types of evidence and in turn help to resolve puzzles left unclear by the literature, such

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as the context for “Gun and Yu transforming themselves into bears”, “Qi was born out of a stone”, and “Deities appear in bear mountains and caves” in The Classic of Mountains and Seas, etc. In the chapters of Part III, the interpretation of mythological images of cultural relics, textual analysis, and living folk heritage are combined to reconstruct the longlost narrative chain of the legendary era. For example, the interpretation of mythological images based on the quadruple-evidence method—hooked cloud-shaped devices, three-hole jade with double bear heads in Hongshan culture and jade-ware adorned with decorative patterns of dragons and birds, beast-headed bronze plaques, bronze bells with jade clappers, dragon-shaped turquoise artifacts, jade gui with the decorative eagle and owl patterns of the Longshan culture, owl-shaped zun and ringfoot gong from the Fu Hao tomb, “tiger-devouring-man” you wine vessel of the Yin Ruins—leads to the discussion about the formation of ritual and music culture, which equally valued gold and jade in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, and then the systematic interpretation of the jade seal of the First Emperor of the Qin Dynasty, the Han Dynasty jade burial suits and other ancient myths and artifacts. On this basis, the study hopes to reconstruct 8000 years of Chinese mythistory. From the prehistoric cultural big tradition to the small tradition of Chinese writing, this book offers a new view of cultural history. Its theoretical innovation lies in breaking the shackles of the thousand-year Huaxia historical view derived solely from textual documents. It reconstructs the long-lost line of the big tradition that existed before Chinese writing and accordingly re-examines the small tradition of Chinese character narratives so as to resolve unanswered questions, such as the reason for the Yellow Emperor’s other names: Xuanyuan and Youxiong, Yu’s central bear-flag mystery, the symbolic meaning of ershe (hanging snakes on the ear) and the wearing of jade huang used in Qi’s ascendance to heaven, the real purpose of Jie attacking Mount Min and the relationship between Ba and Shu regional culture and the Central Plain culture, the degree of continuity from prehistoric owl worship to the xuan bird (owl) totem in the Shang Dynasty, and the derogatory understanding of the owl in West Zhou Dynasty royal ideology. Through new myths of the phoenix singing at Qishan and red birds holding scripts in their beaks, the phoenix idol was constructed, inherited and promoted by Confucianists, laying the foundation for the popular “dragon and phoenix” myths of later eras. The key to exploring the Chinese big tradition is to understand the mystery of the transformation from diversity to unity. It can be safely concluded that the dissemination of jade mythology laid the cornerstone for cultural identity. The great differences between Chinese and Western culture were rooted in their early mythological ideologies: jade worship and gold worship. Through a “genetic analysis” of the ideology of the Western myths, the cultural genes are found to have been closely related to the metal worship that began at the birth of Mediterranean civilizations. The worship of gold, silver and copper—the divinity in metal—is reflected in imaginary myth narratives and eras like the “Golden Age”, “Golden Fleece” and “Golden Apple”. In the initial formative period of East Asian civilization on the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, jade myths and the formation of Chinese identity were inseparable.

22.1 Summary

481

The saying, “Jade objects and silk fabrics turn hostility into friendship”, is rooted in the reality of an ancient time, and is not rhetorical exaggeration. From this point of view, the emergence of cultural symbols—ritual jades—that pre-date Chinese characters leads to the exploration of how diversified prehistoric regional cultures integrated into a unified nation with its core in the Central Plain. The study of jade in ancient times led to the discovery of a cultural community beyond the boundaries of nation and country, namely the formation of an “East Asian Civilization” with the core Chinese civilization extending to surrounding areas. The key “genes” of Chinese civilization identity that would come to influence the development of the region, in chronological order, are as follows: (1)

(2)

(3)

(4)

(5)

