Public Memory in Early China 067449203X, 9780674492035

Citation preview

〔

P u b lic M

em ory

in

Early

C h in a

K .E . B r a s h ie r

麵一

B

m w m o r y in E a r ly C h in a

Public Memory in Early China

t

Harvard-Yenching Institute Monographs 91

Public Memory in Early China

K. E. B r a s h ie r

Published by the Harvard University Asia Center for the Harvard-Yenching Institute Distributed by Harvard University Press Cambridge (Massachusetts) and London 2014

Printed in the United States ofAmerica The Harvard-Yenching Institute, founded in 1928, is an independent foundation dedicated to the advancement of higher education in the humanities and social sciences in Asia. Headquartered on the campus of Harvard University, the Institute provides fellowships for advanced research, training, and graduate studies at Harvard by competitively selected faculty and graduate students fromAsia. The Institute also supports a range of academic activities at its fifty partner universities and research institutes across Asia. At Harvard, the Institute promotes East Asian studies through annual contributions to the Harvard-Yenching Library and publication of the HarvardJournal of Asiatic Studies and the Harvard-Yenching Institute Monograph Series.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brashier, K. E.，1965Public memory in early China I K. E. Brashier. pages cm. — (Harvard-Yenching Institute monographs ; 91) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-674-49203-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Funeral rites and ceremonies_ China~History—To 1500.2. Burial—China—History~To 1500. 3. Collective memory~China~History~To 1500. 4. Memorials~Chinese— History—To 1500.5. Inscriptions, Chinese. 6. China~History~Qin dynasty, 221-207 B.C. 7. China~History~Han dynasty, 202 B.C. -220 A.D. I. Tide. GT3283j \ 2B73 2014 393'.930951—dc23 2013032662 Index by Jac Nelson @ Printed on acid-free paper Last figure below indicates year of this printing 20 19 18 17 16 15 14

To the instructors at liberal arts colleges tuhoy without research libraries》teaching assistants and, most ofally time awayfrom their students, still manage to add their whispers to the conversation

Contents

List of Tables and Figures ix Conventions xi Acknowledgments xiii in tro d u c tio n : Han memorial culture i section i: “Repeated Inking” and the backdrop of a manuscript

culture section

5

2: “Continuous Chanting” and the backdrop of an oral

performance culture section

9

3: Inking and Chanting share their secret of longevity

part 1：Names aspositioning the self 58 section 4： The ancestors given names as locative markers 68 section 5: The ancestors surname as a spatial marker 92 section 6: Following the named lineage back through time 115 part n: Age aspositioning the self 144 section 7: The age of childhood 153 section 8: The age of adulthood 158 section 9: The age of advanced years 172 section xo: The age of death 181 section 11: The age of afterlife 198 part hi: Kinship aspositioning the self 209 section 12: Weakening personal agency 214 section 13: Strengthening interpersonal bonds section 14: A dynamic relationship net 231

221

part iv: The tangible tools ofpositioning the self 263 section 15：Calling cards and the trafficking of names 268 section 16: The ancestral shrine and its tools of remembrance

Vlll

Contents

section 17: The cemetery and its tools of remembrance section 18: Commemorative portraiture as a tool of remembrance 305 part v: The intangible tools ofpositioning the self 317 section 19: Reduction 321 section zo：Conversion 333 section zi: Association 349 Conclusion: “Here is where the Earl ofShao rested” 366

Notes 373 Bibliography ■481 Index 505

292

Tables and Figures

Tables

1 A sample of male and female personal names from the Zoumalou records 71 2 The bounties of seniority，by age and administrative grade 3 The decreasing frequency of sacrifices 202

177

Figu res

1 The stele of Jing Yun, magistrate of Quren，erected 173 ce，from Yunyang County, Sichuan

xiv

2 Eastern Han relief of students bearing books，from Ducheng, Shandong 8 3 Eastern Han inscription urging descendants of a thrice venerable to

continue observing his name taboo, from Zhejiang Province 4 Jorg Breus “Steps of life” 148 5 A woman’s version of “The different stages of life” 149

73

6 Simple summary of the lifeline, as envisioned in the postmedieval

West

152

7 The stele of Xianyu Huang, erected 165 ce, from Tianjin

Municipal Region

168

8 Simple summary of the life line，as envisioned in early imperial

China 207 9 The First Emperor of Qin fails to dredge up the royal tripods, in a late Eastern Han stone relief from Tengzhou，Shandong 282 10 An Eastern Han cemetery at Yanshi，Henan 293 11 The Kong Zhou stele, erected 164 ce, from Qufu, Shandong 300 12 A common mid-Han labeling tag, dated iz bce, from Eji-na, Inner

Mongolia Autonomous Region 300 13 The birchleaf pear beside an homage-receiving lord, from an Eastern Han tomb at Jiaxiang, Shandong 343

14 The ranks of Confucius’s disciples (partial), as depicted in an Eastern Han stone relief from Zoucheng, Shandong 361 15 The cedar where the Chairman Mao rested at the Ming tombs Beijing 371

Conventions

All translations in this book are my own unless otherwise stated, and for early Chinese primary sources，I have opted to include the Chinese so that knowledgeable readers can draw their own conclusions. As will become quickly evident, I favor extensive quotation, not only to support my arguments but also as a means of adding original color to this account. All translators naturally navigate between the Scylla of read­ ability and the Charybdis of accuracy, and I apologize in advance if we get pulled into Charybdiss whirlpool from time to time. In the few cases that call for a substantial substitution within the Chinese text，the character within parentheses is the given character as it appears in the received text，and this is then followed by the brack­ eted suggested substitution. But, because this is not an epigraphic study, I have mostly relied upon the transcriptions of specialists, especially when it comes to excavated documents on wood and bamboo strips. I have likewise adopted standard traditional characters when there is no controversy in meaning. (A thousand years from now after our own age of scholarship gets slotted alongside Hanxue and Songxuey anxious commentators will no doubt debate our choices of character script, decrying the age of the great Unicode filter that destroyed their access to chirographic variances and eliminated alternative interpretations.) Chinese book titles are translated into English within the main text but left transliterated in the endnotes. In the endnotes and bibliography, I refer to premodern Chinese primary sources by their titles and not their purported authors (who are often unknown or a matter of dispute) or their modern annotators. In the bibliography, those annotators are listed after the works title. Finally, the translation of.official titles follows Hans Bielensteins The Bureaucracy ofHan Times. K.E.B.

Acknowledgments

The resources that merge together to become a book can perhaps be divided into finances, friends, and family. In terms of finances, I am most grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities, to the Arnold L. and Lois S. Graves award, and to several Reed College paid leaves for giving me the occasional escape from teaching over the years so that I could complete this project. In terms of friends, I acknowledge a debt to my colleagues Michael Frederick and Martin Souza— financed by the Freeman Foundation and a Reed summer research grant respectively~for taking on the tediousbut-necessary job of testing dubious arguments and correcting Chinese characters. I am also grateful to Michael Puett, William Hammell, Maura High, Jac Nelson, the anonymous reviewers，and especially Kristen Wanner for shepherding this manuscript into its final form. In terms of family, I first and foremost thank Andrew Wallace for patiently waiting outside every Chinese bookstore from Paris to Chongqing, from New York to Hong Kong. And given the theme of this book, I would be greatly negligent if I did not sincerely acknowledge the filial debt I owe my parents Mary and Clyde; and their parents Leona and Henry, Mamie and William; and their parents Mary and Andrew, Mary and August, Mattie and Henry, Mollie and William; and their parents . . . .

Fig. i: The stele o f Jing Yun, magistrate o f Quren, erected 173 ce , from Yunyang County, Sichuan (Source: Chongqing Zhongguo Sanxia bowuguan一 Chongqing bowuguan, 97).

INTRODUCTION

Han memorial culture

I

n 2004，during the rushed archeological work prior to the planned flooding of the Three Gorges region on the Yangzi River, excavators

discovered a stele dated 173 ce and dedicated to a local prefect who had

otherwise disappeared from history (Figure 1). In language common for such gravestones from the later years of the Han dynasty (202 bce—220 ce), the two-meter-high slab lavishly praised the administration of this minor official, named Jing Yun 景 雲 (d. 103 ce). It describes how the local populace wept at his death “as if mourning for a parent” (省口喪考 她 )，how they set aside their musical instruments in brooding silence, and how smoke rising up from seasonal sacrifices on his behalf was visi­ ble all around the district. Typically borrowing lines and formats from

earlier classical literature, it vaunts his accumulated achievements that merited such an inscription, “hoping to encourage future generations and inform posterity” （ 冀 勉 來 嗣 ，示後昆兮 V Yet, if one searches for the details as to what those achievements were, there are none to be found. Other than Jing Yuns name, date of death, and a few standardized details about the origin of the Jing family, this 367-character inscription lacks any concrete data on what the prefect actually did. Instead, we are told that his administration “sorted the vermilion from the purple”一 an allusion to Confucius (551-479), who had esteemed vermilion because it was an unadulterated royal color— or that it “promoted the enlightened and demoted the benighted after thrice examining his administrators,” an allusion to the sage ruler Shun 舜， who had exemplified good government. While Jing Yuns stele is an

extreme case of a stele that does not give us much in the way of personal data, such stereotyping is common for stelae and for other eulogistic media that aimed to insert their dedicatees into the public memory. “Jing Yun” here was a Confucius as well as a Shun，but was he Jing Yun? Reducing a forebear to the rhetoric of stock images and stereotypes runs counter to modern notions of individuality and would be like compiling todays obituaries using nothing but topoi from the Bible, allu­ sions to pop songs, and likenesses to television stars. From our perspec­ tive, Jing Yun’s stele is a failure, but in a predominantly oral culture, an individuality that is so much praised today was anathema in post­ mortem remembrance. Not surprisingly, memory is more easily popu­ lated by a few stock images than by a large diversity of data that must ultimately rely upon an extensive written record. That is, the complex­ ity of detail that individuates a person taxes human memory’s limited capacity. While a truly singular ancestor might still rise above all others, most forebears fade over time as their detailed identities— the sum of particularities and differences that make them distinct~dissolve over the generations. Conversely, if an identity were converted into a stock image, that forebear would enjoy a more robust shelf life precisely by being simplified, standardized, and tied into the existing public memory. In early imperial China~here loosely defined as the Qin 秦 and Han 漢 dynasties (zzi BCE-2ZO ce) 一 the dead were indeed remembered by stereotyping them，by relating them to the existing public memory, and not by vaunting what made each individual distinct and out of the ordinary. Their posthumous names were chosen from a limited prede­ termined pool; their descriptors were derived from set phrases in the classicist (that is, Confucian) tradition;2and their identities were explic­ itly categorized with those of particular cultural heroes or sage rulers of antiquity. In general terms, postmortem remembrance was a process of pouring new ancestors into prefabricated molds, and the following study is an examination of this pouring process that led to the construction of public memory in early imperial China. A person took up residence in the public memory by being positioned in the collectively projected vision of society. Ones personal attributes such as name, age，and kinship typically were used to locate the self and relate it to others in the social network; they didn’t so much “single you out” as “position you in.” Your name, your age, and your kinship

position were three identifiers that said something about you relative to others in early China. There were other socially locative parameters, and by way of example the Liji 禮 "i己（ Ritual records) lists six: name or appel­ lation {ming 名)，age {chan^you 長幼 )，kinship {qin 親 )，honors or rank [zun 尊 )，marriage relationships {churu 出入)，and dependence relation­

ships with people other than kin.3For reasons to be explained later, this book will fold the parameter of rank into its discussion on age and will address both marriage relationships and ndnkin dependence relation­ ships in its discussion on kinship. With death came the need to fix this duly positioned self for perpetu­ ity, to weld this identity into the preexisting infrastructure，using both tangible tools (such as the stele that displays Jing Yuns name and relates him to the rest of his lineage) and intangible tools (such as the rhet­ oric that ties Jing Yun to Confucius and Shun). Thus, to explore the mechanics of public memory (as opposed to the mechanics of ancestral memory, which are examined in this book’s companion volume), this study progresses through five stages or parts: 1. A person’s name is usually the last attribute to survive in the public memory, and Part I explores how the “personal name” {ming 名) of the infant, the “courtesy name” {zi 字）of the adolescent, the “posthumous name” {sbi M), and the lineage “surname” {xing 姓）were in themselves all locative mark­ ers, not just labeling a unique individual but also positioning that individual relative to others. They were more than static identifiers; they negotiated relationships. In choosing to use the personal or courtesy name one indi­ cated hierarchal standing, and the observance of a name taboo after someones death signposted the scope of the deceaseds in-group. Most of all, the lineage surname itself, with its geographic associations and even its perceived cosmological origins, was the focus of much early discourse. 2. Part II examines the ramifications of age. A persons age indexed a kind of social value not only in theory but also in statute, as recently excavated administrative materials amply demonstrate, translating age hierarchy into sanctioned practice. An early Chinese version of the “ages of man” might be summarized as a rising straight line with a fairly constant slope, a line that continued upward unimpeded by the death threshold it crossed. The ances­ tral cult continued that line as ancestors paradoxically faded upward, their detailed selves dwindling from the public memory as they disappeared into the ever higher ranks of the lineage. 3. Just as Part I demonstrates that early Chinese names were not merely labels for individuals but regularly implied relationships among individuals, Part III shows that the self was generally conceived as dispersed rather than indi­ viduated, more like a knot in a network of relationships. Kinship provided

the first and strongest strands that positioned this knot, and those strands served as a model for the bonds that extended beyond the lineage as well. Part III focuses on how the self was positioned in terms of kinship and surveys how rhetoric and ritual weakened personal agency and strengthened inter­ personal ties. This dispersed view of self is most evident in the dynamics of the net, because pulling up a knot via achievement Raised up adjacent knots (including those of ones ancestors) and pulling down a knot via wrongdoing dragged down its neighbors (again including one’s ancestors). 4. Name, age, and. kinship were three locative attributes within the public memory, but what tangible and intangible media actually preserved those attributes? Parts IV and V examine this question and its implications. In Part IV I suggest that, in the Han, tangible locators or objects of remembrance were less like “markers” and more like “maps.” From calling cards to ancestral tablets, from grave stelae to commemorative portraits, these objects identi­ fied and even embodied a set of human connections and associations, and early texts were surprisingly explicit about how they preserved the knotlike nature of the self. A name-bearing ancestral tablet found its meaning within a constellation of other tablets; a commemorative portrait found its meaning through the other portraits hanging beside it. They were not representations of the individuated dead in a Western sense but were more like physical “You are here” tags in the public memory. 5. Just as early China cannot be characterized as solely a manuscript culture, being also an oral-performative one (see below), identity became located within the public memory, not just through visible media but also through invisible ones, these intangible locators found within the rhetorical infra­ structure provided by the classics that came to dominate Han education. The dead were reduced to their core attributes, converted to a classicist model and then remembered by association, by being likened to venerated figures in antiquity. The dead became new old heroes. In other words, the “netdness” that preserved identity in Part III is projected outward in Part V to cultural recollection in general, so that Jing Yun’s “self” becomes remembered by being tied to a Confucius and associated with a Shun.

In sum, this book is a cultural history of identity in early imperial China and the relative positioning of that identity within the collec­ tively projected vision of society. It treats the three definitive parameters of names, age, and kinship as ways of negotiating that position before turning to the tangible and intangible media responsible for keeping that defined identity on the map of Han public memory. Yet before we can pursue this five-part argument about the implicit structure of public memory and the nature of self within it, we must recognize what the Han understanding of “memory” was. How was it acquired? The question of public memory is sufficiently vague to require a more concrete approach to the topic, and so by way of introduction,

I will survey the formal memorization and recitation, skills that char­ acterized Han education. Recent scholarship has made great advances into understanding early writing and literacy, prompted in part by the growing number of excavated texts now available, but the Qin and Han dynasties cannot be described as a purely “chirographic” or manuscript culture. The counterpart to writing was oral performance and the skills of lengthy verbatim recall it entailed. Unlike writing and literacy, this aspect of early education has eluded research, but as will be seen below, it is necessary first to understand the formal memorization and recitation that characterizes an oral performative culture before grasping the more general notion of public memory explored in this book.4 To that end, this introduction will briefly highlight what we know of early manuscript culture and then survey at length the surviving frag­ mentary evidence of the formal and conscious commitment of data to memory, thereby addressing the most basic questions one can ask，such as who memorized what and when. Finally I will speculate on how writ­ ing and recitation together changed the nature of the Han dynasty, even suggesting that the so-called Confucian victory had nothing to do with the content of classicism and everything to do with the lengthy verbatim recall skills the classicists brought to their employment at court. After establishing this beachhead of formal memorization skills, we will be in a better position to advance into the grander notion of Han memorial culture.

Section 1: ''RepeatedInking'and the backdrop of a manuscript culture In the Zhuangzi 莊子，a sagely being was once asked where she had learned the secret to her longevity, and the account of her method reveals one way in which oral performative and manuscript cultures were perceived in early China. She explains that the method was developed long ago by someone or something named “Uncertainty Beginning” and was then passed down to “Conjoined Silence， ” “Dim Darkness,” “Sighing Song， ” and several other similar entities. All the names after the progenitor generally indicate a transmission via alternating audio and visual agencies as the secret moves from silence and darkness to discern­ ment and acuity, the penultimate pairing being “Whispered Sound” and

KSeen Clarity.MThis chronological transmission ends with the grandson of “Continuous Chanting” (Luosong 洛誦 ) and, last of all, the son of “Repeated Inking” (Fumo 副墨).5What was recently passed on through the recited word had now become consigned to the written text. Recently, modern scholarship has focused on the development of writing, literacy, and education in early China, the origins of their spread speculatively traceable to the ancestral cult and the preservation of lineage memory. Looking back to the Western Zhou 周 （ trad. 1122771)5 Yiqun Zhou has argued that, unlike early Greece, where education centered on the gymnasium, the sacred grove, and the symposium, “the home, where one engaged in daily practices of kinship-centered moral precepts and religious ceremonies, was the site for the most fundamental education in Zhou society.”6 Others have contended that literacy itself spread outward from that lineage center. Constance A. Cook speculates as follows: Lineage narratives, memorized and adapted for performance at musical cere­ monies by graduating youth, formed the early core of literary knowledge. Up through the Warring States period [481-221], bureaucratic expansion of this original Zhou-inspired educational structure一 quite possibly inherited from the Shang [trad. 1766-1122]— and reduplication of it in numerous local and competing state variations led to the spread of literacy among the elite through­ out the Yellow and Yangzi River valleys.7

Robin D. S. Yates largely agrees: “Literacy was a technology that had gradually diffused from the courts and the religious experts associated with ancestral cults of the competing states, where it apparently was first deployed.”8 Thus remembrance of one’s forebears may have played a significant role in the preimperial spread of a manuscript culture. This manuscript culture moved beyond lineage narratives and found expression in administrative records, almanacs，covenants, inventory lists, prayers, divination and medical manuals, exercise guidebooks, and more.9 By the unification of China under the Qin dynasty in 221 bce， this list could be expanded to include local census records, data on grain storage，land use figures, conscript records on military and civilian job expectations and performance, as well as omen reports.10 Bureaucratic recordkeeping was another important function of manuscripts. Strips excavated from a Qin provincial official’s grave dated just after the Qin unification attest to the continual writing of regional reports on favorable and unfavorable rains, droughts, violent winds, grasshoppers, and other

agricultural mishaps.11 The legal material dated to the early Western Han (202 bce—9 ce) excavated at Zhangjiashan in Hubei regulates the elaborate system of postal stations for circulating such reports, offer­ ing details such as what to do when seals were broken or which written documents were not to be sent by imperial post.12Yates concludes from such evidence that “ordinary members of the population in Qin and Han times could have possessed basic literacy skills, even though there is no clear record of schools for such individuals.”13 That is not to say the literacy required for those original lineage narratives was the same as the literacy required for inventory lists and conscript records, and recent scholarship separates elite literacy from functional literacy, the latter being the ability to read or write limited, basic data in prescribed circumstances, such as filling out a form with ones name，appending a label, or composing an extremely routinized report. Evidence of functional literacy largely comes to us through excavated materials, whereas evidence of elite literacy survives in received texts that illustrate how great works of literature were being tracked down, copied, and explained. For example, over the first century after unifica­ tion many written texts were collected into imperial and private libraries, notable examples being those of Liu De 夢 急 (d. ca. 130 bce) and Liu An 翟1 J安 (d. 122 bce), the kings of Hejian and Huainan respectively. The former rewarded anyone who brought him good books, which he then copied, keeping the originals. He accumulated written texts passed down through established lineages, particularly texts dating from before the Qin bibliocaust, and his collection included works of both canoni­ cal and commentarial nature, of both classicist and Daoist perspective.14 Alongside the court libraries，the ancestral shrines were another notable place for the accumulation of written texts, as will be seen in Section 16. By the beginning of the first century of the imperial era, the famous grand historian Sima Qian 司 馬 遷 （ ca. 145—ca. 86) did not bother to discuss the literary works of Guanzi 管 子 (d. 645 bce), Yanzi 晏 子 (ca. 589—500)，Mencius 孟 子 （ 4th c. bce), and others because, in his view, so many people already possessed their works.15 In the middle of the Han, a bibliography of the imperial collection lists 677 works， 16and we know that the private traffic of books flourished in the Eastern Han (25-220). Booksellers appeared in the marketplace,17 and stone reliefs from graves frequently depict books— usually in the

Fig. 2: Eastern Han relief of students bearing books, from Ducheng, Shandong (Source: Reconstruction based on Zhongguo huaxiangshi quanji bianji weiyuanhui, Zhongguo huaxiangshi quanji i: Shandong Han huaxiangshi, 88 [p. 123]).

form of scrolls of bound wooden or bamboo slats— as in a grave exca­ vated in Shandong, in which more than a dozen students gather around a master, each student holding a book (Figure 2).18 Wang Chong 王 充 (27-ca. 100) identifies a well-versed person as one

whose “books he has penetrated range from a minimum of one thousand chapters to a maximum of ten thousand scrolls” （ 通書千篇以上，萬卷以 下 )，“chapters” being subunits of scrolls.19 He further describes such a scholar as follows: 通 人 積 文 ，十篋以上，聖 人之言，賢 者 之 語 ， 上 自黄帝， 下至秦、漢 ，治國肥家之 術， 刺世譏俗之言， 備矣。 The well-versed person accumulates at least ten trunks of texts, and he can be considered accomplished if that includes the texts of the sages and the speeches of the worthies from the time of the Yellow Emperor down to the Qin and Han dynasties; the techniques of governing the state and enriching the family; and texts criticizing the age and scrutinizing custom.20

Wang Chong personally favored the production of written texts— not surprising, given that he was by his own admission a prolific writer— but he noted that writers attracted no students in comparison to common classicists. Wang Chong acknowledged that some classicists focused on only a single text or canon， 21 but even those more narrowly focused scholars could produce volumes of work explicating that single text. In the century after Wang Chong, the respected scholar and frontier general Zhang Huan 張 奐 （ 104-181) was praised for his commentary to the Shujing 書 經 、 Documents canoriy also known as Shangshu 尚書 or

Venerable documents), which ran to ninety thousand characters, praised because it was one-fifth the size of its predecessor.22 This manuscript culture of course serves as a necessary backdrop to public memory, but manuscripts are not texts. They are merely the visible instantiation of texts that may themselves be immaterial. While writing and literacy have recently received more attention in modern scholarship, memorization and recitation— the components of an oral performative culture一 have not, and hence this introduction will devote

much more attention to these immaterial modes of preserving texts from the past. It will focus upon the formal, concrete notion of memorization and recitation in Han education that undergirds the more general notion

of public memory.

Section 2: “Continuous Chanting” and the backdrop of an oralperformance culture A millennium after Wang Chong and Zhang Huan, Zhu Xi 朱 喜 (11301200) would summarize the difference between manuscript and oral performance cultures relative to the Han as follows: 今緣文字印本多， 人不著 心 讀 。漢時諸儒以經相授者， 只是暗誦， 所以記得牢。 故其所引書句，多有錯字。如 《孟子》所 引 《詩》、《書》亦多錯，以 其 無 本 ，但記 得耳。 Because there are now many printed texts, no one engages in mindful reading. [Yet] in Han times, when the classicists in their exchanges made use of the clas­ sics, they did so only through well-versed chanting, which is why their memories were secure. Thus, when they wrote down quotations, they often used the wrong characters. For example, when Mencius quotes from the Songs and Documents, he indeed makes many mistakes, because he did not have the original and only drew upon the passages from his memory.23

To contend that Han classicists had thoroughly memorized texts and put them to good use is of course a gross generalization, and writers during and just after the Han lamented that such devotion and skill in fact dropped off over the course of the dynasty.24Yet memorized texts— particularly the so-called Confucian classics, such as the Songs canon {Shijing 詩 ,經 ) and the Documents canon— no doubt heavily influenced

even the written texts that survive, including the incorporation of wrong characters, as Zhu Xi contends. Modern scholars such as Martin Kern have noted that excavated texts frequently exhibit a substantial degree

of graphical variants— roughly one-third of any given text and primar­ ily the more difficult words— but they generally maintain a phonologi­ cal coherence with their received counterparts, all of which is evidence for a reliance upon oral transmission. Kern even suggests that many manuscripts were not necessarily copied from physically present earlier manuscripts but were reproduced from memory, thereby accounting for perhaps 90 percent of all textual variants.25 Zhu Xi praises his forebears for their lengthy verbatim recall (or memoria recitatio)ywhich consists of word-for-word textual recitation, rather than for their rhetorical memory (or memoria rerum), which concentrates on organizing and retaining data without regard for precise wording. While there is an extensive Western tradition of mnemonic strategies for develop­ ing the latter (including the famous “memory palace” in which ideas are symbolically placed in the corners of rooms of a familiar building), the scattered evidence from early Chinese texts focuses upon the former for reasons that will become apparent.26Yet history does not record contempo­ rary commonplaces such as the cultural assumptions about lengthy verba­ tim recall, unless those commonplaces are either disrupted or manifested in some extraordinary way. Thus one is reduced to chance references, to scattered data, and to noteworthy exceptions to the norm. Once this frag­ mentary material is brought together to form a whole picture (albeit under cracked and discolored glass), we might be able to discern a clearer rela­ tionship between the manuscript and the memorized, between Repeated Inking and Continuous Chanting. This survey attempts to collect such material together and thereby answer rudimentary questions on early imperial memorial culture, such as who memorized what and how.27 W ho

m asters a n d recites

Prior to the late Warring States, education was an uncertain enterprise, and little evidence survives as to what form it may have taken, if any. There were of course the famous master-disciple relationships of the great scholars Confucius and Mozi 薹 子 (late 4th c. bce), but there are no grounds to equate them with the later multigenerational textual lineages found in the Han.28Modern ideas that there existed academies (e.g., at Jixia) akin to the Library of Alexandria have now been dismissed after closer examination of the data. Groups of specialists— including many whom we might term “intellectuals”— did gather around certain

wealthy patrons, but, as Nathan Sivin observes, “no anecdote in the early sources suggests that patrons were concerned about, or even curious about，education.’， 29As Yiqun Zhou noted, education began at home.30 That changed at least by the early Han, as the state to a small degree began to take on the role of protecting texts and scholarship, not only guaranteeing the transmission of particular traditions but also develop­ ing a pool of experts in ritual and administration. But who could enter into this pool? Early in the dynasty, Lu Jia 陸 賈 （ d. 178 bce) presents a rather optimistic view of would-be participants in Han memorial culture, claiming as follows: 蓋力學 而 誦 《詩 》、《書》， 凡 人 所 能 爲 也 ；若欲移江、河 ，動 太 山 ，故人力所不 能 也 。如調心在己，背惡向善， 不貪於財， 不苟於利，分財取寡’ 服 事 取 勞 ， 此天 下易知之道，易行之事也， 豈有難哉？ ， When it comes to energetically studying and reciting the Songs and Documents canon, anyone can do it. [Yet] if someone wanted to shift the Jiang and Yellow Rivers or move Mount Tai, human effort could not do it. If someone keeps a harmonious mind within, turns away from evil and faces goodness, is not greedy for material things nor recklessly bent on profit, selects the lesser portion when material things are divided and selects the harder jobs when it comes to service, these are general principles that all the world easily understands and are activities that all the world can easily carry out. Surely that’s not hard!31

Ideally, anyone might have been able to engage in recitation and cleave to the classicist goals, but in reality, there were several barriers. First， education required money, both for texts and tutors and because it took the would-be student out of the labor market.32A few anecdotes describe how youths from impoverished families studied texts while standing at bookstalls or having borrowed them from friends, and others tell of people reciting texts while weeding, toting firewood, or tending to the drying grain. These ambitious youths subsequently rose up to take office, but the exceptional nature of their rags-to-riches ascent is the part of their story that makes them exceptional and hence noteworthy. Sometimes such myths take over from fact，as in the case of Liaodong s grand commandant, Du Shang 度 尚 (d. 166 ce)_ The Hou Hanshu 後 漢 書 (Later Han documents) reports that when Du Shang was young, “his family was poor, he did not cultivate any educational activities, nor was he recommended to office by his village” （ 家貧， 不修學行， 不爲鄉 里户斤推舉)• It goes on to describe how he quickly rose up from such dire

circumstances to become prefect, then to astound the people with his good government:，until they regarded him as “spirit-like” {shenming 牙令

明) . Yet the text’s later commentators point out that in a much earlier

account of his life，Du Shang had indeed been educated, specifically “penetrating” {tong 通 ) versions of the Changes canon {Yijing 易,經 ) and Documents canon and then serving as a lower official.33 It is safe to assume that, on the whole, a childhood spent in textual training was in fact well beyond the reach of most Han Chinese, despite the occasional and often mythical anecdote to the contrary. Not surprisingly, scholar­ ship that led to officialdom tended to run down lineages, and, at least during the beginning of the period under study, this lineage dominance even translated into law, as will be seen below. A second barrier to education had to do with gender: women were less likely to participate in Han memorial culture than men, and their partic­ ipation, when it did occur, was limited to certain types of texts within limited settings. The known exceptions were usually tied to the court, as in the case of Empress Deng fp (81-121), wife of Emperor He ^ (r. 89—106), whose mother was related to the second empress of Emperor Guangwu 光 武 (r. 25—58). Her biography records the following: 六 歲 能 《史書》，十 二 通 《詩 》、《論語》。諸 兄 每 讀 經 傳 ， 辄下 意 難 問 。志在典 藉 ，不問居家之事。母 常 非 之 ，曰: 「汝不習女工以供衣服， 乃更務學，寧當舉博 士邪？」后重違母言，晝 修 婦 業 ， 暮 誦 經 典 ，家 人號曰「諸 生 」。 When she was six sui old [i.e., five years old]，she was competent in the Historical documents, and when she was twelve, she penetrated the Songs canon and the Analects. Whenever any of her elder brothers were reading out the canons and commentaries, they humbly sought her instruction if they encountered diffi­ cult questions. Her mind was fixed on the doctrines and annals, and she never inquired about household matters. Her mother constantly chastised her, saying “You have not trained in women’s work to make clothes, and— worse than that~ you concentrate on studying. Are you instead making yourself equal to all the court academicians?” The [future] empress strongly opposed her mothers words’ but by day she cultivated the wifely undertaking, and by night she chanted the canons and doctrines. The members of her household called her “The Scholar.”34

The anger of Empress Dengs mother well demonstrates the male domi­ nation of Han memorial culture. There survive only a handful of cases in which women 'recited the Songs canorT {songShi 誦詩 ) or llwere capa­ ble of penetrating canonical studies” {nengtongjingxue 能通'經 學)， 35 and one of these notable exceptions was the scholar Cai Wenji 蔡 文 姬 （ b, 177)， who will be briefly discussed below. Third, men inclined toward military rather than civil service were not expected to participate in a memorial culture. Over the first century of

the Han, the court tended to extend fiefs and offices to men of martial valor rather than to men of bureaucratic expertise; even after classicism and administrative ability grew in importance, military skill continued to be valued to the end of the dynasty. Instead of describing how their subjects mastered texts in their youth, as Han standard history biog­ raphies often do, the biographies dedicated to such men might begin, “In his youth, he possessed a .willful qi” (少有志氣 )• Again, the excep­ tions demonstrate the rule, as in the case of Du Liang 杜 }•京 (d. 43 ce), who is said to have possessed a tall and ferocious bearing. “Although he was a military general, he still penetrated the canons and documents” (雖 武 將 ，然通經書 )，reinforcing the stereotype that the two normally did not mix.36 In a second case, Chancellor Wang Yun 王 允 (fl. second half of 2nd c. ce) in his own youth “possessed a will to establish great

deeds, constantly training in and chanting the canons and commentar­ ies, as well as day and night practicing horsemanship and archery”（ 有 志於立功，常 習 誦 經 傳 ， 朝夕試驰射 ).37 Wang Yun became regarded as a vengeful antagonist partially responsible for the ultimate demise of the Han. In other words, not only were martial types perceived as less inclined toward memorial culture, but those who combined the martial and the civil were sometimes considered over ambitious.38 Fourth, a literary education was not esteemed highly by everyone. A small minority of biographies describe their dedicatees as devoted to the tradition of “Huang-Lao， ，黄 老 (i.e., of the Yellow Emperor and Laozi) in their youth, to its “words” {yan 言）or its “techniques” {shu 術 ).39Sometimes labeled as “Daoist” but in fact extremely hard to classify, Huang-Lao is not identified with named books or written texts in these biographies, and the dedicatees are not described as “penetrating， ” “mastering， ” or “receiv­ ing” these materials— terms we will soon see are associated with textual competence. Rather, they only “delighted” {hao 好 ) in them, an expression

almost never used in reference to classicist texts. The implication is that classicism was perceived by some as more scripted than this Huang-Lao discourse, that the classical tradition was a bookish one. This implica­ tion is supported by anecdotes that depict classicist memorial culture as a straitjacket on independent thought and behavior. In a biography that takes a critical view, Chen Zun 陳 遵 (d. ca. 25 ce), for example, is char­ acterized as an arrogant drunk who still managed to enjoy high office; in his youth he had “forded through” {she 涉）the commentaries and records

in only a sketchy manner, but, as he concluded later in life, nothing was lost: “When you，sir, recite and chant the canons and documents, its like tying up your own body. You don’t dare take a step out of place, but I give free rein to my mind and release myself, drifting among the common lot” (足 下 諷 誦 經 書 ，若身 自約，不 敢 差 跌 ，而 我 放 意 自 恣 ，浮湛 俗間 ).4° As if in preemptive response to these textless Huang-Lao students, classicist stalwarts such as Confucius and Xunzi 荀 子 (ca. 335-ca. 238) had already complained that spending a whole day lost in pure thought was not worth a few moments in proper learning.41 Thus, on one hand, the poor, women, the martially inclined, and Daoists were four groups stereotypically perceived as not normally engaging in classicist recitation. On the other hand, the classicists them­ selves were subject to stereotyping, particularly when it came to their constant intoning of texts. In preimperial China, this stereotyping came from diverse idea systems, including what are retrospectively identified as Daoism，Mohism，and legalism. As will be seen below, there was a strong classicist perception that constant recitation improved personal character, but some Daoists denied the link. Zhuangzi 莊 子 （ 4th c. bce), for example, offered anecdotes about insincere reciters. He depicts two classicists breaking into a grave to pillage it and, while cracking open the corpses jaws with a crowbar to steal the pearl that had been placed there at death, reciting wholesome, virtuous, and entirely inappropri­ ate verses to each other.42 Here Zhuangzi is playing classicist insincerity in canonical recitation against another of their preoccupations, namely their ritual reverence for the dead. Mozi likewise attacked classicists on both grounds, complaining that between their constant mourning for the dead and their unending recitations, they never got anything done. He lamented to one of them as follows: 或以不喪之間誦詩三百，弦詩三百，歌 詩 三 百’ 舞詩三百。若用子之言，則君子 何曰以聽治？庶人何日以從事？ Otherwise in the intervening times when you are not mourning, you chant the three hundred poems of the Songs canon, strum the three hundred poems of the Songs canon, sing the three hundred poems of the Songs canon, and dance the three hundred poems of the Songs canon. If we listened to you, then on what day would a nobleman heed his government obligations? On what day would a commoner discharge his duties?43

Text chanters were also useless from the legalist perspective, and Han Feizi 韓寻隹子(d. 233 bce), in a chapter entitled “Treacherous, coercive,

and assassinating ministers” (“Jianjie shichen， ’ 矣劫試臣 )，referred to “the world’s stupid scholars” (shi zhiyuxue 世之愚學）as “forever talk­ ing nonsense and always chanting the books of antiquity”（ 攝吱多誦先 古之書)• Government did not need people like that, nor the values they espoused. He continues in the same chapter: 夫 嚴 刑 者 ，民 之 所 畏 也 ；重 罰 者 ，民 之 所 惡 也 。故聖 人陳 其 所畏 以 禁 其邪 ， 設 其所惡以防其姦。是以國安而暴亂不起。吾以是明仁義愛惠之不足用，而嚴刑 重罰之可以治國也。 Generally, it is harsh punishments that the people fear and severe penalties that the people dread. Thus a sage sets out what they fear to limit their straying and establishes what they dread to restrict their treachery. This is how the state is pacified and how violent chaos never arises. This is how I know that benevolence, propriety, affection, and kindness are not worth using, while harsh punishments and severe penalties are the means for governing the state well.44

Han Feizi draws a bright line between a government based on fear of the sage rulers punishments and one based on a desire to emulate the sage rulers best qualities— — mainly because the latter strategy doesn’t work~ and while this exacting legalist position is somewhat more muted in the Han, the same arguments carry over into court discussions almost two centuries later. For example in the Yantielun 鹽 鐵 論 (Analysis of the salt and iron monopolies), the government officials lambast the Klite­ rati^ (文學) for their shabby dress that attempted to mimic the styles of

the Duke of Zhou (trad. r. 1046-1036) and Confucius, for their “slowly walking around in deep thought” （ 深念徐行）and, not surprisingly, for their “deliberative analysis and chants of praise that plagiarized the words of [Confucius’s disciples] Shang and Ci” （ 議 論 稱 誦 ，竊 商 、賜 之 辭 )_45Echoing Han Feizi, the officials further complain: 呻 吟 槁 簡 ，誦 死 人 之 語 ，則有司不以文學。文學知獄之在廷後而不知其事，聞 其事而不知其務。 If you [merely] hum and drone from rotting bamboo strips as well as chant the words of dead people, then the officials have no use for you literati. You literati understand that the prison is located behind the court, but you don’t understand what goes on there. When you hear about what goes on there, you don’t under­ stand its fundamentals.46

Like Han Feizi, the writers of this passage associate classicists with book chanting and simultaneously condemn them for not understanding how punishment worked. Is there thus a link between a persons constant textual recitation and his opposition to penalty-driven government?

The Han classicist imitated the sages by reciting their words and wear­ ing their clothes, and through that mimicry sought to affect his own character in a positive way through constant repetition, an idea further explored below. In essence, the scholar was conditioned to sagely behavior by habituation; he transformed himself, not by force nor by command­ ments uttered by a lawgiver-on-high. Repetitive mimicry is how he learned texts and is also the basic message ofwhat he was learning. That is，

reciting the sages words was the means to improving the self’s behavior. The classicists extended this type of thinking to the populace at large， but instead of the scholar resonating with past sages, the commoner would resonate with his ruler. The best ruler was then an exemplar, a model that commoners would want to mimic and thereby transform their own characters. The worst ruler ordered commoners to change, backing up those orders with fear of punishment and prison. Mimicry relationships were perceived as contrary to control relationships. Thus the mechan­ ics of classicist memorial culture (habituating a text) and the political

agenda of classicism (mimicking an exemplar) went hand in hand. The basic manner in which a young person was indoctrinated to become a

classicist reinforced the classicist argument he subsequently espoused. He was trained a certain way, and so the resulting message was something to which he himself bore witness on an experiential level. Here in the Han Feizi and the Analysis ofthe salt and iron monopolies, such idealism is deemed unrealistic，and they dismiss both classicist book chanting and the classicist understanding of government. In the end, identifying who recited is an exercise in identifying who didn’t. Stereotypically, as we have seen, reciters were not impoverished, female，military-oriented, or Daoist. But stereotypes are perceived, not real, categories; there are a sufficient number of exceptions to blur distinct demarcations. For example, Daoist and classicist texts have been excavated from the same tombs，and many of the versified Daoist texts were most likely memorized in their own right. W hat

to m aster a n d rec it e

Just before the Qin unification, Xunzi described the classicist corpus as being “the world’s great deliberation” （ 天下之大慮也 )，one that warranted active thought and investigation.47It was the alpha and omega of education itself:

學惡乎始？惡乎終？曰 ：其 數 則 始 乎誦 經’ 终 乎 讀 禮 ； 其義則始乎爲士，終乎爲 聖 人 。眞積力久則入，學至乎沒而後止也 。故 學 數 有 終 ’若其義則不可須定舍 也 。爲 之 ’人 也 ；舍 之 ■ 獸也。 故 《書》者 ， 政 事 之 紀 也 ；《詩 》者 ’ 中 聲之 所 止 也 ；《禮 》者 ，法 之 大 分 ’ 類 之 綱 紀 也 。故 學 至 乎 《禮 》而止矣 。夫 是 之 謂 道 德 之 極 。《禮 》之 敬 文 也 ， 《樂》之中和也，《詩 》、《書》之 博 也 ，《春 秋 》之 微 也 ， 在天地之閒 者畢 矣。 君子 之 學 也 ' 入乎耳 ，箸 乎 心 ， 布 乎 四 體 ，形 乎 動 靜 ，端 而 言 ，蜈 而 動 ，一可 以爲法則。小人之學也 ， 入乎耳，出乎口。 Where does learning begin, and where does it end? I say that its sequence begins with chanting the classics and ends with reading out the rituals, while its purpose begins with making a scholar-official and ends with making a sage. You have begun when your integrity accumulates and strength persists, but learning concludes only when you die. Even though the sequence of what is to be learned has an end, the purpose of learning cannot stop even for a moment. If you engage in learning, you are human; if you stop, you are a bird or beast. Thus the Documents offer a record of governing affairs; the Songs offer preci­ sion in balanced tones; and the Rituals offer the grand divisions of standards and the network of categories. Learning therefore ends when it reaches the Rituals, and such can be called the pinnacle of Dao and De. The respectful patterns of the Rituals> the precise patterns of the Music、the breadth of the Songs and Documents and the subtleties of the Spring and Autumn annals fulfill everything between heaven and earth. The nobleman’s learning enters through his ear, sets in his mind and diffuses throughout his four limbs, and is given form in his movement and rest. If there are nuances in his speech or subtleties in his movement, they can all become an exemplary standard. The petty man’s learning enters his ear and comes out of his mouth.48

Thomas H. C. Lee contends that，among the classicists, it was Xunzi “who contributed more to the shaping of Chinese views about education during and after the Han.”49Here in addition to succinctly surveying the classicist education program, he reveals three assumptions about an oral performative culture. First, education begins with chanting. Second, two of the classics to be chanted— the Songs and the Music一 directly reference oral presentation, whereas other classics such as the Documents consist of oratories and performance pieces through which the reciters roles. Finally, both the noble and petty man duly took on their forebears，

take in their education through their ears, not their eyes. That is, Xunzi and other early sources assume that education is primarily oral and not visual.50Even from an etymological perspective，the graph for the “sage” {sheng 聖) that Xunzi used here to refer to what he wants students to become is in fact written with both the “ear” (er 耳) and “mouth” (kou 口）radicals.51

This last point continues to hold weight to this day, and it has been

convincingly argued that the written Chinese language as a whole does not so much index visual images in the readers brain to communicate meaning but rather first cues the oral language that only then communi­ cates meaning.52David Prager Branner has recently explained the advan­ tage of this two-step process: Explicitly phonetic writing makes readers much more certain about the word they are reading. It lets them identify the word from the sound, assum­ ing they actually know the word (surely a necessary precondition of literacy). Systematically speaking, a phonetic compound represents a specific word more parsimoniously than does a semantic compound, and the larger the number of explicit phonograms in the inventory of graphs, the more efficiently that inven­ tory can be learned.53

The Chinese written language is hence derived from oral language，and so Xunzi and others were apparently correct to privilege the ear over the eye, thereby enhancing the importance of chanting and reading out (and not just reading) the classics. Hundreds of biographies in the Han documents {Hanshu 漢書) and Later Han documents identify the particular text mastered in the dedi­ catees youth, but while more than three-quarters of them are indeed related to the classicist canon, Han learning did not necessarily begin with them, despite Xunzi s advice.54 Instead it more likely began with primers and abecedarians. As seen abpve，it was claimed that when

Empress Deng was five she mastered a text called the Historical docu­ ments, said to be a Zhou work for teaching children. This text appears in other imperial biographies, such as that of Emperor An 安 （ r. 107—26 ce), who studied it when he was ten.55In addition to the Historicaldocumerits, some young people had access to the metered verses of primers such as the Xiaoxue Han guan pian *j、 學 漢 官 篇 (Han offices explained for beginning students) as well as the vocabulary builder Jijiupian 急就 篇 (Quick mastery of the characters) _56The latter versified work in fact includes its own list of texts to study: 官學諷《詩 》、《孝經》、《論》

《春 秋 》、《尚書》、律令文

The learning of an official consists of reciting the SongSy the Filialpiety canon, the Analects, the Spring and Autumn annals, the Venerable documents，as well as the texts of the laws and orders.