Jade myths and jade culture. The belief in the mystical associations of jade is the essence of Huaxia identity. The formation of this core belief is marked by the emergence of jade production, and its growth is supported by jade stones excavated in northern Xinglongwa cultural sites and turquoise stones of the Central Plain Peiligang culture made 7000–8000 years ago. The myth of “unity of heaven and man” based on communication between heaven and humans. Using jade or ritual jade artifacts to communicate with heaven and the gods gave birth to a ritual and music culture marked by the jade huang, one of the six ritual jades recorded in The Rites of Zhou 6000–7000 thousand years ago, and which is evidenced in artifacts of the Hemudu, Daxi, Yangshao and early Hongshan cultures. Totem worship of mythological animals with the bear, owl, turtle, dragon and snake as the most important. The rainbow dragon served as a bridge of communication between heaven and earth, and dates back 5000–6000 years. Representatives of this belief are the Hongshan, Yangshao, Majiabang and early Liangzhu cultures. A mythological view of geography characterized by “Tianxia” (under the heaven), which gave rise to the “China” and “Nine States” understanding of the world 3000–5000 years ago. This understanding certainly existed in the Taosi, Longshan and Erlitou cultures. Sage king and saint myths represented by Yao, Shun and Yu 3000–5000 years ago. Their predecessors were the manlike jade carvings of gods that represented a medium between man and gods. After the Shang and Zhou Dynasties, myths of the five emperors (with the Yellow Emperor on top)—the genealogy of the Chinese ancestors—were reconstructed.

The small tradition of textual narratives developed rapidly in the period when books such as The Classic of Mountains and Seas, The Book of Poetry and The Verse of Chu were written, and this written culture was profoundly influenced by the jade mythological views of the big tradition. Elements of this most ancient culture can be found throughout the entire history of Chinese literature from The Classic of Mountains and Seas to The Story of the Stone.

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22 Conclusion and Future Directions

22.2 Future Research Directions: Reconstructing Chinese Mythistory The preliminary findings of this pilot project may pave the way for further discussion. The tentative plan for future research is to explore some important aspects that this book has not been able to develop. Based on the systematic analysis of the dissemination of the concept of jade myths and the unearthed jade artifacts, the research will probe into the details of Jade Age of China, the major regional branches of China’s prehistoric Jade Road and their mutual interaction. In light of this, one hopes to rebuild an accurate idea of the historical trajectory of Chinese mythology. The following are three future research directions: (1) Research on China’s prehistoric Jade Road Specifically, there are three breakthrough points which need further investigation and analysis in order to achieve a new understanding. First, study of the specific route and era by and in which Hetian jade entered the Central Plain civilization. This is critical to gaining an understanding of the construction of the Xia, Shang and Zhou kingships, and the ideology of jade worship. Second, the preliminary view obtained from the initial investigation is that the Jade Road in the early period of history indicates that there existed a cultural transmission route from the upper reaches to the middle reaches of the Yellow River. This is closely related to the mythological geographical concept of “the river flows out of the Kunlun” recorded in the inherited literature, and corresponds to the mystery of why King Mu of Zhou travelled west to Kunlun to encounter the He Zongshi, the lord of the Yellow River, in the Hetao area and offered jade bi to the Yellow River through him. The reasons behind this are worthy of more research. The concrete steps necessary to achieving this are first to recognize the Hetao area section of the jade road of the Longshan culture, represented by the large ritual jades unearthed from the Shimao site of Shenmu in Shaanxi Province, which imply the existence of a powerful vassal state (the ruins of the ancient city belonging to the Longshan culture have been excavated). It may be the geographic location of the (Yin) Emperor Gaozong’s attack on Guifang, as suggested by the corresponding inherited literature. Thus, it is of great significance to find out the source materials used in Shimao’s jades, the origin and development of the jade myths, and their relationship with the Taosi, Qijia, Lower Xiajiadian, Xia and Shang cultures. The third possible breakthrough is the understanding of the origin and development of Potou jades in Yuncheng, Shanxi. Judging from the fact that the unearthed site of Potou jades is close to the Yellow River, this site is a triangular intersection where the jade systems of the Qijia culture in the west, the Longshan culture in northern Shaanxi, and the Central Plain civilization interacted. It is necessary to expand fieldwork in the surrounding areas, to find more clues related to cultural relics, and establish causal analysis models.