治禮掌故紙厲身

智能通達多見聞

汀you master the rituals and grasp the historical records, then you can grind and polish the self; if your wisdom is capable and your penetration successful, then you will see and hear much.57

According to the Tang commentator Yan Shigu 顏 古 (581-645), some versions of this text read ski 詩 in the first line as song 誦 and thus have the would-be official “reciting and chanting the Filial piety canon and the Analects，58 The Filial piety canon purports to be a dialogue between Confucius and a disciple of his by the name of Zengzi 曾子，in which Confucius explains why filial piety is important and how its mechanics extend outward to an imperial government.59Since the Lu shi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (Spring and autumn annals of Mr. Lii) quotes from it, the text in some form must predate imperial unification, but the scope of its circulation for the early Western Han is unknown.60 By the mid- to late Western Han, the imperial heirs apparent were studying it in their youth at least as early as Emperor Zhao 昭 (r. 86-73) and including the future Emperor Xuan 宣 （ r. 73—48)，who had come from a collateral branch well outside the direct line of descent.61 His son，the future Emperor Yuan 元 (r. 48—32), mastered it by the age of twelve.62 In 3 ce，during the reign of Emperor Ping 平 (r. 1-6), the regent Wang Mang 王 莽 （ r. 9-23) codified the family rituals and established teachers of the Filialpiety canon in the village and district schools. Those who could recite the canon earned a spot on the registers that determined the selection of officials.63Its widest circulation may therefore be due to Wang Mang, who would later usurp Han rule, and not due to a Han emperor, just as Wang Mang was also predominantly responsible for the long legacy of the imperial ritual code. Several Eastern Han references further allude to its popularity, although usually with a sense of nostalgia rather than pride in the present. A prominent member of the secretariat, Fan Zhun 樊 準 (d. n8), endeav­ ored to demonstrate the past breadth of scholarly studies by claiming that even military men had mastered the Filialpiety canon” The histo­ rian and minister of works Xun Shuang 荀 爽 (128-90 ce) correlated the Han interest in this work with its ruling under the “fire phase” of the five phases (to be discussed in Part I) that assigned the particular qualities of fire, earth, metal, water, and wood to particular historical eras. After linking fire with filial behavior, Xun Shuang observed: “Thus the Han

system caused the empire to penetrate the F ilialpiety canon and selected officials via the 'Filial and incorrupt' recommendation system”（ 故漢制 使 天 下 誦 《孝 經 》， 選吏舉孝廉 ).65

The imperial history of the circulation of the Analects is somewhat similar. A whole collection of brief dialogues between Confucius and his various disciples，the text in its diverse versions may have been dubbed the Analects only at the beginning of the Han. In the first century bce, Emperors Zhao, Xuan, and Yuan all received it alongside the Filialpiety canon, and their imperial tutors were composing commentaries to explain it.66Wang Chong wrote that around their time it had been “transcribed into //-script so that it would be widely chanted” （ 更雜寫以傳誦 ).67Yet unlike the Filialpiety canon, it does not seem to have enjoyed the benefits of Wang Mangs patronage. Even so, excavated versions have been found in Hebei and Gansu provinces, and in the Eastern Han it was the only text not related to the original classicist canon to be engraved on stelae and erected near the capitals imperial academy, a project that began in 175 ce.68 Post-Han works continued to identify it as one of the first texts

to be studied.69 Yet, with the exception of records concerning the imperial family, the vast majority of Han biographies make no reference to mastering primers, the Filial piety canon, or the Analects, They seem to have been regarded as an assumed primary level of education that had to be achieved before moving on to mastering particular canons. Such is confirmed by a few chance resumes preserved in the standard histories, such as that of Fan Sheng 范 升 （ cl ca. 65 ce), which notes, “When he was eight years old, he penetrated the Analects and the Filialpiety canon、and when he became an adult he trained in the Changes canon of the Liang Qiu tradition as well as the Laozi, teaching them to later students” （ 九歲通《 論語》、《孝 經》， 及 長 ，習 《梁丘易》、《老子》， 敎授後生 )/。 The almanac 四民 月 令 (Monthly ordinances of the four classes of people) makes it clear that these texts belonged to a lower level of education. In this farming estate calendar, education was mandatory when the agricultural cycle permitted it/1and among the activities associated with the first month of the year, the children were divided into two groups: 農 事 未起，命成童以上入大學，學 五 經 ；師法求備’ 勿讀書傳。研 來 釋 ，命幼童 入 小 學 ，學篇章。 Before agricultural activities begin, tell any boy who has reached adolescence to attend the upper school and study the five canons. The instructional model

should endeavor to be absolute, and there shall be no reading out of records and commentaries [yet]. When ice no longer forms upon the ink stones, tell the younger children to attend the lower school and study the chapters and verses.72

This almanac provides its own commentary, which stipulates the age of fifteen as dividing upper from lower school, and includes abecedarians such as the Jijiu pian among the “chapters and verses” to be studied. In an entry under the eleventh month, the almanac further notes that those same lower-level children are “to read out the chapters and verses of the Filial piety canon and the Analects^ (讀 《孝 經 》、《論語》篇章).73 Thus from the perspective of texts, there were at least two levels of initial Han education, the first being basic texts such as the abecedarians, the Filial piety canon, and the Analects, and the second being canonical studies.74 On that second level, the Songs canon would seem to be a natural candidate for memorization, given that it had a metered-verse format, like the first-level abecedarians, and also because Confucius himself in the Analects advises young people to learn the Songs because they teach a great deal，including the names of birds, animals, plants, and trees.75 Xunzi also gave preference to the Songs, and other descriptions of memorization outside the biographies regularly earmark the Songs as the object of that memorization.76Yet in the Han biographies, the Spring and Autumn annals with its commentaries is the canon most frequently named as the one mastered, and the Songs and Documents roughly tie for second place.77 Because of its content of historical and even legal prec­ edents, the Annals was perhaps more useful for young people destined for Han officialdom, and its language was relatively formulaic. Han legal matters often reference the “sense of justice in the Spring and Autumn annals^ (Chunqiu zhiyi 春 秋 之 義 ).78 Even so, Wang Chong soundly criticized a preoccupation with any single text/9 and while students may have mastered a particular classic, the speeches and memorials contained in their subsequent biographies also demonstrate a thorough familiarity with the rest of the canon as well. That is, they appear to have been well-rounded scholars even if they were said to have mastered one focal text. Beyond the canonical texts, some biography dedicatees mastered Daoist, military, mathematical, and historical works, a few of them written as late as the Han itself. For example, Sima Qians Shiji 史"I己 (Historical records), originally known as the Taishi gong j i 太史公記

(Records of the grand clerk), was studied by his own grandson. Yet it probably never enjoyed a wide circulation, and by the end of the Western Han, requests for copies of the Taishi gong shu 太 史 公 書 （ Documents of the grand clerk)— probably the same work, judging from the name

and contents~were being refused on the grounds that it diverged from the classicist corpus too much.80 In the Eastern Han, both surviving literature and stelae inscriptions demonstrate that a limited circulation of what are now known as the “standard histories” continued to some extent.81 The works of the historian Ban Gu 班 固 （ 32-92) likewise found their way into the Hans oral performative culture, and, as Fan Ye 范释（ 398-446) later summarized, “it was appropriate that the age very much esteemed his writings and that there was not a scholar who did not recite and chant from them” （ 當世甚重其書，學者莫不諷誦焉 ),82 Thus a text did not have to be old in order for it to be memorized, though age helped. W hen

to m aster a n d recit e

According to the self-commentary of the Monthly ordinances of the four classes ofpeople cited above, “lower school” covered the ages of ten through fourteen and “upper school” continued until the age of twenty.83 Well before this Eastern Han estate calendar, scholars were strongly advising that education begin early, and Xunzi, who explicitly laments that many of his contemporaries were not good reciters，stresses that reciting and chanting must commence in youth.84If it didnt, the results would become apparent later in life, and even the future First Emperor of Qin (r. zzi-209) confesses this shortcoming in his own upbringing. The Zhanguoce 戰國策 (Stratagems of the Warring States) relates the following: “The king [i.e., the First Emperors father] called upon his son to chant, but his son said, ‘While still young I was neglected and sent abroad. I never had teaching from 汪tutor, and I am not trained when it comes to chanting， ”（ 王使子 誦， 子曰 : 「少棄 捐在外，嘗無師傅所敎學，不習於誦 」).85 Here textual recitation is akin to performance with, in this case, a royal audience, and it assumes that young nobility should all be able to recite properly. Later, JiaYi 賈I t (201-169) would advise that instruction gener­ ally began early, “when the mind was not yet overflowing” {xin weilan 心 未溢 )，in order to effect major changes in later character,86 and the Da Dai liji 大 戴 禮 記 （ Ritual records of Dai the Elder) specifically insists on

the importance of developing memorization skills prior to analysis and explanation when it offers the following warning: “If he does not recite and chant as a child, does not discuss and deliberate as a youth, and does not instruct and admonish as an elder, then he can certainly be called an untrained person” （ 其少不諷誦， 其壯不論議， 其老不敎誨，亦可謂無 業之人矣 ).87 Like their ancient Greek counterparts and their medieval

successors, educators in early China recognized the suppleness and recep­ tiveness of the young mind that would become ossified in adulthood.88 The Ritual records recommends that boys should be chanting the Songs by the age of thirteen.89 In at least a dozen biographies from the Later Han documents and from Eastern Han stele inscriptions that state the age of textual mastery, the dedicatee is in fact noted as having penetrated or chanted canonical texts by this age. Whether thirteen was consid­ ered ordinary or extraordinary-~and hence warranting biographical mention— is unknown. Sima Qian was “chanting ancient texts”（ 誦古 文 ）by the age of nine, and， never to be outdone, Ban Gu was “competent in composing narratives and chanting poems and poetic expositions” (能 屬 文 ，誦 詩 賦 ) by the age of eight.90 Still others claimed the ability to

chant the Songs by age eight or to write by age five.91 In one anecdote, a child’s precocious textual mastery marked him for life: 張霸字伯饒，蜀郡成都人也。 . . . 七 歲 通 《春 秋 》， 復 欲 進 餘 經 ，父母曰「汝小 未 能 也 」，霸 曰 「我 饒 爲 之 」，故 字 曰 「繞 」焉 。後 就 長 水 校 尉 樊 鯈 受 《嚴氏公 羊春秋》， 遂博覽五經。 Zhang Bas courtesy name was Borao [lit. “The eldest son Much”]，and he was a man of Chengdu in Shu Commandery. . . . When he was six years old, he penetrated the Spring and Autumn annals’ and he also wanted to advance into other canons. His mother and father told him, “You can’t study more canons yet because you’re little.” Ba replied, “But I am ‘much’ because I study them.” Therefore his courtesy name was “Much.” He later went to Colonel Fan Chou of Changshui and received Mr. Yans tradition of the Gongyang commentary for ， the Spring and Autumn annals and subsequently became well versed in all five canons.

H

Two things should be noted here. First, the boy Much claimed to have become “much” as he mastered the canon, and this statement should not be dismissed as merely the simplistic reasoning of a precocious child. Children are indeed better than adults at developing certain skills, such as picking up languages or developing their memories, but they are also

affected by the content of what they master, more so at that age than later in life. Indeed, the impact of memorizing texts at an early age cannot be overemphasized, as it most likely had a major impact on character devel­ opment. In the following description, Tu Wei-ming highlights how this

kind of approach to a text significantly differs from that of a student in a nonmemorial culture: The traditional Confucian student was likely to begin his study on [the “Zhongyong” 中庸 or “The central and the universal” in the Ritual records] as early as the age of eight. After thoroughly memorizing the text, he had time to grasp its meaning by being gradually steeped in it. Without imposing a precon­ ceived interpretive scheme upon it, he could try to realize its inner logic through personal knowledge. For him, systematic recitation, which is often misconstrued as unreasoning rote-learning, was a long and strenuous process designed to foster a holistic vision by integrating the cognitive and experiential dimensions of his understanding of the text. Chu Hsi was absolutely serious when, in response to his students，queries about the expedient method of reading Confucian classics, he simply instructed them to experience the taste of it by “embodying” it in their daily lives. Such advice must sound odd, if not totally irrational, to modern readers.93

Thus Much probably did become “much， ， ， at least in the sense of embody­ ing the text and developing his character. Second, it is significant that Much began by penetrating a canon and then later went on to receive the explanations and commentaries for it. In other words, from the perspective of textual mastery we now have a threestage education, with the first level being primers (abecedarians, the Filial piety canon, and Analects)ythe second level being basic canonical study and recitation, and the third level being a commentarial tradition on that canon. Numerous Han descriptions confirm this order. In Much s case, that final stage in turn translated into a comprehensive knowledge of the canonical corpus. This third level could take a long period of time, as in the case of Feng Yan ,馬本亍（ d. ca. 60 ce), who grew up during the Wang Mang interregnum. He was so precocious that “at the age of eight he could chant the Songs canon, and by the time he reached the age of nine­ teen, he had broadly penetrated a host of books” （ 年 九 歲 ，能 誦 《 詩 》， 至二十而博通群書 ).94 Other biographies record a similar length of time, such as that of Chancellor Zhai Fangjin 翟 方 進 (d. 7 bce), whose mother followed him to the capital where he went to further his education, weav­ ing sandals for ten years to support her son’s education.95 Despite the recognition that memorization and chanting had to begin

early, a handful of scholars did not start out in pursuit of a bookish life. A few held lowly positions in officialdom and then turned to studies, whereas others only opted for education after wild，misspent youths, in a couple of cases not even starting until the age of forty.96Almost all of the biographies of latecomers to education occur in the Han documents3 where almost all of the biographies of early starters occur in the Later Han documents. The difference most likely results from the rhetorical interests of the different authors, but it might possibly reflect a rise in educational professionalism. Over the course of the Han, an increased pool of educated people demanded that longer times be spent at learning in order to rise above the rest and secure official employment，virtually eliminating the possibility of successful latecomers. However, this expla­ nation is only speculative. W h e re

to m aster a n d rec it e

In the Warring States period, the classicists were perceived as concen­ trated in the regions surrounding Confuciuss home state of Lu，a small territory that became synonymous with the teaching of rituals and with much singing of hymns.97At the time of the imperial unification, once Xiang Yu 項 羽 (d. 202 bce) had been executed, Gaozu 高 祖 (r. 202-194) lay siege to Lu, and according to the Historical records, “The host of classicists within Lu still expounded the recitations of and training in rituals and music, the sounds of their strumming and singing continu­ 魯中諸儒尚講誦習禮樂，弦歌之音不絶 ).98 Credited for ing unabated” （ first codifying court rituals in the Qin and Han, Shusun Tong 叔孫通 (fl. early 2nd c. bce) brought these classicists to Gaozus new capital to advise him on ritual matters. Yet while Lu may have been the home of recitation of the classicist canon, it was by no means the home of recita­ tion skills in general, as evinced above in the assumption that the First Emperor of Qin himself should also have been a good reciter. Below it will further be noted that, prior to the classicist success at the Han court, other nonclassicist texts were indeed used to test verbatim recall. Even so，the question of where texts were mastered highlights a transi­ tion between that second and third level of Han education，a transition

often accompanied by a significant change of locality. In the Monthly ordinances of thefour classes ofpeople, the earliest levels of education not only began at home, they were part of home life, because they were fully

integrated into the agricultural cycles of the farming estate. In both the Western and Eastern Han, this close association between education and home regularly extended to particular canons favored by the extended family. According to standard history biographies or stele inscriptions, it was common that a person, “when young, trained in the studies of his father and grandfather” （ 少習父祖學)，or, when it came to choos­ ing a canon, continued “the undertaking that had been passed down from generation to generation in the family” (家世傳業) . For example, in the Eastern Han the well-established Yuan 袁 family transmitted the Changes canon as interpreted by Meng Xi 孟 喜 (fl_ mid-ist c. bce) down

direct and collateral lines of descent through at least four generations." Thus there existed a tendency in which particular families were identi­ fied with particular canons.100 One reason for this specialization may be that the household possessed certain books. Han officials could account for their early scholarly successes because “the family already had many books” （ 家既多書)，or," if

the family was poor, they could turn to relatives and “obtain their family books” （ 得其家書 )J。 1The Kong 孔 brothers of Lu were impoverished orphans, but ccthe family possessed the remnant books of their forebears, and so the brothers urged one another on, tirelessly reciting and chant­ ing'5 (家有先人遺書， 兄弟相勉， 諷誦不倦 ).102 These cases suggest that a mastered text first derived from a manuscript medium, after which it entered into the oral performative medium. While we know little about education within families, we know even less about schools outside the families, and as Yates noted above, there is no clear record of schools where people in the Han might have acquired literacy. Envisioning the Han education system is like excavating the few remaining shards of a shattered urn and then reconstructing the shape with fresh clay. We are reliant upon a handful of chance refer­ ences to imagine the structure as a whole, and to make matters worse, educational systems no 'doubt changed over time. That is, we can’t even be certain our surviving shards all go to the same urn. The Shuihudi documents refer to a school or “study chambers” {xueshi 學室) expressly reserved for only the sons of scribes, perhaps reflecting the earlier heredi­ tary ideals of office and scholarship.103Later the Han documents describes how Emperor Wu 武 (r. 140—86)，impressed by an academy established in Chengdu that had attracted many students and had turned out many

worthy administrators, ordered all the empires commanderies and king­ doms to establish such schools, and while this edict is significant in high­ lighting the ideal of a widespread, court-mandated education system, historians today doubt it was fully carried out.104 Below we will meet late Western Han regional inspectors who went to the schools and tested the students as a way of taking the pulse of the district’s general health. Among other chance references, we saw above that Wang Mang had insisted the Filialpiety canon be taught in the village and district schools, and many mirror inscriptions from Wang Mangs Xin 新 dynasty (9-23) in fact praise his winstitution of schools” {zhi xiaoguan 治校官).105 Yet Ban Gu later lamented that a proper school network had not yet been established in his own time, resulting in an officialdom that could not properly “recite and explain” [songshuo 誦 説 ）their texts.106 Ban Gus contemporary Wang Chong writes that he himself began his learning at the age of five and entered the “writing halls” (shuguan 書館) at seven, where there were at least a hundred other children; he reports that, after successfully acquiring the ability to write， he studied the Analects and the Documents, Kdaily reciting a thousand characters” {rifeng qianzi 日諷千 字).107As already seen above, the Eastern Hans Monthly ordinances ofthe four classes ofpeople stipulated that, before the agricultural season began, boys aged nine to thirteen were to study primers in the lower grades or xiaoxue d、 學，while boys aged fourteen to nineteen were to study the classics in the upper grades or taixue 大學 . Conversely, girls were to spend their own time sewing and weaving.108Particularly in the Eastern Han, there were also individual or private teachers who were recognized for attracting thousands of students who duly “registered” {zhulu 著 錄 ) with them, although the full implications of that registration remain unknown.109Future archaeology may fill in our fragmentary knowledge of regional education. Yet if a young person wanted to advance his education further, that advancement could entail traveling farther afield. When describ­ ing Eastern Han students, Fan Ye generalized, “If there were a place where canonical scholars abided, they wouldn’t consider a ten-thou­ sand li road to be far”（ 若 乃經生所處， 不遠萬里之路).u° Sometimes

a students travels could take him all over the Han empire: Sima Qian in the Western Han, for example, whose extensive travel is listed in his autobiography, or Jing Luan 景實 in the Eastern Han, who, “when

young in his pursuit of teachers and study of canons, traversed the terri­ tory of seven provinces” （ 少隨師 學 經 ，涉七州之地).111 Yet more often

than not, these travels were directed to the political and cultural centers of that empire, namely Changan and Luoyang. From the beginning of the imperial era, a young person often set out for the capital to “study away from home， ，(youxue 游學）or，when already in the capital on other business, he might catch the eye of a teacher and then “remain to carry out his studies away from home” {liuyouxue 留游學).112 Given the regional differences, dialects, and long distances to travel in Han China, the modern concept of a study-abroad program is not entirely out of place. Sometimes with guardians in tow, adolescents as young as thirteen or fifteen could journey to the capital and enter the Taixue 太 學 or Grand Academy to study for a year or more under specialists in particular canons.113This early cosmopolitan experience, coupled with the later probationary period before taking office that was also spent in the capital, no doubt contributed to the remarkable degree of cultural homogeneity within Han officialdom. H O W TO MASTER AND RECITE

The very fact that the text studied in a person’s youth was known and recorded in his or her later biography speaks to the perceived significance a particular text had in a persons life，the modern equivalent perhaps being a curriculum vitae beginning with the college attended or major pursued. Knowing which particular classic you mastered apparently said something about you. Yet the actual choices of terms for mastering and reciting that text simply reflect the proclivities of the historian and are readily interchangeable. For example, hundreds of biographies in the Han documents and the Later Han documents begin with the dedicatee in childhood “penetrating” {tong 通)，“mastering” {zhi 治)，“training” (xi 習)，“receiving” (sbou 受)， or indeed “reciting and chanting” {fengsong識 誦 ）a certain named text, usually one of the classics.114On one hand, Ban Gu in the Han documents frequently describes a dedicatee as “mastering， ， a text, and Fan Ye in the Later Han documents rarely uses the term. On the other hand, Fan Ye in almost thirty cases identifies the dedicatee as having “trained” in a particular text in his or her youth, a term Ban Gu uses only two or three times. Fan Ye uses this same term for boys train­ ing in archery and horsemanship or girls training in making clothes,

suggesting that training in a particular text involved much guided prac­ tice and the development of skills. Both Ban Gu and Fan Ye frequently speak of the dedicatee as having “penetrated” a particular text, but tong has a large range of meanings. Wang Chong, quoted above, regarded a person well versed if the “books he has penetrated [tongshu] range from a minimum of one thousand chap­ ters to a maximum of ten thousand scrolls.” He dubbed such a person a tongren 通 人 ， “a person who has penetrated， ” and the epithet “Penetrating Classicist” or tongru 通儒 was not uncommon in the Han.115As also seen above, Xunzi associated textual “penetration” (tong) with the ability to recite the text in question, an equation repeated elsewhere. Once, when Emperor Cheng 成 (r. 32—6 bce) ordered the future Emperor Ai 哀 (r. 6-x bce) to recite from the Songs canon, the future emperor was deemed 'penetratingly trained and capable of explanation” {tongxi, nengshuo 通 習 ，能説 ).116As will be seen below, the court sought out would-be offi­ cials who could “penetrate” a canon, and Emperor Yuan even remit­ ted their taxes. Thus tong was recognized as a high standard of textual familiarity. However, the word tong could be qualified, to make it apply to penetration of just the meaning or theme of a work. Some biogra­ phy dedicatees ulightly penetrated the greater principles” {liietong dayi 略通大義 ) or abroadly penetrated the documents and commentaries” {botong shuzhuan 博 通 書 傳 Here the usage is not necessarily dismis­ sive, because an understanding of the core principles could sometimes

be juxtaposed against textual recitations that were merely parroting or verbose commentarial traditions that were merely pedantic. If Ban Gu wanted to be dismissive, he might instead say the dedicatee in his youth simply “forded across and hunted through the documents and records” {shelie shuji 涉冬鼠書1己) . In other words, less-than-serious scholars didn’t dwell in the textual realm very long; they were transients merely crossing through it for other purposes，on the hunt to fulfill their own agendas. Turning to the oral performance of texts, again there is a great deal of overlap among terms. Writing shortly after the Han, the poet Shu Xi 束 暂（ d. ca. 300 ce) conveniently enumerated most of them in his “Poetic

exposition on reading out books” {Dushu fu i 賣書赋) which describes a reading session with the Songs canon: 耽道先生 潘泊閑居 讓練精神

The Master who is Besotted with the Dao Lives alone in calm composure; He finely disciplines his quintessential spirit,

•

呼吸清虛 抗志雲表 戢形陋廬 垂帷帳以隱几 被紈素而讀書 抑揚嘈嘈 或疾或徐 優游蘊藉 亦卷亦舒 頌卷耳則忠臣喜 祙蓼莪則孝子患 稱碩鼠則貪民去' 唱白駒而賢士歸 是故重華詠詩以終己 仲尼讀易於身中 原憲潛吟而忘賤 顏回精勤以輕貧 倪寬口誦而芸耨 買臣行吟而負薪 賢聖其猶孳孽 況中才與小人