22.2 Future Research Directions: Reconstructing Chinese Mythistory

483

(2) Research on the driving forces behind the origins of civilization Corresponding to Frazer’s great book The Golden Bough, which delves into the roots of Western culture, this author hopes to write a work titled Jade Brilliance in the future, a book with the aim of exploring the main vein of Chinese culture. The theoretical thinking behind this would be to determine whether material or ideological factors were the decisive controlling factor. What is the cause and what is the result? The hope of mediating past disputes lies in empirical case studies. For example, where there is no gold, gold worship is impossible. In this way, of course, the material determines ideology. However, without the worship of gold as a sacred object, there would be no mining of gold in the place where there is gold. In this regard, it is the concept and ideology that determines the behaviour. What factors caused Western civilization to embrace the values of gold worship from the very beginning, which have so far been difficult to transcend, while East Asia has always adhered to the values of jade worship? Even after metal worship and metal production took root in China with the emergence of Chinese civilization, the supreme value of jade remained irreplaceable. The imperial jade seal, the symbol of supreme power from Qin Shi Huang to the Qing Dynasty is a case in point. The most recent practice of adding jade to Olympic gold medals is another fine example of this persisting value. The five stone jue production sites of the Erlitou, Xiajin, Taosi, Potou and Zhouyuan Qijia cultures show that the emergence of jade culture was the result of cultural transmission. The earliest of these cultural sites did not contain jade articles, while the later ones did, which must be the result of learning under certain concepts. In the absence of jade materials, stone jue were used to replace jade jue. Obviously, examples can be found to demonstrate that mythological concepts dominate production. In addition, jade ritual systems in different regions in early history represent the existence of different “sects” within the common jade belief system. (3) Reconstructing the Chinese mythistory For the convenience of explanation, the division of the big and small traditions of Chinese culture and the analysis of the ancient layers of Chinese jade myths can be simplified into three layers of prehistoric culture superimposed one after another: the pre-Yangshao era, the Yangshao era and the Longshan era. These three eras together constitute the “Jade Age”, which corresponded with the gestation of Chinese civilization, and is in sharp contrast to the “Gold Age” that occurred during the genesis of Mediterranean civilization. This leads to a new perspective on the timeline of the big tradition of Chinese and Western mythology. As far as the jade culture in East Asia is concerned, a chronology of the jade myth tradition may be preliminarily delineated as follows:

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22 Conclusion and Future Directions

Jade Myth 1: Ershe and eryu: jade jue, jade axe

8000 years ago

Jade Myth 2: Rainbow dragon: jade huang, jade ben

7000 years ago

Jade Myth 3: Kingship: jade yue and jade gui

6000 years ago

Jade Myth 4: Yellow Emperor ate the jade grease: jade ying and jade bi

5000 years ago

Jade Myth 5: Yao and Shun conferred rui: jade zhang and jade ge

4500 years ago

Jade Myth 6: Yu was granted a jade gui: gold and jade ritual instruments

4000 years ago

Jade Myth 7: King Zhou of Shang and the Jade of Heavenly Wisdom

3200 years ago

Jade Myth 8: Jiang Taigong caught a jade huang while fishing

3000 years ago

Jade Myth 9: King Mu of Zhou visited a jade palace at Kunlun mountains

2800 years ago

Jade Myth10: King Wu of Chu acquired the He Shi Bi

2500 years ago

Jade Myth 11: King Zhao of Qin pursued the He Shi Bi

2300 years ago

Jade Myth 12: The Imperial Seal of Qin Shi Huang

2200 years ago

The traditional Chinese view of history saw it beginning with the Emperors Yan and Huang more than five thousand years ago, but there is no physical evidence of this until the Shang Dynasty. The long historical period between Emperors Yan and Huang and the Shang Dynasty became an unsolved case. Since the Doubting Antiquity School became popular in modern academic circles, the history of China before the Eastern Zhou Dynasty has been questioned and challenged. The history of civilization reconstructed by the quadruple-evidence method now extends to 8000 years ago and runs through the Xia, Shang, Zhou and Qin. The chronological clues afforded by unearthed jade articles have greatly made up for the limitations imposed by the late appearance of Chinese writing systems. The 12-stage jade mythological narratives have corresponding jade objects as evidence, so they cannot be regarded as purely fictional myths in literature. Nevertheless, empirical scholars may view Yan, Huang, Yao, Shun and Yu as legendary figures and do not recognize their historical authenticity. Therefore, today’s solution is to deconstruct and renounce the old concept that myth and history are completely opposite and irreconcilable and instead to draw on the concept of “mythistory” as the basis of a new historiography. The analysis of archaeological cultural relics can reveal clues about the historical inheritance of the jade mythological view. These clues can be connected with the corresponding inherited literature so as to reconstruct the core values expressed in Chinese jade myths, and thus the values of the big tradition of Chinese mythistory.

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