Inhaling and exhaling pure emptiness. He raises up what is fixed in his mind to beyond the clouds, While he secrets his form away in a rustic hut. He lowers his curtains and leans on his table, Unrolls the white silk and reads out his book. Rising and falling in cadence, measured in time— Here quick, there slow. Easygoing and refined— Now taut, then relaxed. When he hymns the “Cocklebur,” loyal ministers are pleased.117 When he intones the “Tarragon,” filial sons are grieved.118 When he extols the “Big rat， ” greedy people flee.119 When he croons the “White colt,” worthy officials return.120 Thus Shun intoned the Songs to the end of his days, And Confucius read out from the Changes until the close of his life. [His disciple] Yuan Xian was careful in his droning, forgetting about his humble circumstances, [And another disciple] Yan Hui concentrated his diligent efforts, thereby making light of his poverty. Ni Kuan had chants upon his lips when he weeded and hoed, And [Zhu] Maichen intoned while walking when he toted his firewood.121 If worthies and sages had to be so diligent, Then how much the more us middling talents and petty people!122

When hymning, intoning, crooning, chanting, and so forth are taken as a group in this piece, two obvious conclusions can be drawn. First, they can readily overlap with one another. Second, an individuals particular interactions with a fixed text were auditoryregardless of whether there was an audience— and even musical to some degree. As

noted above, once the words were read out and airborne, they entered the mind through the ear. In early China when a text was performed-~ whether by reading aloud or recitation一 it was an oral and aural expe­ rience, and silent reading was sufficiently exceptional that such rare cases warranted reference in the standard histories.123 Thus to “read a book” {dushu 讀書)，as in the title to this poetic exposition, means to “read out” from a book, and the character du 1賣 is in fact written with

the radical indicating oral speech {yan 言)• Alone, Shu Xi reads out his book, his voice “rising and falling in cadence, measured in time— here quick, there slow•” Excavated manuscripts as in the case of the Laozi 老

at Mawangdui are sometimes found edited with attention marks that are probably “an ancillary device for reading the text aloud/，according to Matthias L. Richter, thereby giving it illocutionary force.124 Shu Xi most likely had the Songs canon memorized, but presence of the physical text could craft his performance of it. In sum, such manuscripts might be better envisioned as performance scripts rather than as books in the modern sense. Other early texts likewise do not use du as a term for familiarizing oneself with a text but instead as a performance term，with associa­ tions even of chanting. For example, the Kong congzt 孑L*叢 子 (Collective masters of the Kong family) records an Eastern Han poem about the renowned scholarship of two Kong brothers that begins，“The Kong family in the state of Lu delighted in reading out the canons [dujing], and when the brothers expounded and chanted, everyone listened(魯國 孔氏好讀經， 兄弟講誦皆可聽 ).125 Usually this “reading out” (du) refers to particular occasions when an individual is in the presence of a physi­ cal text. For a typical example from the Western Han, Sima Qian begins one of his genealogy charts by commenting that whenever he reaches a particular dramatic point while “reading out” (du) the Spring and Autumn annals: “I have never once not set aside the book and sighed” (未嘗不廢書而歎也).126For an example from the Eastern Han, Li Yu 李 育（ fl. late 1st c. ce) had “once read out the Zuo commentary"(嘗讀左氏 傳）and found it pretty but shallow.127 Shu Xi s poetic exposition highlights a degree of musicality in his vocalizations, particularly when it cotnes to the Songs canon. Han sources frequently refer to intoning {yong 泳 ）the Songs and sometimes the Documents, e v o k i n g the primary and most authoritative state­ ment on the poem throughout the Chinese traditional period. The Documents canon states: “The poem articulates what is intently fixed within the mind; song makes language last long” （ 詩 言 志 ，歌永言).129 Stephen Owen explains the second half of this statement as follows: “The statement probably referred originally to intoning/ stretching out the words in the act of singing. But commentators play on the meaning 'lasting long/ transferring it to another aspect of song, its capacity to

be preserved, carried afar, and transmitted. Through the patterning of song, a text becomes fixed and repeatable. Unlike speech, which disap­ pears as soon as it is uttered，song is one of the earliest examples of the fixed text.”13。In Shu Xi s piece, ”intoning” clearly overlaps with the other musical presentation styles, but some Han scholars attempted to pigeon­ hole the various terms for recitation on a spectrum between normal speech and singing. For example，in the Zhouli 周 禮 [Zhou rituals) the “Greater master of music” {Da siyue 大司樂）usesfeng 諷 or Mrecitation” and song 誦 or “chandxig” as tools of education. Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127-200) in his exegesis distinguishes them, explaining that “to repeat a text from memory is Recitation; using tones to segment it is chanting' ” (倍文 曰諷 ，以聲節之曰誦 )• Here Qing commentators further explain that feng is simple recitation of the kind a child might perform without recourse to musicality，whereas song adds the rise and fall of cadence as well as the articulated phrasing of music.131Yet the same commentators note that song or “chanting” still remains separate from ge 歌 or actual “singing/，pointing to a passage in the Zuo commentary in which a duke orders a subordinate of the chief music master first to “sing” {ge) a stanza from the Songs and then to “chant” {song) it as well.132Other preimperial sources likewise distinguish chanting from singing without comment,133 whereas the Han documents stipulates that “chanting without singing is called poetic exposition” （ 不表而誦謂之賦 ）and that “chanting their words is called poetics; intoning their tones is called song”（ 誦其言謂之 詩， 泳 其聲 謂 之 歌 )_134 Regardless，in common parlance the terms may not have been differentiated. It is clear from its general usage that “chanting” implied chanting from memory as Zheng Xuan defined it, and there are numerous exam­ ples below in which texts are chanted explicitly in the absence of physical media. For example, in a letter of recommendation for Mi Heng 禰衡 (fl. ca. zoo ce), his contemporary Kong Rong 融 (153-208) praises his sharp mind with the observation, “Whenever his eyes saw [a text] just once, he was able to chant it with his mouth; whenever his ears heard something even if only briefly, he would never forget it in his mind”（ 目 所一見， 辄誦於口， 耳所暫 聞， 不忘於心 ).135 As we will also see below, Mi Heng was often praised for his prodigious memory, and here song seems to draw on that faculty. Yet there are exceptions when 诏叹 doesn’t rely on recall. When the much admired Eastern Han official Chen Shi

3 3

陳 宪 (104-87) was still a child, his future patron regularly “saw Shi hold­ ing a book and standing up to chant” （ 見宪執書立誦 )，implying that song was not necessarily from memory.136Just as the word 'recitation5 in English once meant “to read out or aloudMbut now generally means “to repeat to an audience from memory/5 terms such as and cannot be pigeonholed with absolute certainty, only context indicating

feng

song

their specific meaning. Most of the terms denoting recitation carry with them a sense of performance and hence an audience.137This audience could be a teacher, although the details for how a text was actually recited are few. Guanzi generalizes that students stood the first time they chanted their lessons， and in a case in the Han documents, it is recorded that they stood in the subordinate position facing north.138Standing seems to be the norm, and the Huainanzi i隹南子 even records that it would be silly to “squat down and then chant the Songs and Documents” (蹲 据 而 誦 《詩 》、《書》） ， akin to first pilfering something and then giving it to a beggar or first stealing some bamboo strips and then writing out the law on them.139 Instead of the teacher, the audience could be a ruler，and there are several cases of the Han emperor requesting a recitation to test the knowledge of a would-be heir apparent or a prospective official. He might even summon reciters to soothe him with a worthy composition if he were ill.140Yet as in the case of Shu Xi, the most common audience was in fact the readers or reciters themselves. With this vocabulary of chanting and reading out in mind, let us turn to two specific features associated with how a text was mastered and recited, namely the mental focus required to absorb a text and the fixed understanding that was to accompany that text. Texts in memorial cultures such as Han China exhibit trademark mnemonic features such as clichd, exaggeration, stereotyping, parallel­ ism, and versification, all useful for making the text easier to remem­ ber.141 Yet the tools of memorization come not just from the text itself but also from the mental exertion of the learner, an exertion sometimes perceived as bordering on meditation. The text learners intensity is frequently denoted through complementary pairings— one recites “day and night,” “coming and going， ” “sitting and standing”一 indicating

a constant devotion. Yet in addition to such passing statements, there survive many anecdotes in the Han documents and Later Han documents

that illustrate textual devotion. For example, Zhu Maichen (who also appears in Shu Xi s poem above) came from a poor family and had to earn his living carrying firewood. Yet he delighted in reading out books， and while toting his wood along the road, he constantly chanted the texts he was learning, much to the annoyance of his wife, who repeat­ edly asked him to stop singing. Zhu Maichen would then sing with all the more gusto, in the end driving his wife to leave him.142For a second example，Cao Bao 曹 褒 （ d. 102) loved ritual studies, particularly the works of Shusun Tong, and day and night he droned them and thought about them. He slept cradling bundles of texts in his arms, and when he was out walking, he chanted them and thought about them so intensely that he would forget where he was going.143 For a third example, Zhu M u 朱 移 (100—163) was also constantly lost in thought as he chanted,

forgetting where he left his clothes or tumbling down into ditches. His father believed there was something wrong with his mental faculties.144 For a final example, Gao Feng 高 鳳 (fl. later 1st c. ce) would not stop chanting day or night. Leaving for the fields, his wife once told him to tend to the drying grain in the courtyard so that the birds wouldn't get it. Staff in hand, Gao Feng stood there in the courtyard intently chant­ ing the canons, oblivious to the fact that, all the while, a violent storm was washing away the grain in front of him.145At the very least, these four light-hearted anecdotes and many others like them demonstrate the stereotype of intense devotion to recitation and oral performance within Han culture. A text was mastered only through focused mental exer­ tions during which the outside world of destinations and ditches would disappear.146 This textual separation from the rest of the world is well described by an imperial advisor named Yan Du 延 篤 （ cL 167 ce), who, after experiencing troubles at court, had withdrawn into a private life on the grounds of ill health. In a letter to a friend，he described his time free of external cares as follows: 吾 嘗 昧 爽 擀 梳 ，坐於客堂。朝則 誦 羲 、文 之 《易》， 虞、 夏 之 《書》， 歷公旦之典 禮 ，覽仲尼之《春 秋 》。夕則消搖内階， 詠 《詩》南 軒 。 Just before dawn, I would comb my hair and sit in the guest hall. In the morning, I chanted the Changes canon of Fu Xi and King Wen147 as well as the Documents canon of Shun and Yu the Great; I surveyed the doctrinal rituals of the Duke of Zhou; and I perused the Spring and Autumn annals of Confucius.148 In the evening, I aimlessly wandered the inner stairs and intoned the Songs canon on the southern balcony.

5 3

After briefly describing his leisurely life among the commoners, he then explains how this text-bordered world was all absorbing, focusing his attention inward: 當 此 之 時 ’ 不知天之爲 蓋 ，地 之 爲 舆 ；不 知 世 之 有 人 ，己之有 軀也。雖漸離擊 筑， 傍若無人，高鳳讀書， 不 知暴雨 ，方 之 於 吾 ， 未足況也。 At that time, I didn’t know heaven was covering me and earth was holding me up. I didn’t know there were people in the world or that I myself had a body. "When [Gao] Jianli played his lute, it seemed as if there were no others around him,149 and when Gao Feng read out his books, he was unaware of the violent storm. Yet neither of them could compare to me.150

This self-imposed isolation was not merely mental. A scholar reciting texts frequently erected barriers between himself and his surroundings, giving rise to descriptions such as “he barred his door, expounded, and chanted” {bihujiangsong 閉户i 秦I 甬) or “he barred his gate, chanted, and trained” {bimen songxi 閉門誦習).151 Dong Zhongshu 董 仲 舒 （ ca_ 179ca. 104) lowered his screens to expound and chant and only commu­ nicated with the disciples who had been with him the longest, so that

some of his followers never saw his face. It is said that for three years he never even looked out at his own garden.152 Liu Xiang 劉 向 （ 79—8 bce) likewise “did not deal with worldly affairs and concentrated his accumulated thoughts on the canonical works” （ 不 交 接 世 俗 ，傳積思於 、 經術)• By day he chanted texts, and by night he watched the stars.153As seen above, Shu Xi was already living a hermits life in an isolated hut， but before he began his textual orations, he still lowered his curtains and

reduced his world even further. Thus accessing the textual infrastructure is like building a border between the outer mundane environment and the inner mental realm. In Shu Xis case, his readings clearly carried the trappings of a medi­ tation experience. He calmed his spirit, controlled his breathing, and projected his mind before he began reading out his text. Others would first endeavor to reach “a purified state without any desires” {qingjing wuyu 清 )爭無欲) before concentrating their minds on the canons.154 In a story from the Fengsu tongyi 風 俗 通 義 (Comprehensive discourse on customs), an investigator stopped at a district station for the night, and when the clerks brought him lanterns, he said: £“I would contemplate the Dao，and so I cannot see any fires. Extinguish them.’ . . . When it was dark, he adjusted his clothes, sat down, and chanted the Sixjia, the Filial piety canon, and the Root of the Changes. Once finished, he lay down”

( 「我 思 道 ，不可見火，滅 去 。」 • . . 既 冥 ，整 服 坐 誦 《六甲》、《孝 經》、 《易本》訖 ， 认 ).155His chants, carried out in darkness, became a part of mental exertions aimed at the Dao.156 • Some of the earliest references to recitation from memory ironically do not vaunt its benefits but deny that it was the be-all and end-all of virtue. Guanzi lamented that the ability to chant ones book learning would not prevent one from falling into destruction if one were not also filial.157In a similar vein，Confucius complained that being able to recite the three hundred poems but failing in government was still failing.158 They condemned a recitative education that bore no effect on the rest of one’s life. In the Han as well, recitation by itself was not deemed suffi­ cient for education. For example, Chao Cuo 霞 錯 （ d. 154 bce) warned that the future Emperor Jing 景 （ r. 156-140) was merely spinning his

wheels by focusing on recitation: 皇太子所讀書多矣’ 而未深知術數者， 不問書説也。夫多誦而不知其説’ 所謂勞 苦而不爲功。 The books read out by the august heir apparent are multiplying, but his lack of deep understanding for affairs of state is because he has not inquired about the explanations behind chose books. Generally speaking, chanting much but not understanding the explanations is called great toil for no achievement.159

At other times, emperors dismissed texts as substandard until they heard the explanations that accompanied them, only then promoting the texts to canonical status.160 By way of self-depreciation, a speaker could claim， “I only narrate what IVe heard and I only chant what I’ve studied (述 所 聞 ， 誦所學 ).161In turn， Wang Chong called mindless recitation “of the category of parrots being able to speak” （ 鹤鶴能言之類 )，parroting texts being a metaphor also used in the modern West.162 In summary, the recited text was only the beginning; explanation, elaboration, and application were perceived as its fulfillment, as fleshing it out and giving it life.163 Such was the focus of the third level of textual mastery noted above, that of an established interpretive program through which to understand the memorized classic. Just before the imperial era, Xunzi frequently discussed the necessity of students having an Kinstructional model” {shifa 師法）to guide human nature away from its innate evilness. An instructional model would steer cleverness, bravery, versatility, and other human capacities toward positive，selfless goals rather than negative, selfish ones. The central

characteristic of these models seems to have been fixing interpretation, preventing people from taking intentional or unintentional liberties when citing the texts. “Say what your teacher says, and your understanding will be on par with your teacher” （ 師云而云， 則是知若師也)， Xunzi argued.

Throwing aside the instructional model and instead Hdelighting in self­ reliance” {hao ziyong 好自用）would be like asking the blind to distinguish colors or the deaf to distinguish sounds.164 In other words, the yardstick of the textual infrastructure cannot be lengthened or shortened; instead, the desired ideality was matching it as perfectly as possible. Besides Xunzi, several other late Warring States sources similarly advo­ cate a rigid continuity of the teachers instructional model. According to the Stratagems of the Warring States，it was considered offensive not to quote from one’s teacher when discussing any important issues, and as acknowledged by the Spring and autumn annals of Mr. LU, the recit­ ing and chanting disciple always endeavored to please his teacher, never

disobeying him and always heeding his words and his model.165 By the Han, scholars were labeled as 'maintaining the instructional modelM {shou shifa 守 法 ) or “possessing the instructional model” {you shifa 有 師法)，sometimes abbreviated to “possessing the model， ’ iyoufa 有法)’ and this label was always a sign of excellence. There are clues that these instructional models took on substantial proportions, and in one case, a disciple increased his teachers instructional model to reach a million words.166 On one hand, a disciple might be singled out as the only one who “maintained his studies without losing the instructional model” {shouxue bushi shifa 守學不失師法 ).167On the other hand, if the emperor heard that a disciple had 'changed the instructional model” (gaishifa 改 師法)，he might not make use of that disciple.168The implication seems to be that innovation and independent interpretation were frowned upon. Just as lengthy verbatim recall preserved fixed texts, the explana­ tions for those texts were to be equally unchanging. What made up an instructional model? We do not know how closely everyday written Chinese conformed to everyday spoken Chinese, but we cannot assume they were equivalent, just as in the West formal writ­ ing was once done in Latin but spoken discourse regularly resorted to regional languages. Because Chinese is not an alphanumeric language, the separation between writing and speaking becomes more easily exac­ erbated. Furthermore, the classics themselves were written in an archaic

language with an archaic pronunciation, a fact recognized as early as Confucius's lifetime; Confucius himself insisted on “elegant speech” (yayan 雅言)一 that is, the proper classical pronunciation，which was implicitly separate from daily speech— when reciting them.169 As now evident in excavated documents, in which up to a third of the characters consist of textual variants, texts required guidance in how to read them. Kern surmises that “in order to be fully intelligible, texts were transmit­ ted within a defined social framework, most likely a master-disciple(s) structure of face-to-face teaching and learning. 丁his framework enabled

the interaction of the oral and the written word, implying the neces­ sity of direct personal contact between those who master the text and those who learn it.”170Alongside teaching the contexts, explanations, and potential applications of passages from the traditional texts, this guid­ ance in correct pronunciation and correct characters may have figured as a major component of the instructional model or shifa. Preserving this instructional model is thus regularly listed along­ side recitation. Sometimes a description may be limited to the fact that a promising scholars “chants and explanations possessed a model” {songshuo youfa 誦説有法 )，to quote Ban Gu describing o.ne of his own great uncles.171 Other times a slightly longer account survives, such as the following: 唐 生 、褚生應博 士弟子選 ，詣 博 士 ，樞 衣 登 堂 ，頌 禮 甚 嚴 ，試 誦 説 ，有 法 ， 疑者 丘蓋不言。諸博士驚問何師，對曰事式。 The scholars Tang [Changbin] and Chu [Shaosun] responded to the academi­ cians’ call for disciples. When they went to the academicians, they hitched up their robes and ascended the hall. Their hymns and rituals were extremely grave, and when tested on their chants and explanations, they possessed a model. Like Confucius, they wouldn’t speak about suspect places in the texts. All the acade­ micians respectfully asked who their teacher was, and they answered that they served [Wang] Shi.172

Not surprisingly, this praise for rigidity and implicit condemnation for personal interpretation led others to damn classicism, as seen in Chen Zuns comment above that recitation and chanting were akin to “tying up your own body.” The Huainanzi similarly laments how scholars inherit their practices and 'maintain the old teachings” {shou jiujiao 守舊敎) instead of necessarily changing with the times.173 So why were confor­ mity and conventionality so valued by the classicists? It is perhaps because classicism saw itself as embodying the faithful transmission of textual

precedents from a golden age，not the creation of something new. That is，its textual infrastructure was rooted in the distant past, a past that was regularly privileged as being more correct and genuine than the pres­ ent. Older was better，and the further back down the trunk of tradition one ventured, the fewer digressive offshoots (i.e., rival school interpreta­ tions) were encountered. The longer lifespan claimed by an instructional model that explained those original texts meant its closer proximity to the root origin and hence the greater likelihood it was correct. Individualized interpretations in which the interpreter “changed the instructional model” were like the upper branches coming off the main trunk. Thus continuity and conformity in themselves became virtues. As an outgrowth of having fixed instructional models and of educa­ tions increasing professionalism over the course of the Han, each of the classics developed several interpretative traditions that were most likely manuscript in nature. Biographies and stele inscriptions frequently identify the dedicatees particular interpretative tradition, such as the Documents canon as interpreted by Ouyang Sheng 歐 陽 生 (fl. early 2nd c. bce) or the Gongyang 公羊 commentary of the Spring and Autumn annals as interpreted by Yan Pengzu 嚴 彭 祖 (fl. mid-ist c. bce). The volume of each of these interpretations alone suggests a predominantly written medium. As noted above，Zhang Huan boiled down an older commentary of 450,000 words to a mere 90,000 words. Others ran up to a million words，and such word counts are far beyond the already high standards of Han recitation ability.174It is possible these explanatory works were halfway between purely memorized texts and purely refer­ ential texts. W hile the content may have been committed to memory, it is likely that these explanatory texts remained at the level of writing and

not verbatim memorization. That is, these secondary sources were more like reference materials, as in the following description of how a certain Zhang Xuan 張 玄 (fl. early 1st c. ce) conducted his studies at the begin­

ning of the Eastern Han: 清淨無欲， 專心經 書 ，方其 講 問 ，乃不食終曰。及 有 難 者 ， 辄 爲 張 數 家 之 説 ，令 擇從所安。 In a purified and quiet state without any desires, he concentrated his mind upon the canons and documents, and when he reached a point in which he had a ques­ tion, he wouldn’t eat for the whole day. Whenever he came upon a difficulty, he would open up the various explanations of the specialists, making his selection based on what seemed natural.175

Here the explanations are written, are divergent, and are used like refer­ ence works, and in this case there appears to be no instructor in sight. One possible cause for this change might have been the development and availability of proto-paper and paper during the Eastern Han.176Thus it is possible the disciples dependency, in antiquity, on a master devolved into the students dependency, in early imperial China，on commentar­ ies, as a growing manuscript culture began to function more and more in tandem with the existing memorial culture.177 W h y m a s t e r a n d r e c it e

After establishing as best we can who recited what in Han memorial culture, as well as when, where, and how, we must finally address the question of why recitation was regarded as important in the first place. What would one gain by participating in an oral-performative culture? The answers to this question can be distributed across a spectrum of lofty, practical, and even arcane goals. First, on the lofty end of the spectrum, one masters and recites a fixed text to gain self-transformation. Mencius famously noted that if one wears the clothing of the sage ruler Yao, carries out Yaos behavior, and “recites the words of Yao” {song Yao zhi yan 誦堯之言 )，one simply is a Yao.178A strong advocate of recitation, Xunzi offers a similar assessment: “The gentleman . . . thus recites and enumerates in order to become familiar with [the classics]，ponders and inquires in order to penetrate

them, becomes their kind of person in order to situate them,179and clears away the harmful in order to support and nourish them” （ 君 子 . . • 故誦 數以貫之， 思 索以通之， 爲其人以處之，除其害者以持養之 ).18QHere the gentleman reaches into the past with his mind via the classics and brings

them forward until his own person serves as their shelter and support. Yet the message is the same一 one begins with memorization and recita­ tion and ends with ethical transformation. Western Han scholars such as Lu Jia and the literati in the Analysis ofthe salt and iron monopolies continued this correlation between recita­ tion and ethics, the latter again including clothing in this formula: “It

is rare for those who focus on wearing the ancient clothes and on recit­ ing the ancient Dao to do wrong” （ 夫 服 古 之 服 ，誦 古 之 道 ，舍此而爲非 者， 鮮矣 )， 181Bringing together recitation, ethics, and clothing yet again, Wang Chong transforms the “clothes make the man” requirement into a

metaphor: “As for a scholars nature，not every one is good, but by cloth­ ing himself in the teachings of sages, reciting and intoning them day and night, he takes on the conduct of the sage” （ 儒 生 之 性 ’ 非能皆善也， 被

服聖敎，日夜諷泳， 得聖人之操矣).182 Numerous sources thus make the connection between recitation and ethics. The memorized texts not only influence character; they naturally become part of the psyche itself through habituation. As Jia Yi once noted, if ones proper “training” (xi 習）were so all-encompassing during the formative years, it would be like growing up in the state of Qi and naturally speaking the language of Qi or growing up in the state of Chu and naturally speaking the language of Chu.183 Like acquiring ones native language, canonical memorization led to character construction on a fundamental, subconscious level. We are what we repeat. Sometimes the assumed links between textual mastery and character are most overt in negative examples, namely,.when canonical training only took partial hold or no hold at all. Such was the case with Liu He 劉 賀 (ca. 92—59), the ambitious and undisciplined would-be emperor who

was quickly deposed in the Western Han. When Liu He was still king of Changyij Gong Sui 襲 遂 (d. 62 bce), who was then leader of the gentle­ men of the palace, endeavored to direct the boy toward classicist studies. He suggested a training program in which tea hand-selected retainers always attended the king so that he would constantly be chanting the Songs canon while sitting and practicing ritual while standing. The king agreed, but his patience lasted only a few days before he terminated the program. On another occasion, Gong Sui chastised the king, argu­ ing that chanting the Songs canon was the perfection of the royal Dao, but even though the king outranked the lords of the states, his tainted behavior was really on par with commoners. £tWhere does your behav­ ior match a single verse of the Songs canonV'(王 之 所 行 中 《詩 》一篇何 等也 ？)，he critically asked. Soon after that, the king had an ominous

dream, and he asked Gong Sui for an interpretation. Yet again Gong Sui pointed out the kings educational failure— “Isn’t it discussed in your Songs canon?M(陛下之《詩 》不云乎 ？） ■ ~ after which he interpreted the

dream via one of its poems. Not surprisingly, the king failed to heed the dreams omen.184Yet because the imperial court had documents evincing Gong Sui s anxiety over the kings training, he escaped the death penalty and was only sentenced to hard labor when Liu He was deposed.

Less fortunate was Liu Hes Songs canon teacher, Wang Shi, who had been sent to prison to await execution. Such a penalty in itself demon­ strates the seriousness given to successful canonical training. When asked why there were no documents proving that he，too, had remon­ strated to the unruly king, Wang Shi replied as follows: 臣以《詩 》三百五篇朝夕授王， 至於忠臣孝子之篇，未嘗不爲王反復誦之也； 至 於危亡失道之君， 未嘗不流涕爲王深陳之也。臣以三百五篇諫， 是以亡諫書。 Day and night I presented the king with the three hundred and five verses of the Songs canon. Whenever we reached verses on loyal ministers and filial sons, never once did I not make the king chant them over and again. Whenever we reached cases of people who were in danger of perishing or who had lost the Dao, never once did I not in tears make the king explain them in depth. I remonstrated with him using these three hundred and five verses, and so there are no documents of remonstration.185

Like Gong Sui, Wang Shi managed to escape execution and returned home， where he then refused to teach any more. He was invited to come back to the court only after the impressive canonical recitations of Tang Changbin and Chu Shaosun, who, as noted above, claimed Wang Shi as the source of their instructional model.186Ultimately, Liu Hes repeated failure to absorb the Songs canon well demonstrates the assumption that mastering the classics indeed transformed a persons character, just as scholars ranging from Mencius to Wang Chong had described it. He failed to achieve self-transformation through the habitual conditioning of recitation. A second and more practical goal behind mastering the classics was the chance to secure employment. To this end，the desirable quality was not only the content of what had been committed to memory but also the skill of having a well-trained memory in itself. Here it might be fruit­ ful to explore just how extensive that memory capacity could be, a capac­ ity that is astounding by our modern standards, in which our limited memory abilities are in great decline as we come to rely more and more upon technological aids. After the famous late-Han classicist Cai Yong 蔡 襄 (133-92) had died, the Hu people kidnapped his daughter Cai Wenji, and she lived with them for twelve years. Out of respect for her father, the warlord Cao Cao 曹 操 (155-220) bought her back from the Hu, and he later inquired about the state of her father's abundant writings. Cai Wenji replied:

「昔亡 父賜書四千許卷，流 離 塗 炭 ’ 罔有存者。今 所 誦 憶 ，裁四百餘篇耳。- 操 曰: 「 今當使十吏就夫人寫之。」文姬曰: 「妾聞男女之别， 禮 不 親 授 。乞給紙筆， 眞草唯命。」於是缮書送之’ 文 無遺 誤。 “Previously my late father had left behind more than four thousand scrolls, but cheyVe all become scattered amid the mud and coals and none of them survives. Yet at present, I can recite from memory more than four hundred chapters of them.” Cao Cao said, “I shall now send ten clerks to you to have them written out.” Cai Wenji replied, “I have heard that there is to be a separation between men and women, and according to ritual, I cannot personally present them to your clerks. I beg that you give me paper and brushes, and I will promptly heed your order using regular script and grass script characters.” She thereupon drafted the written work and presented it, and the text had no omissions or errors.187

As the Cai Wenji legend well demonstrates, texts endured on paper and in heads. O n one hand，texts survived— or in this case did not survive—

via the written or manuscript medium. Her fathers physical writings had perished during her captivity, but she would resurrect some of them through her own calligraphy. On the other hand, texts also survived through memorization and oral performance, although here it was somewhat hampered by the fact that gender placed certain restrictions on performance ritual. Cai Wenji s repertoire of more than four hundred memorized chap­ ters may seem vast to us, but anecdotes of Han memory and recitation feats are in fact relatively common. • Dongfang Shuo 東 方 朔 (fl. 130 b c e ), an advisor and trickster for Emperor Wu, claimed that he could chant 440,000 words, half from the classicist canon and half from military treatises.188 • Lou Hu 樓 護 (fl. end 1st c. b c e ), governor of Guanghan, was able to chant medical and pharmacological lore to the volume of several hundred thousand characters.189 • Wang Chong (27-ca. 100) was too poor in his youth to afford his own books’ but whenever he visited the bookstalls in the marketplace, he was able to memorize the books in a single reading.190 • Du Zhen 杜 眞 （ fl. ca. 135 c e ) was said to be able to chant a million characters of the classicist tradition.191 • Yan Du (d. 167 c e ) as a child was able to recite the Zuo commentary from memory after only ten days of study.192 • Xun Yue 荀 悦 （ d. 209 c e ) was said to be from a relatively poor (but locally influential) family, and like Wang Chong he memorized books in a single read­ ing whenever he went out in public.193 • M i H en g (fl. ca. 2 0 0

ce)

could write out the stele inscriptions chat he had seen

during his walks without missing a single character, even though he had given the stele only a glance.194

• Xu Gan 徐 幹 (170-217) was said to be able to “chant texts” {songwen 誦文）to the length of several hundred thousand characters while still in his youth.195 • Wang Can 王 粲 (177-217), upon encountering a stele while out walking with friends, could turn his back to it and recite it without missing a word.196

At the very least，the frequency if not the veracity of these claims to prodigious memory suggest that lengthy verbatim recall in general was valued as a quantifiable skill in early imperial China.197 Yet the ability to memorize was more than just an intellectual boast; it was regarded as a relatively nonsubjective standard by which to measure certain cognitive abilities of would-be officials or officials desir­ ing promotion. Future officials needed to hone two main skills’ namely writing and recitation, to secure employment, and among the various wooden and bamboo slips surviving from northwestern China, a piece of surviving verse from the CangJieplan 蒼 讀 篇 (Essay on Cang Jie) high­ lights these two abilities.198 Because at least ten examples of this verse survive from diverse locations, we might surmise that the beginning of this abecedarian was itself a writing warm-up exercise, perhaps akin to a singers practicing the scales before a performance. The longest intact version is as follows: 蒼頡作書 以敎後嗣 幼 子 承 （昭 ) 〔 詔〕 謹 慎 敬 （戒 ）〔 式〕 勉 力 （風 ）〔 諷 〕誦 晝夜勿置 苟務成史 計會辨治 超等軼群 出尤别異 初雖勞苦 卒必有意 愨恿忠信 微密傻言言賞賞

Cang Jie invented writing To teach later generations. Young children have inherited his proclamation, Conscientiously and carefully respecting the [character] forms.199 They [also] make every effort to recite and chant, Never stopping day or night. If they devote their energies to becoming a clerk, To calculating and organizing,200 Then they will transcend their class and rise above the crowd, Standing out in an extraordinary manner. If in the beginning they are painstaking and earnest, Then in the end they will certainly achieve their goal. Upright and honest, loyal and trustworthy, Careful and thorough, [garbled] . . . . 201

The poem provides few details about when and what these children recited and chanted, but early Western Han legal material excavated at Zhangjiashan gives us more information; it specifies that aspiring govern­ ment clerks begin three years of study at the age of sixteen and that their

examinations be regularly conducted in the eighth month of the year. In particular: “Examine the boys studying to become clerks by using the Fifteen chapters, and if they can recite at least five thousand words, then they can become clerks” ( 〔 試 〕史學童以十五篇，能 （風 ）[諷)書五 千字以上， 乃得爲史)_2°2 Commentators on the strips speculate that the Fifteen chapters referred to is the Shizhou 史 籀 (Clerk’s reader).203 Two similar but much later passages are found in the Han documents and in the Shuowen jiezi 説 文 解 字 (Explaining single-component graphs and analyzing compound characters), although they both bump the number of recited characters up to nine thousand.204After being tested in recita­ tion and chanting as well as in writing skills， the best students, according to the Zhangjiashan regulations, were then reserved for higher office.205 As for would-be diviners and invocators, their recitation bar was set much higher than for clerks in the Zhangjiashan materials, at six thousand and seven thousand characters respectively. Furthermore, their required secondary skills were not in writing but in divination accuracy and in explaining sacrificial protocol.206 Because the invocators had the highest bar, it is not surprising that they were depicted, in texts ranging from the Zuo commentary to the mid-Han divination poetry corpus known as the Yilin 易 林 (Forest of the Changes), as protocol masters who were “good with words” {shanyan 善言).207Anecdotes in the received literature as well as in excavated materials group clerks and invocators together because they made formal presentations and announcements to the ghosts and spirits.208 Later, when Emperor Wus court first established the classicist acade­ micians and their student body, success was measured by whether the students could “penetrate” {tong) at least one canon after a year of study. As noted above, the meaning of “penetrating” a text is somewhat unclear, and so how it was tested remains unknown. Those who passed this test, as established by Gongsun Hong 公 系 弘 (ca. 200—121)，were declared exempt from serving in manual labor, a reward also offered by later emperors.209 However, for existing officials educated in the classics who were seeking further advancement, the testing process was explicit and straightforward: “Give preference to those who can chant the most” （ 先 用誦多者).21° As in the Zhangjiashan regulations, the volume of lengthy verbatim recall was what mattered. Still later, during Emperor Cheng’s reign, recitation skills were deemed a measure for a districts health. The

routine of a regional inspector ofYangzhou by the name of He Wu 何武 (d. 3 ce) is described as follows: 行部必先即學官見諸生， 試 其 誦 論 ，問以得失，然後入傳舍，出記問墾田頃畝， 五榖美惡’ 已乃見二千石，以爲常。 Whenever he traveled into a district, he would without fail go first to the schools and meet with all the students, testing them on their chanting and analysis and asking them about gain and loss. Only then did he enter the [district’s] post house, bring out the records, and ask about new acreages under production and the quality of the five grains. Afterward he would meet with the two-thousandshi officials. He cook this order as a constant.211

Yet it was not only would-be officials who were being measured in recitation; would-be emperors had to demonstrate such abilities as well. When Emperor Cheng was considering who should be his heir-apparent, he called upon his youngest half-brother to recite from the Documents canon, but the young man broke off in the middle of the recitation, having forgotten the text. When he called upon his half-nephew to recite from the Songs canon, this second young man had [Refined and patterned] .HThe commentary states, “How elegant and refined!”133 The Documents canon states, “The nine divisions of the “Great Pattern” are the means whereby the natu­ ral categories are ordered.， ， 134 Refinement is how virtue becomes manifest, and patterns are how officials become regulated. When alive, he instructed, and when dead, he will have this title— is this not appropriate indeed!135

The sources for defining wen and fan in this instance are the Analects and the Documents canon respectively, and together with this speech’s allusions to the Songs canon (losing the king’s protector) and the Ritual records (the collapsed crossbeam) 一 both of which were used to describe the death of Confucius-these literary benchmarks transform Chen Shi into a textual referent to be slotted into the memorial culture as described in the Introduction and further analyzed in Part V. He is being made relative to the classical corpus and, through implication by association, identified as the modern equivalent of a classical figure. In the final years of the Eastern Han, as the warlord Cao Cao waged his campaigns against the South, a twelve-year-old cowherd by the name of Deng Ai 鄭 艾 （ d. 264 ce) migrated with his mother to Yingchuan. There he encountered Chen Shis stele that bore the words

“His refinement served as the pattern of the age, and his conduct served as a model for officials” （ 文爲世範， 行爲士則 )• Deng Ai was allegedly so impressed by such virtue that he changed his personal name to Fan 範 （ “Pattern” ）and his courtesy name to Shize 士 則 （ “Model for officials”).136 Chen Shi is said to have made an impression upon Deng Ais character, and Chen Shi would continue to impress as Deng Ai began to form his own relationship net using his personal name and courtesy name. The stele was fulfilling its own role in securing Chen Shi s name. Chen Shi's inscription demonstrates how descendants resorted to a preexisting, highly familiar textual heritage to draw upon the modifi­ ers they would use in their names to remember the dead. Ultimately the modifiers they chose were relatively common, bordering on cliched， and repeated in the posthumous names of many different ancestors. As already seen，negative posthumous names were limited to a small handful of terms— “numinous， ” “erring,” or “cruel”一 and positive post­ humous names are generally not too imaginative, either. “Respectable Marquis” (Jing hou 敬侯 ) and “Martial Marquis” (Wu hou 武侯 ) were regularly handed out as honorable titles, an uninspired repetition that at first appears baffling. Perhaps from the perspective within an indi­ vidual lineage, this overall repetition across the state was not quite so noticeable, but repetition did not simply happen by chance. There was an express desire to streamline and limit the variety of posthumous names. This aspiration for a singular permanent system is evident when the academician Fan Sheng 范升 in 33 ce persuaded Emperor Guangwu to honor one of his military officials by the name of Zhai Zun 祭遵 with the following words: 臣愚以爲宜因遵薨，論 敘 眾 功 ， 詳 案 謚 法 ，以禮成之。顯章國家篤古之制’ 爲後 嗣法。 ， In my humble opinion, we should on the occasion of Zun’s death arrange and organize the whole gamut of his achievements, and we should carefully examine the system of posthumous names, using ritual to bring them to a state of comple­ tion. Such would expressly display the methods of how the stare reveres antiquity and become a system for later generations.137

In the same manner, stele inscriptions explicitly refer to the process of “consulting the documents” {andian 按 典 ）to determine a name.138 Accordingly, several lists of posthumous names indeed circulated in the Han, two of which survive.139For example, when the famous biblio­ phile Liu De died around 130 bce, the court was advised as follows:

“The system of posthumous names states, 'Astute clarity and shrewd understanding is called Devotion/ It is appropriate that his posthumous name be ‘Devoted King’ ”（ 《 法 曰 「聰明睿知曰獻」，宜謚曰獻王 ).14° This definition agrees with that found in the “System of posthumous names” in the Additional Zhou documents}^ Ying Shao 應召力(ca. 140before 204) also seems to have drawn upon the same work for his Han documents commentary in all his explanations of imperial posthumous names, the one exception being “Gaozu， ” on which he remains silent. There, the Wei commentator Zhang Yan 張晏 notes that “Gao” does not appear in the “ritual system of posthumous names” {lishifa 禮謐法)， again implying a name list with limited scope.142 To recapitulate, names in early imperial China tended to relativize the bearer rather than individuate him or her in the manner of their Western counterparts. They were first applied when an infant could demonstra­ bly interrelate with others, the naming ceremony itself like a series of personal introductions. The courtesy name often indicated where among the siblings the bearer ranked, and the continual choice between using the personal or courtesy name was a dynamic marker of hierarchy. The taboo of the personal name at death mapped out the scope of the bearers relationship net. Most of all, the selection of a posthumous name hinged upon how others intended to remember the bearer and had nothing to do with self-identification. (Imagine for a moment going through life not even knowing your own future name, the name that people will always use to identify you when they think about you.) Yet there is another story gradually unfolding here in this survey of names; there is a fading upward，a gradual loss of differentiation. As seen above, when sampling the various common nouns that could become personal nouns, the first name might be almost anything. The second name was regularly more limited, both in meaning (as it tended to be a virtue or positive attribute) and in prefix (as one of the four or five seniority markers was often appended to it). The posthumous name was extremely limited and derived from a relatively small fixed list. That is， it seems that the selfs own identifier was shedding individuality over the course of one’s lifetime even before becoming an ancestor. Once having joined the remembered dead, that loss of separateness will indeed come to the fore as the self merges with the lineage past, as we turn to the prin­ cipal marker of lineage identity, which is the surname itself.

Section 5 ：The ancestor’s surname as a spatial marker In a recent study, Liang Ningsen surveyed how the name format for Guo 貌 family members appeared in Zhou dynasty bronze vessels and identified no fewer than nine different variations, the variables being not just whether personal, courtesy, or posthumous names were present but also whether the names included titles such as a royal rank {gong 么 for “duke， ， ，bo 伯 for “earl， ” and so forth), a gendered ancestral identifier (fu 父 o r# 甫 for men，nil 女 or mu 母 for women), and a natal surname for women, among other possible parameters. Names could be as simple as “Second-eldest Guo” ▲仲 or as complex as “Mother Liang of Guo n^eji, eldest daughter” 虢孟姬良母 . The one unchanging component— and indeed the component that allowed Liang Ningsen to collect these sacrificial vessels into a single corpus— was of course the surname， and as will be seen below, future bearers of that Guo surname would regularly trace its origins to the enfeoffed territory by that name first established by King Wen of the Zhou.143 To understand how surnames mapped out a persons position within the public memory, we must first understand how a person related to territory. Cho-yun Hsu summarizes the Qin and early Han populace as consisting of “free and independent small farmers,” and more recently Loewe has used excavated administrative documents to discern how arable land could be held by individuals {zitian 自田) or assigned to households {hutian 户田)，households usually consisting of four or five people and serving as the basic unit of taxation and government work assignments. In terms of household land, “property” might not be the most accurate term，and Loewe notes that it was actually “made over for occupation by the household, by permission of the authorities and with due registration/5The tenure for such household lands may have been inherited by younger generations.144Yet this initial land distribution was by no means static and even, and already by the middle of the Western Han there were complaints about estate builders buying up their poorer neighbors (who often became their tenant farmers) as a class of landlords began to wedge its way between the court and the populace. Over the course of the Han, there were many symptoms of the courts increasing distance from direct control over land. For example, it lost the ability to move rich families away from their landholdings to live in the shadows of the imperial tombs near Chang’an，and it gradually replaced gifts of

land with gifts of cash.145 It is from this changing context of land rela­ tionships that people in the Han looked back to the preimperial states, states which for many (if not most) were recognized as the origin of their lineage surnames.146 T h e st a t e ’s r e l a t i o n s h i p t o a n c e s t r a l t e r r i t o r y

In both religious and practical terms, the state ruler expressed his control over the land via the construction of a she 社 or “earth altar/5 Several Han prescriptive sources maintain that “the earthly domain is broad and expansive, and it cant be worshiped in every place” （ 土地廣博， 不 可遍敬也 ).147Thus the ruler constructed an earthen mound to serve as a fulcrum between his lands and the heavenly forces, a place where semian­ nual sacrifices were offered. According to the White Tiger H all discussion^ the altar lacked a roof because it was intended to “access the qi of heaven and earthM(達 天 地 氣 )， 148 and the Ritual records likewise contends that it “must receive the frost and dew，the wind and rain” (‘公受霜露風雨)， which are the manifestations of yin ^ndyang}ASThat is, the altars own open structure reflected its role as node between humans and earth. Only when the ruler lost control of his state did his earth altar become roofed and walled to terminate access with those heavenly powers.150Here the frequently cited precedent is the Shang dynasty s enclosed earth altar at Bo 蒲， which the Spring and Autumn annals records as burning down in 491 bce.151 Several Han descriptive texts evince that these theories were indeed put into practice. The Han documents refers to Qin destroying the earth altars of others during the Warring States period, and it records that Gaozu ordered all the Qin earth altars be replaced with Han earth altars in 205 bce.152Later’ Wang Mang had his Xin troops swear oaths of allegiance with the “ghosts of the earth altars” {shegui 社鬼 ) as witnesses, and he explicitly heeded the Bo precedent by walling the earth altars of rebellious Liu branch lineages.153 Below these imperial treatments of earth altars, we know from various wood and bamboo strips excavated from northwestern China that even people out on the borderlands were selecting auspicious days, observing abstentions, and then making sacri­ fices to these altars.154 As for their role relative to lineage structures, the ancestral shrine and the earth altar are regularly depicted in tandem with one another, and traditionally, lineage progenitors were the fief founders, their

descendants owing their agricultural livelihoods to that man who had first won the territory. Hence ancestral worship and territorial control theoretically had a common nexus, just as their fates were intertwined.155 In texts such as the Wu Yue chunqiu 吳 越 春 秋 {Spring and autumn annals ofWu and Yue), most references to the Wu and Yue earth altars are immediately accompanied by a parallel reference to the state s ances­ tral shrines, usually in terms of their joint demise signaling the end of those states. The Additional Zhou documents similarly laments that the people will have nothing to lose if their altars of earth and grain are gone, their ancestral shrines demolished, their graveyards destroyed， their ancestral spirits impeded, and their lineages obliterated.156 Or as the Guanzi begins its chapter on the five aids to government: “We have never once heard of a case in which a cruel king had lost the state, endangered the earth and grain altars, toppled the ancestral shrines and [his name] extinguished throughout the world without [first] losing the people” （ 暴王之 所 以 失國 家， 危社稷， 覆 宗 廟 ，滅 於 天 下 ，非 失 人 者 ， 未 之普聞 ） .157The earth altars, the ancestral shrine, and how the ruler is remembered are all interwoven, and without the prerequisite of popular support, all of them perish together. Guan Zhong further contends that he would give his life only for the sake of preserving the earth and grain altars as well as the ancestral shrines, and if forced to choose between them, he would favor the latter, because one must “maintain the earth and grain altars in order to support the ancestral shrine”（ 奉社稷以持宗 廟） .158Family comes first, land second. In like manner, the White Tiger H all discussion ritually ranks the earth altar below the ancestral shrine, observing that the former receives smaller and less frequent sacrifices than the latter.159 Their paired nature was also physically manifested, as they were said to have been constructed together between the inner and outer walls of the rulers palace on either side of the gate. The Zhou rituals begins its description of the “Lesser head of ancestral matters” (Xiao zongbo 小宗伯） as follows: “The duty of the lesser head of ancestral matters is to manage the placeholders for the spirits associated with the foundation of the state. To the right [when leaving the palace gate] are the earth and grain altars, and to the left are the ancestral shrines” （ 小 宗 伯 之 職 ，掌建國之 神位， 右 社 稷 ’ 左宗廟 ).160 The White Tiger H all discussion echoes these locations and explains the earth altars privileged place by stating that

“one reveres and maintains intimacy with it in the same manner as with ones ancestors” （ 尊而親之， 與先祖同也 ).161 The same source contends that the enclosed earth altar of the previous now-defunct dynasty should remain near the current ancestral shrine as a stern' reminder that the territory can be lost if the rulers standards slip.162Typical of the rest of the White Tiger H all discussion, the underlying assumption here is that all rulers remain subordinate to a grander sequence, that one’s own lineage will not necessarily possess the land forever.163Yet we should not assume these prescriptions that physically paired up the ancestral shrines and the earth altars were always put into practice. The physical ancestral shrine may mark the center of territoriality, but the relationship between ancestrolotry and territory is not limited to that one axial locale. Other physical manifestations of the ancestral cult~namely the ancestral tablets— could make their way outward to the borders of that territory on either imperial tours or military expedi­ tions. On this point, the more prescriptive texts一 the Ritual records、the White Tiger H ull discussion, the Collective masters ofthe Kongfamily, and others— are in general agreement as to the procedures, and their prescrip­ tions highlight how tightly the ideas of ancestors and territory are inter­ twined. Before the ruler departs, announcements and sacrifices were to be made at the earth altar, the ancestral hall， and the shrine for the Lords on High or for the Five Lords. Here the Collective masters offers the most detail, laying out the ideal ritual program of the entire campaign with divinations for an auspicious day to make the announcement to the ancestors, with five-day fasts and abstentions, and with other ceremo­ nies that had to be observed before the tablets were removed for travel. However, all three texts agree that the only ancestral tablets allowed to travel were the retired tablets or, more literally, the cremoved-fromshrine tablets35 {qianmiao zhu 遷 廟 主 )，namely those tablets belonging to distant ancestors who had been promoted beyond regular direct sacri­ fices within the shrines, to the corporate lineage beyond the immediate forebears.164That is, if the son of heaven is allowed to seasonally sacrifice to his four most recent forebears, only the tablets from the fifth genera­ tion and prior can travel with him on expedition. The lineage progenitor also had to stay at home. If there were no such tablets available for travel because the trunk lineage was too short (having branched off another trunk lineage within the last five generations), then tokens of jade, silk,

and animal skin were presented at the ancestral shrine and then taken on tour to serve as substitutes for the tablets. Thus the central ances­ tral shrine was to be left entirely intact，and the only tablets to receive homage en route were the no-longer-remembered ancestors, who stood for the corporate lineage as'a whole and on a more impersonal level.165 The Collective masters then describes the departure of the ruler and his entourage as follows: 以齋車遷廟之主及社 主 行 ’ 大司馬職奉之。…凡行主皮圭幣帛’ 皆每舍奠焉’ 而後就館。主車止于中門之外，外門之内。廟 主 居于 道左 ，社主居于 道右 。 The retired tablets and the earth altar tablets were transported in the sacristy carriages, and the commander-in-chief was assigned to oversee th e m .. . . When

transporting the tablets as well as the pelts, jade, and silk, they offered libations to these things wherever they stopped for the night, and only then did they proceed into a residence. The tablet carriages remained between the inner and outer gates, the shrine tablets located to the left of the road and the earth altar tablets to the right of the road.166

With the ancestral and territorial tablets so positioned, the royal entou­ rage was nightly echoing the layout of the central capital wherever it journeyed，faintly replicating the state's temporal and spatial fulcrum. While these ritual procedures are repeated in several prescriptive texts，again we cannot determine whether they were regularly translated into practice during the Qin and Han. At one point, the Ritual records claims that actual practice had indeed deviated from prescription in at least two ways. On one hand, there was a tradition of making copies of the tablets and then traveling with the copies; on the other, some rulers were simply taking all the tablets with them，leaving the capi­ tal shrines empty. The text soundly condemns both practices.167 Even so, little is known of actual Han practice, although in terms of impe­ rial ancestrolotry extending beyond the capital, the shrines of Emperors Gaozu, Wen 文 （ r_ 179-156)， and Wu were indeed spread throughout the empire until the late first century bce, when they became too expensive

to maintain and a series of economic retrenchments were attempted.168 In Emperor Wus case, shrines were specifically erected in the forty-nine kingdoms and commanderies where he had personally made his imperial progresses. Thus it wasnt simply a general demand to remember him that was blanketed across the empire but a more specific link between his actual presence in each part of his territory on one hand and subsequent formal remembrance of him as an ancestor on the other— somewhat

like a permanent version of these rituals on transporting the ancestors throughout the empire.

Before leaving the topic of how the state ritually associated its terri­ toriality with lineage worship, we must consider what happens when a ruling lineage eventually loses that state. In terms of the earth altars, we have already noted how they were to be enclosed，cutting them off from the cosmological forces, but what of its companion place of worship, the ancestral shrine? According to the extant literature, successor dynasties regularly set aside fiefs and states where each now-defunct royal lineage was relocated, almost always with the explicit command that the remaining descen­ dants continue the ancestral sacrifices: • Tradition maintains that once King Wu conquered the Shang dynasty and commenced the Zhou, he enfeoffed the descendants of the Yellow Emperor, Yao and Shun, even before descending from his carriage after the last campaign.169 The literature provides little more information. • After King Wu descended from that carriage, he then enfeoffed the descen­ dants ofXia in*Qi. Again little more is known, but there is a passing reference in the Zuo commentary concurring that uQi is the remnants of the Xia" (Qi, Yl-^yuye 杞 ， 夏餘也).170 • King Wu also enfeoffed the descendants of Shang or Yin in Song.171 More attention is given to these sacrifices because, according to the Ritual records, the current dynasty must preserve the remnant lineages of the previous two dynasties only.172 At least by the middle of the Han, the Qin was not regarded as a legitimate dynasty, and thus the Han was responsible for preserving the Shang and Zhou. The lineage of Confucius was regarded as descending from the Shang kings, and because the Shang sacrifices had died out by 8 bce, one of Confuciuss descendants was dubbed “Excellent Marquis who continues the Yin” （ “Yin shao jia houM殷紹嘉侯)，later simplified to the “Duke of Song” (“Song gong” 宋公).173 • The Zhou had dissolved well before the final Qin unification in 221 b c e , but already in 250

bce,

the Qin had set aside land earmarked for Zhou descendants

to continue ancestral sacrifices.174 In 199

bce,

Han Gaozu also set up altars

throughout the new empire to worship Houji, but in this case Houji or “Lord Millet” seems to have been recognized more as a god of agriculture rather than the Zhou progenitor.175 By Emperor Wu's reign, the Zhou ancestral sacrifices had long lapsed, and a direct descendant of the royal lineage could not be found. Coming from beyond the trunk lineage, a “son by a concubine” (niezi 孽子) was chosen instead.176A century later, in 8 bce, the Zhou descendant was awarded the title “Blessed Marquis who continues the Zhou” （ “Zhou cheng xiu hou” 周承休侯)，later simplified to “Duke of Zheng” (“Zheng gong” 鄭公).177 • In 195 b c e , Han Gaozu set aside a meager twenty households to continue sacri­ fices to the First Emperor of Qin, and it is perhaps significant that he likewise

set aside ten households for the ruling lineages of the now-defunct states of Chu， Wei, Qi, and others. In other words, from this particular perspective, Qin wasn't really a full dynasty worthy of a remembrance region and was merely the last and largest of the warring states.178 The Qin descendant lineage draws little attention after that. • Preserved in the Han documents, Wang Mangs edict demoting the last Western Han emperor to a duke also set aside a small remembrance region for descen­ dants of the Han. He combined five districts along the border of what is now northern Shandong Province and declared that the descendants would forever enjoy the status of guest at the new ruling house ofXin.179 He explicitly likened this new polity to that which existed for the Zhou descendants, but his edict makes no reference to the Shang descendants, perhaps because they would now have slipped beyond the stipulated two-dynasty remembrance limit.

This last resettlement was of course two centuries premature, and it would be the Wei dynasty and not the Xin that demoted the final Eastern Han emperor to a duke. Even then, the new Han remembrance region would itself outlive the Wei by roughly fifty years. Against this chronology of remembrance territories, what •did “remembrance” actually entail? In the case of nonroyal and nonimperial lineages, it consisted of stipends to ensure that loyal service was remem­ bered and rewarded. As the Guanzi defines it: 所 謂 接 絶 者 ，士 民死 上 事 ，死 戰 事 ， 使其知識故人受資於上而祠之。此之謂接 絶也。 The phrase “continuing what was broken off” means when people die in the service to their ruler or in warfare, their acquaintances and companions receive assistance from the ruler to carry out sacrifices. Such is what “continuing what was broken off” means.180

For the ruling lineages, additional allowances were made. The Collective masters of the Kong family distinguishes a royal remembrance region by letting its inhabitants continue to follow the calendar or zhengshuo 正期 of its own days of rulership， as if that fief literally existed out of the space and time of the current age.181Addressing the last Western Han emperor， Wang Mang stipulates the same, and his edict (as well as the later Wei edict addressed to the last Eastern Han emperor) adds that the defunct ruling lineage was also to continue wearing vestments appropriate to their own era.182Perhaps the familiar sacrifice schedule，familiar clothes, familiar carriages, and so forth were intended to maintain a comfortable status quo for the ancestors of a bygone age within a little pocket of land that time forgot. Regardless, the ultimate function of the remembrance

regions was the same as the Guanzts definition of “continuing what was broken off.” As Wang Mang charges the remnant Han descendants: “By means [of this fief], may you generation after generation serve your ancestors so that they will always enjoy sacrifices there across the ages because of their famous virtues and flourishing achievements”（ 世世 以事其祖宗， 永以命德茂功， 享歷代之祀焉 ).183 Due to the paucity of sources, we cannot assume that all preimperial remembrance regions Were set up in the same way, nor can we assume such prescriptive edicts were even translated into actual practice, but they at least demonstrate the idea of not only preserving the ancestors but also preserving the past mechanics used for ancestral maintenance. Yet behind all these efforts to sustain the former ruling lineages within a small pocket of the public memory remains a basic, logical question: Why bother? Why did tradition regard it as King Wus first act of government, before he even descended from his carriage, or why did the Collective masters ofthe Kongfamily contend, “Thus raising up what was obliterated and continuing what was cut off is considered a govern­ ment priority” （ 乃興滅繼絶以爲政首 )?184 Why does the Guanzi simi­ larly make reconstructing past lineages a prerequisite for the hegemonic rule of Duke Huan 桓 of Qi (r. 685-642) in the following summary of his government? 度義 光 德 ， 繼 法 紹 終 ，以遺後嗣。貽 孝 昭 穆 ， 大霸天下。 [Duke Huan] ascertained the principles and radiated virtue, preserved the law and continued [the lineages that were] cut off in order to pass these down to later generations. Thus he treated the ancestors in their zhao and mu branches with

filial piety and became a great hegemon to all under heaven.185

The zhao and mu branches were the even- and odd-numbered generations (counting the lineage progenitor as the first generation), their ancestral tablets displayed to the lineage progenitors left and right respectively. While any answer to the question “Why bother?” must be speculatives there is evidence for both sacred and profane justifications, for both supernatural and utilitarian reasons. In terms of supernatural justifications，if the ancestors were indeed regarded as willful external agencies，they might need placating. Ancestors could go on the rampage unless the descendants were able to sacrifice to them sufficiently. Such was the famous case of the ghost Boyou 白有(d. 543 bce)，documented

in the Zuo commentaryy who terrorized the people of Zheng until his

descendants were promoted, thereby increasing his sacrificial sustenance. If the displeased ancestors were of the highest ranks，they could even

bring on floods, droughts, and other natural disasters if their offerings were terminated. Such was the case of Han Emperor Yuans imperial ancestors，who put four commanderies under water when the emperor tried to limit and streamline the ancestral sacrifices during the economic retrenchments at the end of the Western Han. As will be discussed in Section 6，the highest-ranked ancestral lineages could claim the clos­ est proximity to the five-phase cosmological forces of the universe itself, perhaps warranting caution before rashly stopping their reverent offer­ ings of food. Here it may be expedient to digress for a moment and briefly describe this five-phase pattern that underlay the universe because it leads to another kind of supernatural justification for preserving lost lineages. The five phases will also greatly impact the popular conception of lineages and surnames by the Eastern Han, as will be seen below. The five phases was a totalizing classification scheme that sketched out an organic cycle of existence，beginning with initial growth (its symbol being wood) and continuing with vibrant expansion (fire), peak maturity (earth), decline through death (metal), and finally dormancy (water). Each phase generated the next, as wood gave rise to fire, which in turn produced earth (in the form of ashes)，and so forth in an endless “production cycle” (xiangsheng 相生)，with water leading to wood again. Conversely there was a “conquering cycle” {xiangsheng 相勝 )，in which each successive phase suppressed the one previous，in which fire conquered metal， water conquered fire, and so forth. Seasons, directions, colors, flavors, and other frames of reference all found themselves fitted into this basic rubric until five interrelated image clusters took shape. For example, springs wood eventually gave rise to the vibrant expan­ sive movement of fire that is summer, is south, is red，is the energetic bird, and— with the later overlay of yinyang~is the height of yang, of light, of life, of day, and of enlightenment. Here the components within each cluster resonated with one another, and any disruptions in one might become visible via the others, thereby leading to omens. If the ruler behaved in an “unenlightened” manner, conflagrations or droughts might sympathetically reverberate because of an excess of fire or yang. These five clusters also became anthropomorphized as the “Five Lords”

{luudi 五帝)，who will be frequently referenced below. The Five Lords were most associated with the five directions (the four cardinal direc­ tions plus the center), their colors of the “Blue Lord” in the east, the £tRed Lord” in the south, and so forth, as their spatial positions trace out a production-cycle sequence. Furthermore, these five phases came to be applied to history itself, as if each dynasty were a long season of time with its own characteristics.186As noted in the Introduction, by the first century bce, the Han came to be identified with the fire phase, which, as will be seen below, allowed it to form its own associations with previ­ ous periods of rulership that had also existed under the fire phase such as that of the sage ruler Yao.187 There was also a second less-well-known (but still significant) rival set of cycles known as the “threefold dispensation” or “triple concordance” {santong 三統 )• Championed by works such as the Chunqiu fanlu 春秋 繁 露 {Luxuriant gems ofthe Spring and Autumn annals), the White Tiger Hall discussion, and the Collective masters ofthe Kongfamily, the threefold dispensation consists of the blackness that characterizes germination and which was embodied by the Xia, the whiteness that characterizes sprouting and which was embodied by the Shang, and the redness that characterizes dynamic growth and which was embodied by the Zhou.188 According to all these sources, a key element of each systems imple­ mentation is preserving the remnants of the previous two lineages in a hundred-// fief (approximately 250 square kilometers), where the descen­

dants could w^ar their traditional clothes, carry out their traditional sacrifices, play their traditional music, and be treated as official guests of the reigning court. Some of the above-mentioned imperial edicts resettling Shang and Zhou descendants cite this system of the threefold dispensation by name, whereas others allude to many of its details.189 Adopting the language of this system in turn offers a different kind of cosmological justification to preserving lineage remnants besides that of placating imperial ghosts; it sustains the larger universal system of which the current dynasty is then recognized as merely one component. As the White Tiger H all discussion explains: 所以尊先王，通天下之三統也。明天下非一家之有，謹 敬謙讓 之至也。 It is to honor the ancestral kings and complete the threefold dispensation of all under heaven. It demonstrates that all under heaven is not the possession of a single family; it demonstrates the heights of respectful reverence and humble modesty.190

Theoretically， the defunct lineages were maintained to serve as a reminder that the current ruling house cannot forever lord it over the world but is instead subordinate to a larger system. Although not nearly as explicit, this perspective would be assumed within a five-phase historiography as well. In these systems, cosmological mechanics seem to take priority over concerns about willful ancestral agencies. As is the case with most elegant theories of the literati, its actual application “on the ground” is uncertain and perhaps even unlikely in some ways. That is, there may have been more practical reasons to justify prolonging the previous dynastic lineage. Above，Duke Huan was said to have sustained the defunct lineages not merely as a humble act of filial piety to the spirits but also to develop his role as great hegemon to all under heaven,” and it is these more profane reasons we must finally consider. In his highly interpretive history of preimperial China, K. C. Wu comes to a blunt conclusion about the motivation behind the Zhous preservation of the Shang lineage: To show his magnanimity to the fallen house of Shang, [King Wu] invested Wugeng, [the last Shang king’s] son and heir, as Prince ofYin, who was allowed to continue the imperial ceremonies in veneration of their ancestors but also required to acknowledge allegiance to Zhou like all other enfeoffed princes. • . • In brief, the authority exercised by Wugeng was minimal, and the entire popu­ lated area ofYin was placed under military occupation.191

From this perspective, the remembrance regions of Qi, Song3 and so forth are more like internment camps or reservations, where people were forcefully resettled to keep them under control. As already noted, in the Qin and Western Han powerful families were similarly uprooted from their own landholdings and transplanted into the capital region, ostensi­ bly to tend the imperial graves but more likely to remove them from their vested land interests. This practice was carried out eight times, until the Western Han government became too weak to exercise such control.192 Creating royal remembrance fiefs could be regarded in tandem with this type of forced resettlement, and it is true that most of these remem­ brance regions were established during power shifts— the traditional story of King Wus conquest over the Shang, the Qin destruction of the Zhou in 250 bce, and Wang Mangs usurpation of the Han. However, it may not have been as overt and deliberately planned as a “military occu­ pation； 5It may indeed have been an unconsciously evolving institution to

placate loyalist insurgents by using religion instead of using force alone. 丁hat is, if the remnant descendants were to be well-treated guests of the

new court in the present and then continue as richly endowed ancestors in the future-~if the new regime could supernaturally compensate the old regimes loss of secular power一 then there is perhaps a decreased likelihood of resistance by that old regimes uppermost level of authority. Remembrance fiefs could have been a mimetic device that ameliorated

the friction of power transitions from state to state, naturally helping preserve the larger social system. However, this interpretation is merely conjecture. The

lineage ’s rela tion sh ip to ancestral t errit o ry

As we move down from the ruling houses and inch closer to how an individual relates to the ancestral land, it should be highlighted that the prescriptive and idealized classicist texts regularly portray ritual practice as rippling down into the rest of the state below, and here the earth altars are no different. The regularly memorized Filial piety canon contends that a lord of the states who exercises restraint will retain his earth and grain altars; the grandee who speaks wise words will uphold his ancestral shrines; and the officer who proves his obedience will continue his sacri­ fices.193Echoing those same three layers, the Ritual records demands that those who would abandon this hierarchy must be warned: 國君去其國， 止 之 曰 ：「奈 何去 社稷 也！-大夫曰：「奈 何去宗廟也！」士 曰 ：「奈 何去填墓也! 」 Should a ruler be leaving his state, he is to be stopped with the words, “"What’s to be done about leaving your earth and grain altars In case of a grandee, living during the Wang Mang interregnum, who, after studying the Songs and the Rituals— a different source says the L a o z iwas caught up in the Han restoration, rising to become one of Emperor Guangwus most important military leaders. Here his biography is not so impor­ tant as how his series of names— the markers of his weblike identity~ become increasingly standardized over a lifetime and beyond.341

• His personal name was “Yan” meaning “Concealment.” As already seen, personal names tended to be the most varied in content, and they could include common nouns as diverse as "Warm,” “Skin,” “Blue,” "Rhyme," “Deaf, and “Dustpan,” as in the examples cited above. However at the point of death, this identity marker became nullified through the practice of taboos. Thus Geng Yans most distinctive label would have been removed. • His courtesy name was “Bozhao” 4白昭 meaning First-born radiance. Compared to personal names, courtesy names were somewhat less varied in content as they yielded to certain conventions. As Michael Loewe describes it, “The chosen term might express a wish for happiness or success; or，in many cases, it denoted the degree of kinship or seniority.”342 As to the latter, large numbers of them included one of the same four or five seniority mark­ ers, thereby heightening the sense of similarity among courtesy names. In this case, we know that Bozhao was most likely the eldest son and principal heir to the trunk lineage. In a way, the addition of “Bo” shifts his appellation from common to proper noun, his label now limited to being a person s name. • His posthumous name was “Minhou” 愁侯，meaning “the marquis evoking sympathy.11Still more limited in concent and variation than both the personal and courtesy name, posthumous names were not unique to the individual and were in fact shared by others. Limited lists could even be consulted to explain the choice of “M in， ， ，and both the Additional Zhou documents and Cai Yong’s “Duduan” 獨 斷 （ “Final assessments”）define Geng Yans new name as a descriptor for one who “encounters hardship within the state” {zaiguo fengnan 在國逢難)，a name that would fit his life of facing down warlords and help­ ing quell the Red Eyebrow peasant rebellion in the early first century.343As in the example of “Numinous” above, which had six dissimilar descriptors, there were multiple meanings for “Min,” but such differences again filtered down to a single standardized appellation. • From common noun to proper noun, from proper noun to a narrow list of labels, Geng Yans identifiers became more and more limited. Theoretically, the most limited label would have been that drawn from the “hundred surnames, and as Geng Yan ultimately faded away over the generations only to merge with the corporate lineage, he would become most associated with just this Geng appellation from among his several names. Geng itself had been a state in the Shang and Zhou Dynasties (in modern Shanxi Province) until wiped out by Jin in 661 bce, and so here we can now mentally position Geng Yan and his lineage within a grand spatial scheme.344 • Geng is said to have been a “surname” {shi 氏）of the Ji 姬 “clan name” {xing 姓)，which, according to the Eastern Han comprehensive genealogy projects, made the Geng lineage a descendant branch of the Yellow Emperor. Ultimately, Geng Yan would thus have been the dangling thread or leading edge of a qi that could be traced up to the cosmological rotation of the earth phase, although we have no explicit evidence that he himself ever made such claims.

Thus Yan (or Bozhao or the “Duke evoking sympathy55) of the Geng lineage (of the Geng state, of the Ji clan, of the earth phase) faded upward

into history. Even so, names were of course only the most succinct means of remembrance. There were other ways of positioning the self within the public memory such as age and kinship, to be studied in Parts II and III respectively. In Geng Yans case, he was also remembered via a portrait in Emperor Mings gallery, a particular kind of honor to be discussed in Part IV. Yet portraits faded after only a few generations, a fact not lost to the Han sources themselves. Names were more robust.

PART II

Age as positioning the self 孔 子 曰 ：「君子有三成：少 之 時 ， 血氣未定， 戒之在色； 及其狀也’ 血氣方剛， 成 之在鬥； 及其老也 ， 血氣既衰， 成 之 在 得 。」 . Confucius said, “The noble is careful about three things. When he is young and his blood and 弓i are still unsettled, he is careful about sex. "When he reaches matu­ rity and his blood and e^i are squared and firm, he is careful about conflict. "When he reaches old age and his blood and qi have waned, he is careful about hoarding.1

C

onfucius in the Analects briefly tracks a persons physical and emotional well-being through changes to his blood and qiyand in Part I， we saw Wang Chong and others in the Han taking that blood and qi one step further, at death, with the former transforming into earth and the latter dissipating into the air. The physical decrepitude to be suffered by the elderly was indeed a readily acknowledged fact of life in the minds of Han writers and think­ ers, even though efforts were made to stave off the biological inevitabil­ ity. For example, one might endeavor to forestall the decay that comes with old age by engaging in certain physical regimens while still young, including controlling the sex drive that worried Confucius. Medical texts excavated at Mawangdui provide a list of sexual do’s and donts called the “eight enhancements55{bayi 八益 ）and “seven detriments {qisun 七才貝)， which regulated the qi and maximized harmony. Otherwise the body was doomed to a gradual disintegration: 不能用八益，去 七 （ 孫）〔 損〕，則行年卅而陰氣自半也’ 五十而起居衰，六十而 耳目不 （ 葱）〔 聽〕明 ’七十下枯上 （ 说）〔 脱〕’ 陰氣不用，深 泣 （留）〔 流〕出。 If one is unable to employ the eight enhancements and set aside the seven detri­ ments, then at forty one’s sexual potency will be halved, at fifty one's work and rest will become enfeebled，at sixty one’s ears and eyes will no longer be acute, at seventy ones lower body will wither and upper body shrivel, one’s sexual potency will be lost, and one’s humors and tears will flow forth.2

We cannot know how popular such prescriptions and proscriptions might have been, but the unwelcome physical dissipation of old age was most likely deemed unavoidable. The Forest of the Changes provides a fairly blunt list of infirmities: 精神消落 形骸醜惡 纽藉镇挫 枯槁腐囊

The quintessential spirit dissipates and dissolves； The skeletal frame becomes ugly and foul. Improperly aligned teeth click and grind While [the body] decays and withers, putrefies and festers.3

When Yang Xiongs Taixuanjing 太玄•經 (Canon on the grand mystery) describes old age as the yang ascending far upward and the yin descending far downward, thereby distorting ones physical frame, and vaporous qi in the middle, it seems to recognize, like these other texts, a “fonctional” explanation for the body’s well-being. That is, it perceives the human organism as a system of yin and yang, qi3and so forth, and when that system falls out of harmony and breaks down, disease results. Yet the Canon then contends that, once the frame and qi become vulner­ able in old age, ghosts and spirits take their chance to become obstruc­ tive.4 The tracing of disease to external agencies— to demons, winds, bugs, and the like attacking from outside the body~rather than to internal disharmonies has been called the “ontic” explanation.5A corol­ lary of this view is that, just as spirits could move in，they could also move out. Early texts sometimes interpreted the body and its organs as a kind of apartment complex for spiritual agencies, as in this secondcentury ce poem by Gao Biao 高 彪 (d. 184)， which also laments old age: 神明無聊賴 愁毒於眾煩 中年棄我逝 忽若風過山 形氣各分離 一往不復還

When the [body] spirits have nothing to rely and depend upon, Eyery annoyance will become vexingly poisonous. The spirits will desert you in your middle years As suddenly as the wind passing through the mountains. Your frame and your qi will take leave of one another, And once that’s done, there’s no return.6

Thus geriatric physical decay，in both functional and ontic understand­ ings of the body, was a cause for concern in various genres of literature. No one, noble or commoner， was immune to the infirmities of old age. The empress Lii 呂 （ d. 180 bce)，at the beginning of the Western Han， humbly lamented her own decline by writing, “My years are advanced and my qi declining; my hair and teeth are falling out; and my steps have

lost their steadiness” （ 年 老 氣 衰 ，髮齒墮落， 行步 失度 ).7 At the end of the Western Han, the Grandee Secretary Gong Yu 貢 禹 （ d. ca. 44 bce) provided his own graphic account of how old ages dissipation continued even after death: 臣禹犬馬之齒八十一， 血 氣 衰 竭 ，耳目不聰明’ 非 復 能有補益 ， 所謂素餐卢祿洚 朝之臣也。自痛去家三千里， 凡 有 一 子 ，年 十 二 ，非有在家爲臣具棺槨者也。誠 恐一旦躀仆氣竭，不復自還，考席薦於宮室，骸骨棄捐， 孤 魂 不 歸 。不 勝 私 願 ， 願乞骸骨， 及身生歸鄉里，死亡所恨。 . At eighty-one, when I am just an old dog or horse, my blood and qi are declin­ ing to the point of extinction while my ears and eyes are no longer acute. Such things cannot be revitalized, and so I am deemed one of those officials who contaminate the court as mere fodder and deadweight. I am anxious about being three thousand li from home, where I have a twelve-year-old boy who has not prepared a coffin or vault for me there. I am truly afraid that one morning I will collapse, my qi extinguished, and because I will be past the point of no return, my contamination will spread over the palace and halls, my bones will be tossed aside and my solitary hun soul left with no chance of a homecoming. My unwor­ thy personal desire is that I be allowed to beg for my bones. The dead are most vexed by whether they had managed to get back to their village while still alive.8

Gong Yu here expresses the often-voiced desire, already noted in Part I ， to return at the end of ones life to ones home territory, to be buried in lineage lands. From philosophies to poetries, from medical texts to divination guides, physical demise seems as lamentable as it was inevitable, and we might easily envision a lifeline descending from its prime, perhaps because of the Western deutero-truth of imagining the lifeline as an arc. Wellknown English translations of Confucius’s threefold caution against sex, conflict, and hoarding in fact speak of the nobles “prime” {zhuang 狀 ）when one’s vigor is “at its height” {fanggang 方剛 ） ，followed by an old age when that vigor is “declining” {shuai 衷 ) . But might reading a Western-style arc into these depictions of life’s stages create any implicit challenges? Was the early Chinese lifeline best visualized as an arc? R e a l i z i n g o u r s it u a t e d n e s s o f “ t h e a g e s o f m a n ”

Like Confucius, Aristotle in his Rhetoric recognized the same three ages of man— namely youth, the prime of life, and old age.9 Later, like the Han dynasty in general, the Roman empire evolved its own panologiesj and in the process of uniting cosmos and daily life within a single grand pattern, it correlated the ages of the world with the ages of man.10

Perhaps as early as the second century, the Christian church picked up this notion of a segmented life，and by the era of Augustine (354-430) and Isidore of Seville (560—636)，human life had become divided into six or seven parts.11.Over the course of the next millennium, it would come to have as many as ten or twelve parts, as in the case of a popular German poem penned by Abraham Meir in the sixteenth century: For the first ten years a child. At twenty years a youth. At thirty years a man. At forty years stationary. At fifty years well to do. At sixty years on the decline. At seventy years look after thy soul. At eighty years the fool of the world. At ninety years the laughing-stock of children. At a hundred years, now God have mercy on thee.12

Note the waning social status of this individual in later years, a theme that is often repeated in depictions of the ages of man. While pictorial representations of the ages of man cannot be dated any earlier than the eighth century, envisioning these ages specifically as an arc and thereby visually weighting them relative to one another likewise has a long history, or，as Georges Minois puts it: The concept of a curved scale of ages was imposed on our society very early on, with its peak situated at around 40 or 50 years, preceding the irremediable and definitive decline towards a devalued old age. This scheme includes many variants and exceptions • • , but the psychology of old people is profoundly and enduringly affected by it, making them internalize the degradation of their social status.13 _

By the sixteenth century the steps of life were being depicted in the visual arts, from intarsia to woodcuts.14 In a woodcut by Jorg Breu, the nine ages of man peak at the fifth stage, where a skeleton enters the picture, and then decline into darkness as storm clouds form overhead (Figure 4). Waiting below the last step is a coffin that points to a Christian resur­ rection because judgment and heaven have no place upon the arc itself.15 These earliest discussions and depictions of the ages of man no doubt belonged to an intellectual rather than everyman discourse, and most people in the Middle Ages probably didn’t recognize so many divisions in their lifespan. Minois stresses that，in reality, there were only three for

4 8

Fig. 4： Jorg Breus “Steps of life” (Source: © Trustees of the British Museum).

the commoner: childhood (when an individual was too young to make a contribution to the family’s livelihood), adulthood (which began when he or she could enter the fields), and old age (when he or she had to leave the fields due to frailty).16Yet from at least the seventeenth century, the many-segmented “arc of existence” grew in popularity as an art form, in part because it was often reprinted in almanacs. Philippe Aries here describes their broad appeal: The repetition of these pictures, pinned to the wall next to the calendar and in the midst of everyday objects, fostered the idea of a life cut into clearly defined sections corresponding to certain modes of activity, physical types, social func­ tions and styles of dress. The'division of life into periods had the same fixity as the cycle of Nature or the organization of society. In spite of the constant evoca­ tion of old age and death, the ages of life remained good-natured, picturesque sketches, character silhouettes of a rather whimsical kind.17

In one set of late representations, the model lifespan lasts one hundred years, in which a briefverse characterizes each decade, the wording of the verse sometimes reflecting the shape of the line. For example, the poem at the top of one womans “hill” reads, “At fifty, she has reached her prime I

Fig. 5: A womans version of “The different stages of life， ，(Source unknown, in the possession of the author).

and now grandchildren claim her time” (Figure 5). The language on the male counterpart image is more explicit about the arc: At fifty he stands still at last And views the future and the past. At sixty, as the world will say, He starts to go the downward way. At seventy with cane in hand, A gray-haired man he walks the land. At eighty years his locks are white, Life’s day is turning into night.18

Midway at the literal height of his journey, he can see both sides of the and then he travels downward. “Life’s day is turning into night” is reminiscent of Breus portrayal from four centuries earlier, in which storm clouds and darkness await the aging sojourner. Several social and economic factors have affected how each stage has been portrayed over the centuries, but in many ways, the overall shape of the lifeline itself has not changed. Bringing what has become a basic

cultural assumption up to the present, Richard Huntingdon and Peter Metcalf in their acclaimed Celebrations of death write, The life of the individual should rise in an arc through brassy youth to fruitful middle years, and then decline gently toward a. death that is acceptable as well as in e v ita b le .”四 Or as a 2012 New Yovket cartoon by Roz Chast visualizes “The last PowerPoint， ” black-robed Death stands beside a screen which shows nothing but the arc itself, his bony hand holding a pointer that directs his newest customer’s attention down to the (literal) end of the line.20 . While there exist numerous visual, instantiations of and a few brief textual generalizations about this arc, it would of course be too simplis­ tic to say this arc constitutes the only way a lifeline is today envisioned. Yet as hinted in the English translations to the Analects passage cited above, the lifelines shape is even embedded in our everyday language. The word “span” （ as in lifespa.n ) is a spa.tia.1 rn.eta.pKor denoting a bridge between two discrete points, here between the moment of birth and the moment of death. On this span，we grow up, reach our peak or “prime,” and eventually find ourselves “over the hill” as we enter our “declining” years. The arc is so embedded in tradition and language that we are habituated to reading the lifespan this way, usually without thinking about it. Yet recognizing this situatedness is particularly useful before examin­ ing the “ages of man” in early China because there are indeed substantial differences. When those differences arise, we can develop new questions that, without this baseline, we might not otherwise ask. We can also learn from the caveats that Western scholars have raised when dealing with their own materials, such as that of Minois when he recognizes the difference between an intellectual discourse and an everyman belief. Even though I will regularly resort to early Chinese laws and adminis­ trative measures aimed at the populace at large, we must be wary that the materials come from the lettered class and do not necessarily speak for that populace. Following Minois s lead, Part II is in fact limited to the three ages of childhood, adulthood, and old age, but it appends two other “ages” that are only implicit in these Western depictions, namely those of death and afterlife. Thus we might represent the Western arc as a fivefold structure as follows:

• Childhood. With regard to the arcs initial rise, children from classical Greece to medieval Europe were not highly valued, the youngest considered not even “seriously alive” and in some ways on a par with family pets.21 Philippe Anbs contends that, in the Middle Ages, children were shifted into aduk society as soon as possible, around the age of seven, once they were no longer dependent upon their mothers.22 In one thirteenth-century ages-of-man poem, this first stage is simply summarized as follows: “Thus the child six summers old / Is not worth much when all is told.”23 However in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a notion of a longer, transitional childhood developed as education became increasingly important and the modern concept of family emerged.24 • Adulthood. Thomas R. Cole and Claudia Edwards note that pre-twentiethcentury images offer a “neat division into stages of life where physical utility and social roles changed in tandem,”25 and the texts in these pictures affirm this equation between individual strength and social status. A popular midnineteenth-century Currier and Ives version reads, “With bull like strength to smite his foes / At Thirty to the field he goes. / At Forty naught his courage quails / but lion like，by force prevails. / Strength fails at Fifty but with wit / fox like he helps to manage it.”26 • Advanced years. Minois above has already described the e巳論)；Chunqiu Gongyangzhuan yizhu 、515 (Ding 定 5)，559 (Ai 衣 13); L iji jijie 、290 (“Tan Gong” 植弓） ；Baihutongshuzheng, 411­ 12 (“Xingming” 姓名 ) .L iji commentators are uncertain how far the taboo exemption extends into the textual tradition. The primary text refers to the histories and poetry, but it might have extended to all forms of writing so there would be no gaps in a would-be official s training. Alternatively che exemption may have more to do with being in the presence of the teacher who, like the ruler and che ancestors, constitutes ones superior. 69. These early prescriptions on naming would clearly qualify it as what Eliade and others broadly dub a “rite of passage.” Eliade (The sacredand theprofaney184—85) states the following: “When a child is born, he has only a physical existence; he is not yet recognized by his family nor accepted by the community. It is the rites performed immediately after birth that give the infant the status of a true (living person; it is only by virtue of those rites that he is incorporated into the community of the living." This naming “rite of passage” transforms an “analogic” process— a natural process of gradual change such as an infants maturation— into a “digital” process— an imposed either/or measure. The latter is necessary for a society to function. The family with this now-registered infant, for example, might bear new tax obligations or might have assured its territorial inheritance. 70. L ijijijie , 49 (“Quli” 曲禮) . For some details of the capping ceremony including a hymn, see Da Dai liji jiegu 、247—50 (“Gong fli” 公 符 ) ; for an example of a capping, see Shuoyuanjiaozhengy 483 (“Xiuwen” 修 文 )；for a recent description of the early ceremony, see Zhou, Festivals, feasts and gender relations' 149-53. 71. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhuy970 (Xiang 襄 9). Zhejiang University is in possession of a small set o f W arring States strips dated to around 340

bce

that includes this section o f

the Zuozhuan. See Zhejiang daxue cangZhanguo Chujian, 152 (“Chunqiu Zuo shi zhuan” 春 秋 左 氏 傳 ). 72. Hanshu、7.229. 73 -Li Falin, Shandong Han huaxiangshiyanjiu, 107-8. 74 -Caizhonglangju 6.4b (“Tongyou Hu Gen beiming"童 幼 胡根 碑銘 )_ See also Cai zhonglangji, 4-i2b-i5a (MTaifu Anle xianghou Hu gong furen lingbiao” 太 傅 安樂 鄉侯 胡公 夫 人 靈表 ). 75. Yili yizhu, 38 ( 'Shiguan li” 士 冠 禮 )；L iji jijie ' 703 (“Jiao tesheng” 郊特牲 )；

、415 (“Xingming” 姓名 ).

Baihutongshuzheng

76. Baihutongshuzheng, 415 (“Xingming” 姓 名 ). 77. Baihutongshuzheng、406-7 (“Xingming” 姓 名 ).

78. Shanghai bowuguan cangZhanguo Chu zhushu, 6 :312-13 and 334 (“Tianzi jianzhou” 天 子 建州). 79- Zhanguoce, 860 (“Wei” 魏 ). Bo. Hanshu, 75.3158. 81. Shiji' 120.3111-12. 82. Shiji, 120.3112. 83. L ijijijie 、100 (“Quli” 曲禮)• The L iji anthology includes other cases when names should and should not be used, such as children using chem before their parents (e.g., 13。[“0 ^ ” 曲禮]). ' ” 84. Baihutongshuzheng、325-27 (“Wubuming” 五 不 名 )• According to Hanshu, 8.271, at times the emperor did not use the personal name of Xiongnu chieftains visiting the court. As in the justifications for perpetual remembrance of imperial ancestors, the subjective standard of merit again diluted objective ritual restrictions and may have been a symptom of the emperors declining authority over the course of the Eastern Han. Citing this passage, Nylan argues that the Han governments decision publicly to recognize virtuous men may have partially encour^ed the development of patron-client cliques that characterized the Period of Disunion. See Nylan, MConfucian piety and individualism in Han China,” 9. 85. Zhanguoce, 465 (“Qi: Diao Bo chang eTian Dan” 齊 ：紹 勃 常 惡 田 單 ). 86. Ke Changsi even suggests that sponsor-list names on stele reverses reflect this hierarchy of personal versus courtesy names. The most-honored sponsors are identified by only a courtesy name in addition to their surnames, the next most-honored sponsors by both personal name and courtesy name, and the least-honored sponsors by personal name alone. For example, two groups of sponsors are listed on one particular stele reverse, the “district officials” {xianzhongshi dafu 縣中 士 大 夫 ）identified by only their courtesy names and the more subordinate “household disciples” (jia mensheng 家門生) identified by both their courtesy names and personal names. See Ye Changchi and Ke Changsi, Yushi, 171; Lishi, io.9b~ioa (“Tongzi Feng Sheng bei” 童子 逢 盛 碑 )• Yet most sponsor lists are internally uniform in their manner of identification, and so no hierarchy can usually be determined. 87. L iji jijie y'207 (“Tan Gong” 擅 弓 )；Yili yizhu, 35 (“Shiguanli” 士 冠 禮 ) . The Baihutong {Baihutong shuzheng, 415 [“Xingming” 姓 名 ]) echoes the L iji description. 88. For example, see Lunhengjiaoshil 615 (“Chaoqi” 超 奇 ） • 89. Hanbei jisbu 1-2, (“Sanlao huizi jiri jiM三 老 韓 字 忌 曰 記 ) . It is suggestive that, in this list of nine sons，names, only the fourth and fifth possess two-character personal names, thereby setting them off from the rest. 90. For the preimperial dispute, see, for example, Liu Huaxia and Liu Kefu, ‘“ Bo/ ‘Zhong， ’ ‘Shu/ ‘Ji’ yu Xi Zhou Jin hou shi xi.” 91. Lunyu jishi' 1102 (“Wei Ling” 衛 靈 ). 92. The posthumous control of names was no small matter in the medieval West as well, as Patrick Geary writes in his book Phantoms o f remembrance: “Memoria not only commemorated the departed but made them present through the manipulation of words (especially names) and objects. The importance assigned to the past by medieval society was such that this past had to be considered essentially knowable, and thus static and accessible. The names of the dead commemorated in libri memoriales and necrologies had to be scrupulously recorded so that they could be made present once

more at the Mass or when the necrology was read in chapter.” See Geary, Phantoms of remembrance，18. 93. YiZhoushu quanyi, 219 (“Shifa” t il法)； L ijijijie , 176，207，277 (“Tan Gong” 檀 弓 ） ， 706 ( ‘Jiaotesheng” 郊靖牲) . Cai Yong (Cai zhonglangji, 1.13b [“Zhu Gongshu shi yi” 朱 公 叔 認議] ) agrees that in the Eastern Zhou, such names were widely conferred, even down to the level of grandees in the individual state. Judging from bronze inscriptions, Wang Guowei suspects the practice of posthumous names probably began in the middle of the Western Zhou. See Falkenhausen, “The concept of wen: 10-11. A5 for the dating of the Yi Zhoushu, McNeal (Conquer and govern, 75) recently noted that “there is sufficient evidence to say with confidence that a text much like the Yi Zhou shu that has passed down to us today was known during the Han dynasty and that at least a large portion of that work circulated during the Warring States period as well.” 94. Y ili yizhu, 40 (“Shiguanli” 士 冠 禮 ) . Some commentators take this to mean that such conferrals were simply becoming more liberal in recent times. 95- Keightley, “The Shang,^ 235. 96.

Baihutong shuzheng,

409 (“Xingming” 姓 名 ） • There is in fact no evidence that

either the day of birth or of death determined which of the ten heavenly stems was used. Instead, the chosen day may fir Shang notions of lucky and unlucky days. See Keightley, The ancestral landscape、35. 97 - Sbiji, 6.2^6. His edict proclaimed, “From now on, we shall dispense with the system of posthumous names"( 自 今 已 來 ，除 f益法)，after which he ordered that all his successors instead be numbered, counting himself as “Pirst.” Curiously, in a memorial toadying to the Second Emperor of Qin (lit. “Qin Emperor Second August， ’)，the prime minister Li Si tells the young emperor that, as enlightened ruler, he can do whatever he wants, including changing the customs and getting rid of practices he deplores. If he does, he will enjoy awesome power in life and “will possess a worthy and enlightened posthumous name in death” （ 死 則 有 賢 明 之 f益也) . See Shiji, 87.2557. One can only speculate as to how these two statements could function in tandem. Is Li Si merelyengaging in rhetoric despite the earlier ban? Or is Li Si telling the new emperor he can revert to the old system of posthumous names if he so chooses, thereby sidestepping the permanent title of always being known as “Number TwoM? 98. According to Hanshu, 1.51, Gaozu posthumously honored his elder brother as the “ M arquis o f m artial pity” （ “W u’ai hou” 武 哀 侯 ） in 202 bce. 99. Hanshu、5.145. 100. Cai zhonglangji, I.i3b-i4a (“Zhu Gongshu shi yiM朱 公叔 謹 議 ) .The accuracy of such generalizations is of course open co question, as is evident, for example, in Han sources discussing whether women received posthumous names. Some sources contend that, in preimperial times, such names were indeed, extended to women; see Jinshu^ 20.644-45, and Gao Gheng’s commentary in Shiwu jiyuan, 32a—b，for a discussion of sources. The Baihutong (Baihutong shuzheng, 74-76 [“Shi” 認] )explains that if women “lacked rank, they then lacked posthumous names” （ 無 舞 ，故 無 認 )，but it then gives other opinions and examples of women who had indeed received them. The L iji also notes that wives generally “lacked rank， ’ 無爵■but followed that of their husbands when it came to matters of seating, sacrifice, and so forth; see L iji jijie , 710 (“Jiaotesheng” 郊特牲) . The exception to the general rule of no posthumous names, the Baihutong maintains, is the empress, but Cai Yong [Cai zhonglangji, 8.3b [“Hexi Deng hou shiyi”

和 条 ® 后謹議] )notes that the first Han empress to receive a posthumous name was Empress Yin, consort to Emperor Guangwu. Before chat, they only took their husbands* posthumous names. At least from Empress Yin (whose posthumous name was Guanglie 光烈）onward, their posthumous names were conjoined to their husbands’ names, taking the latter as a prefix; see Hou Hamhu、10.405-55. 101. Zhang Buxiu, S hifaji deshiren biao, 201. For all imperial history, he found 6,767 people who were granted posthumous names. 102. Faikenhausen, KThe concept of wen:、13. 103. L ijijijie , 995 (“Yueji” 樂記). i 〇4.

Hanshu, 7 3.3 118 .

105. Lunheng jiaoshi, 270 (“Fuxu” 福 虛 “Mu” usually means *reverence/' but it is a variant for miu 穋 (here and elsewhere in the Lunhen^), which indeed means “error.” 106. Cai zhonglangjiy 4.2b (“TaiRi Anle xiang Wengong hou Hu gong bei” 太傅安樂 鄉 文 恭 侯 胡 公 碑 ) .For a discussion on all the possible meanings of wen in a posthumous name, see Falkenhausen, “The concept of wen in the ancient Chinese ancestral cult,” I-2 Z .

107. Baihutongshuzhengy77 (“Shi” M). 108. Lunhengjiaoshu 869 (“Yiwen” 佚 文 )■Liu Xiang in his Wujing tongyi 五經通義 similarly recorded that “if one possessed virtue, his posthumous name was good, but if 有 德 則 "t益 善 ，無 德 則 f益惡)• one possessed no virtue, his posthumous name was bad” （ See Jinshu, 20.643. See also Cai zhonglangjiy 1.13b (“Zhu Gongshu shi y\ 朱 公叔 認 議 )； Yiwen leiju, 726 (“Shi” M ). . 109. Mengzi zhengyi, 491 (“Li Lou” 離 宴)_ 110. Shiji, 117.3045. h i. Falkenhausen, KThe concept of wen in the ancient Chinese ancestral cult,” 14. 112. So much of the ancestral cult is focused on the simple binary of whether one is remembered, as if being remembered in itself were the sign of success. The possibility of a negative posthumous name moves beyond the question of whether one is remembered to one of how one is remembered. That is, if it were merely a matter of being remembered, someone with an extremely bad reputation would still have attained posthumous staying power and hence would have been deemed a success. Conversely, many early thinkers struggled with the question of why good people can potentially disappear from history. As Nylan (“The art of persuasion from 100

bce

to 100

ce， ” 493-94)

recently stated it,

“In an unjust world, how is one to insure that ones name lives on after death? . . . Must the noble in spirit depend upon alliances with the powerful for their fine reputations? . . . Why should moneymakers, no matter how despicable their line of work, invariably be hailed as uncrowned nobility，on par with Kongzi, the uncrowned king， ?” From Confucius to Wang Chong, many thinkers queried why the good died young or why the good weren't assured recognition in the world. Perhaps Han discussions on posthumous names and their potential for being negative should be contextualized amidst these contemporaneous concerns of who is being remembered and how. 113. Yt Zhotishu quanyi, 229 (“Shifa” iM■ 法)• 114. Yi Zhoushu quanyi、227 (“Shifa” 言益法)■In the penultimate line, Zhang Wenyu reads neng 能 (“ability”) as xiong 熊 (“brilliance”). If we treat this text as a list of precedents, we might instead begin this translation with “One person who had achieved what was fixed within his mind when he died was called ‘Numinous， ， ” and so forth.

115. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu、 709 (Xuan 宣 io). The ruler’s original posthumous name was You 幽，which is already negative. It seems that some names, such as Ling, are worse than others. 116. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhuy xooi (Xiang 襄 13). I am uncertain whether to render cong 從 as “to follow” in the sequence of the ancestral rulers or “to serve” the ancestral rulers. The viscount’s request was not granted, and he was given a much nobler name. This passage shows the posthumous name in direct association with ancestral ritual, and in like manner, there are Han cases of assigning the posthumous name in tandem with scheduling the sacrifices. See for example, Hanshu, 8.242. 117. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 515 (Wen 文 i). Finally closing the eyes at the receipt of a posthumous name marks an interesting contrast to receiving the personal name once the eyes show signs of perception at the beginning of life. 118. For examples, see Shiji, 88.2569; Hanshu, 36.1928, 63.2762, 70.3007, 99.4165. 119. Shiji，10.426 (emphasis added). 120. Hanshuy 99.4153. 121. Hou Hanshu, 12.505. 122. For example, see Fengsu tongyijiaosbi, 427 (“Yiwen” 佚 文 ). 123. YiZhoushu quanyi, 219 (“Shifa” 摄 法 )；Yiwen leiju, 725 (“Shi” M); Cai zhonglang jh 5.9a (“Chenliu taishou Hu gong bei” 陳 留 太 守 胡 公 碑 ). 124. Wenxuan, 58.2506 (“Chen Taiqiu beiwen” 陳 太 丘 碑 文 )_ 125. LishU 9.9b (“Xuanru xiansheng Lou Shou bei” 玄 惊 先 生 宴 壽 碑 ). Lishi, 9-5b-6a (“Sili xiaowei Lu Jun bei” 司錄校尉魯 峻 碑). 127. After the Han, when the concept of literary genres was being retrospectively

applied, the bestowal of the posthumous name became associated with the threnody; see Wenxin diaolortg zhu, 212 (“Leibei” 練碑 ) . In several sources at least as early as the Zhouli {Zhouli zhengyi, 2095 [“Dashi” 大史]，2102 [“Xiaoshi” 小史]) and later, including stelae, the bestowal of posthumous names was indeed associated with threnodies, although not all threnodies established posthumous names. See Hanshu, 55.2489；Lishi, 7.14a (“Juji jiangjun Feng Gun bei” 車 騎 將 軍 ;馬混碑)，11.2b (“Taiwei Liu Kuan bei， ’ 太 尉 劉 寬 碑 )； Cai zhonglangji, 4.6a (“Hu gong bei” 胡 公 碑 ) .For a justification of the emperor granting posthumous names, see Baihutong shuzheng, 72-73 (“Tianzi shi zhuhou” 天子言益諸侯） . 128. Dongguan H anjijiaozhu, 10.340 (“Wu Han” 吳 漢). 12$). Shuoyuan jiaozheng, 546 (“Yiwen” 4失文)， 130- Cai zhonglangjiy2.8b (“Chen Taiqiu bei” 陳 太 丘 碑 62.2067. He Jin would later play a key role in the transition from Emperor Ling to Emperor Xian and die at the hands of the palace eunuchs. 131. This sentence originates from the KShiyue zhi jiao" and is also used in the Zuozhuan and L iji descriptions of Confucius’s death. See Mao Shi zhengyi, 447；Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu、1698 (Ai 哀 i6); L ijijijie ’ 239 (“Tan Gong”檀 弓） . 132. According to the “Tan Gong” 檀 弓 [L ijijijie ，195), just before his death Confucius sings, “Mount Tai will surely collapse! The crossbeam’s wood will surely rot! The wise person will surely wither away!” （ 泰 山 其 類 乎 ！梁 木 其 壞 乎 ！哲 人 其 萎 乎 ！） . 133. The context of this statement, from the Lunyu {Lunyujishi, 182 [“Bayi” 八偷])， is Confucius’s praise of the Zhou, which had knowledge of both the Xia and the Shang. 134. Shangshu zhengyi、187 (“Hongfan” 洪範). 135. Wenxuan 58.2506 (“Chen Taiqiu beiwen” 陳 太 丘 碑 文 )• A possible model for this posthumous name bestowal can be found in L ijijijie , 277 (“Tan Gong” 檀 弓 ） . This L iji

citation is used in other Han documents, such as Hanshu，88.3605. For a summary of the ritual prescriptions on bestowing the posthumous name, see Falkenhausen, “The concept of wen: 9-10. 136. Sariguozhiy 28.775. The received Chen Shi stele texts do not include the Sanguozhits exact words, although they clearly refer to this justification for his posthumous name. 137. Hou Hanshu, 20.742. 138. For examples, see Cai zhonglang)\y2.15b (“Zhenjie xiansheng Chenliu Fan Shiyun bei” 貞節先生陳留范史雲碑)，2.17b (“Xuanwen xiansheng Li Zicai ming” 玄 文 先 ‘ 李 子材銘)■For an example of an inscription’s posthumous name explanation matching that of the Yi Zhoushu, see Lishi, 7.14a (“Cheqi jiangjun Feng Gun bei” 車 騎 將 軍 ； 馬絕碑). 139. Cai Yongs Duduan and the Yi Zhoushus “Shifa” are the two extent lists. The Duduan presents forty-six imperial posthumous names and includes eight not in the longer Yi Zhoushu list. O f the names found in both, only four of the Duduans explanations are significantly different from those of the Yi Zhoushu, and where there is a difference, Ying Shao’s Hanshu commentary (in which he explains the Western Han imperial posthumous names) follows the explanation given in the latter. There also exist references to other lists that no longer survive. The Da D ai liji and the Shi ben 世 本 （ a now-lost text listed in the “Yiwen zhi,” Hanshu, 30.1714) were said to have once included chapters on posthumous names, and Liu Xi is also said to have composed a work on this topic. See Zhang Buxiu, Shifaj i deshiren biao, 19. Sima Xiangru (Shiji, 117.3064) wrote that since the reigns of Shun and Yu, the posthumous names and appellations of seventy-two rulers survived, and the Baihutong {Baihutong shuzheng, 71 [“Shi” 言益])likewise refers to the existence of seventy-two posthumous names. The latter also references a Lishifaji 禮 謐 法記 and includes four examples from it, two of which can be found in the Duduan and the other two in the Yi Zhoushu. 140. Hanshu、53.2411. 141. Yi Zhoushu quanyi、223 (“Shifa” 謹 法 )； 142. Hanshu, 1.1. The Hou Hanshu commentators cite a shifa to explain Eastern Han imperial posthumous names, but only some explanations match the Yi Zhoushu list and some titles (i.e., Emperors Zhang, He，and Chong) are not listed at all. Whether such explanatory systems were used in the original selection of titles or were only later compilations of existing titles is unknown. 143. Liang Ningsen, “Cong qingtong mingwen kan Guo guo guizu xingshi mingzi

jiegou 广5)8-ioi. 144. Hsu Cho-yun, Han agriculture, 14; Loewe, “Social distinctions, groups and privileges， ” 303. See also Hou Xudong, “Rethinking Chinese kinship， ， ’ 34-39. 145. For a summary of these changes and some implications for the ancestral cult, see Brashier, Ancestral memory in early China, 125-29. . 146. As early as Cicero, scholars have long recognized the inseparable association between property and lineage worship, between inherited land and ancestral cult. In his excellent study of Ghanese ancestor worship entitled Death, property and the ancestors, Goody argues that the idea of such property in general is less about material objects and more about the rights to those objects. Furthermore, it is not about an individual^ right to an object but the various rights— legal, jural, and moral— negotiated between two or more individuals relative to an object. That is, a person without a relationship net would also have no concept of “property” because a property claim is a relative term—

mY claim to a thing versus your claim to it. Territory in particular exemplifies those interhuman relationships all the more because “man is a land-based animal, and most of his social relationships have a terrestrial framework. Land is consequently the focus of a multiplicity of interests.11See Goody, Death, property and the ancestorsy287, 296—97. Those interests or rights can be subdivided along many fracture lines, such as rights to present use versus rights of ultimate control. Fiefs, for example, were really perpetual tenure, an extended sequence of partial ownership. Making the problem even more complex, one’s actual rights over a territory may not necessarily reflect ones perceived everyday rights. I may consider my house as my castle, but that castle is not really a sovereign nation and I still must pay taxes, obey all laws, abide by zoning practices that prevent me from building a drawbridge, and even hire lawyers to designate who will inherit it. There is relatively little “my” in “my house,” but regardless I still defensively perceive it as my own property, my castle, at least in terms of my normal everyday perception of it. From where does this modern Western sense of property ownership come? Lynn White Jr. famously argued that our daily habits of action and thought concerning land are deeply conditioned by religion, including in the West our Judeo-Christian notion of human dominion over the world. As products of a Judeo-Christian culture, we have accepted the deutero-truth of human superiority over the natural environment, even if we do not claim to be Jews or Christians ourselves. White writes: “Despite Copernicus, all the cosmos rotates around our little globe. Despite Darwin, we are not, in our hearts, part of the natural process. We are superior to nature, contemptuous of it, willing to use it for our slightest whim. ■. ■For nearly 2 millennia Christian missionaries have been chopping down sacred groves, which are idolatrous because they assume spirit in nature” （ “The historical roots of our ecologic crisis,” 1206 [emphasis in original]). While White is here addressing ecological issues in a way that set the stage for many heated theological debates, the idea of land as private property~to do with as one sees fit— is clearly a prerequisite to environmental exploitation. Thus for Goody, property claims get reflected in religion; for White, religion gets reflected in property claims. At the very least, both make it clear that attitudes toward territory can be closely married to religious idea systems, thereby encouraging us to tackle the thorny question of how the state, the lineage, and the individual relate to the concept of ancestral territory. 147. Baihutong shuzheng，83 (“Sheji” 社 稷 ) . This line is repeated in Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi’ 295 (“Sheshen” 社神)，where Ying Shao (among others) attributes it to the Xiaojing 孝經 . As the line does not appear in the received version of the Xiaojing, he may be referring to a chanwei version of the text. 148. Baihutong shuzheng，89 (“Sheji” 社 稷 ). 149. L ijijijie ，684-85 (“Jiaotesheng” 郊 特牲). 150- L ijijijie 、684-85 (l51. 21. According to Emily Vermeule {Aspects o f death in early Greek art and poetry, 115, 56), “The Greeks may have considered the very young to be not seriously alive, with limited intelligence or language skill， ” and in Mycenaean tombs, children were buried outside the door because it was probably “too much trouble to unblock the door for such slight burdens•” Paul Binski {Medievaldeath, 106) indicates such attitudes continued into medieval Europe despite the fact that children were sometimes idolized on tomb memorials. “This was not a child-centred culture,Hhe writes, even suggesting children belonged to the same realm of family attributes as pets. Writing from a different era and region of the world, the anthropologist Robert Hertz (Death and the right hand， 84) similarly depicted the impact of a child’s death on the social net in Indonesia at the beginning of the twentieth century. His following insightful description could be applied to early Greece, medieval Europe, or indeed Han China: “The deaths of children thus provoke only a very weak social reaction which is almost instantaneously completed. It is as though, for the collective consciousness, there were no real death in this case. Indeed, since the children have not yet entered the visible society, there is no reason to exclude them from it slowly and painfully.M 22. Ari^s {Centuries of childhood, 411) writes, “They immediately went straight into the great community of men, sharing in the work and play of their companions, old and young alike.” At that time, the role of the family was focused on the transmission of name and estate. * 23. Ari^s, Centuries o fchildhood, 22.

24. According to Aries {Centuries of childhood， 411-13)，the child was removed from adult society as the modern concept of family emerged, engendering new attitudes toward children as well as their moral and spiritual care. Elsewhere {The hour o f our death, 207, 230) he further notes that, if a premature death denied their ascendancy co adulthood, children who may have once been sewn into cheap shrouds and buried in big common graves were now being given individual graves and were more frequently eulogized through stone inscriptions. Thus in general terms, children within the Western tradition gradually lost their anonymity and became invested with a greater sense of value, although other factors such as class, gender, ethnicity, and regionalism would of course modify this oversimplification. 25. Cole and Edwards, “The 19th century,” 259. 26. Cole and Edwards, “The 19th century,” 260. 2-7- Jones, “Observations on the origin of the division of mans life into stages,” 182. The desire for his death may have been because his heirs were getting restless; see Minois, History o fold age, 240. 2.8. In her book The coming o fage (as quoted in Thane, “The 20th century， ， ’ 292), Simone de Beauvoir lamented how “old age is a shameful secret, a forbidden subject/， her description aptly fitting the downward progression in the Western “ages of man” where the storm clouds gathered. She contends that values assigned to old age are a fusion of biological phenomena and social mores, chat “as at every period of his life, his status is imposed upon him by the society in which he belongs." In her view, that society-imposed status is not necessarily kind, and she relentlessly depicts the modern perception of old age as negative. While the question must be raised as to whether Beauvoir reflects a general consensus or is a minority view, her analysis for us raises the question of how the biologicalself and the socialself in early China interacted with one another to reach a value judgment about old age and whether that judgment was the same as ours. 2-9- Poets frequently highlighted the temporal brevity of this point of death. Thomas Gray poetically dubbed the endpoint of life “the inevitable hour,” whereas Robert Browning would truncate that to the “black minute” in which darkness and cold “shall dwindle, shall blend, shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, then a light.” See Gray, “Elegy written in a country church-yard,” in Hurford, The anthology o fpopular verse, 457; Browning, “Prospice， ” in Enright, The Oxford book ofdeath' 53. I might add that, just as modern cultures struggle with defining the precise moment human life begins (as in abortion debates), they also attempt to identify the precise moment when human life ends, whether it be the last breath, the last heartbeat, or the last brain wave. Ever since at least the Period of Disunion and continuing on into the twentieth century, death in China was usually acknowledged only when the bod/s heat had completely dissipated, which is a much less digitized standard. 30. Botelho, “The 17th century,” 120-21. 31. This abrupt, transformative point of death— Brownings “black minute” in which darkness suddenly gave way to lightbecam e frequently realized in Western art and literature, and in terms of modern United States practice, the abruptness and the perceived m ^nitude of that transformation are amplified in how we now treat the dead. As Huntington and Metcalf {Celebrations o f death, 194-95) describe “American deathwaysw: “The majority of deaths now occur in hospitals, where the fiction of probable recovery is often maintained until a person is near the point of death. The corpse is

then promptly removed without the aid of the bereaved, who see it again only under very special circumstances, after it has been primped up to appear as if asleep. . . . This endless shying away from confrontation with mortality is undeniably a marked feature of American culture.” The corpse is then quickly removed from the community within days, any thought of its natural corruption being tabooed as it lay hidden within spotless containers and carried away by polished cars. In their opinion, the reasons for this shying away from mortality range from a decline of organized religion “with a consequent loss of faith in the old certitudes” to a profit-driven funeral industry bent on monopolizing all matters concerning death. 32. Wheeler, Heaven, hell, and the Victorians, 120. 33. For example, see Hanshu., 97.3988. 34. Yunmeng Shuihudi Qin mu, pi. 89 (strips 439-40); Hulsew^, Remnants of Ch'in law、139. For the hard labor sentences of “wall builder” and “grain pounder,” see p. 14 in the latter. 35. Yunmeng Shuihudi Qin mu, pi. 90 (strip 448); Hulsew^, Remnants ofChin law、141. 36. For “harsh measures that punished an infringement of filial duty (xiao 孝 )，and the special punishments for parricide or for incest,” see Loewe, “The laws of 186 bce,"

258; see also Nylan, “Administration of the fa m ily ,275-77; Goldin, “Han law and the regulation of interpersonal relations’” 1-31. Over the course of the Han, unfilial behavior was apparently punished with less and less frequency and became a much more minor offence than it had been in the Shuihudi statutes; see Wakae Kenzo, “Shin-Kan ritsu ni okeru tsumi,” 1—34. 37. Boyer, Religion explained、247. • 38. Hanshu, 72.3075 and 3079. Seven sui was also said to be when education should begin. See for example Skuoyuan jiaozheng, 58 (“jianben” 建本 39. For examples, see Hou Hanshu, 6.255, 7.301, 7.319. As seen above, the age of six or seven was also a recognized transition point in the Western tradition. 40. Yiliyizhuy 508 (“SangfU” 喪服). 41. For examples, see L ijijijie y542, 547 (“Zengzi wen” 曾子問)，870 (“Sangfu xiaoji 喪 服 小 記 ) .In “Sangfix xiaoji” （ 870)， deceased children were grouped with those who had died without descendants, suggesting that the focus on lineage continuity contributed to devaluing child deaths. For statements that children were not yet human, see Yili yizhu, 508 (“SangfU” 喪服) ;Liji jijie, 1090 (“Zaji” 雜 記 ). 42. Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi、428 (“Yiwen” 佚 文 )• The phrase 成 人 之道 could be read as either “the Way (Dao) of becoming human \chengren\ "— that is, of adulthood— or “attaining/reaching [cbeng] the roadway used by humans [ren zhi dao].n The ambiguity was most likely intentional. There were deities who oversaw children who died prematurely, as evident in funerary texts, such as the Lord of the Northern Dipper, who controlled the ghosts of stillborns; see Sterckx, “Religious practices in Qin and Han,” 419-20. Furthermore when a person died, the survivors before burial might implore the favors of “Boys Who Died Young” and “Girls Who Died Young” alongside the family’s earth altar, the “Manager of alloanents” {Siming 司命)，and so forth; see Poo, “Preparation for the afterlife in ancient China/’ 25. 43. For An Boxiao 安伯 孝 ，the eldest son of a certain An Guo 安 國 ， who died at the age of six sui, see Li Falin, Shandong Han huaxiangshi yanjiu, 107-8. 44. Erickson, “Han dynasty tomb structures and contents,H46-47.

45. Hou Hanshu, zhi 9.3197. 46. The fragment is from the “SangfU bianchu m， ’ 喪服變除圖 by She Ci 射慈 from die kingdom ofW u and is preserved in Yuhanshanfangjiyishu, 2： 322. His solution was to calculate the child7s 3ige in months, not sui. 47- Lishi, 9.7b (KGuanghanshuguo hou LiYibei” 廣 漢 屬 國 候 李 翔 碑 ). 48. Cai zhonglangji, 6.4b (“Tongyou Hu Gen beiming” 童 幼胡 根 碑 銘 ). 49. The image is from the Lunyu (Lunyu jishi, 614 [“Zi Han” 子罕]) :“The master said, ‘Can it not happen that the bud never blossoms? Can it not happen that the blossom never bears f r u it ? (子 曰 ：「苗 而 不 秀 者 有 矣 夫 ！秀 而 不 實 者 有 矣 夫 」） . In inscriptions, the xiu 秀 is sometimes replaced by a synonym, perhaps to avoid Emperor Guangwus taboo name. 50. Kinney, “Dyed silk/，36. 51. Lishi, 10.8a (“Tongzi Feng Sheng bei” 童 子 逢 盛 碑 )，12.16a (“Li Yi furen bei” 李 _ 夫 人 碑 )；Cai zhonglangjU 6.4b (“Tongyou Hu Gen beiming” 童 幼 胡 根 碑 銘 )，6.3b (“Yuan Manlai beiming” 袁滿 來 碑 錄 );Gao Wen, Hanbeijishi, 354 (55-56), mourning for political and other relations is clearly an extension of a core system based on kinship relations. Anecdotally, the Huainanzi {Huainan honglie jijie , 425-26 [“Fanlun” 巳論])， citing a story also found in the L iji, describes how a certain Duke of Lu wore mourning clothing for his wet nurse, arguing that rituals in general are not fixed but rightfullychanged to fit new circumstances. 202. For example, see Lishi, 8.ioa-b (“Chunyu zhang Xia Cheng bei” 淳 于 長 夏承 碑 ) . The authenticity of this particular stele has been called into question; see Brown, “Han steles， ” 185-86. For similar expressions, see also Yiwen leiju, 12.240,15.282, 45.807. 203. Cai zhonglangji, 2.4b—5a (uWenfan xiansheng Chen Zhonggong ming” 文範先 生陳仲弓銘) .This case is not unique. For example according to Hou Hanshu, 62.2049, the two districts formerly administered by Xun Shu 荀 淑 （ d. 149 ce) established sacrifices

to him at his death. 204. Wenxuan, 58.2507. Hou Hanshu, 62.2067, further confirms that they “numbered by the hundreds” {yibai shu 以百數)• According to Hou Hanshu, 56.1819, more than five hundred people also donned mourning attire for a lower official named Zhang Gang 張 綱 （ 1 。9—44 ce), “toting the earth and building his grave m ound” (負土 成墳 ). 2〇5. Lixu, 16.5b (“Beihai xiangJing jun beiyin” 北 海 相 景 君 碑 隆 )；Qin Han beishu、 169 (“Beihai xiang Jing jun ming” 北 海 相景君銘 ) . For other examples, see Lishi， 9.i8b~i9a (“Tangyiling Fei Feng bei” 堂 邑 令 費 鳳 碑 ) ;10.18b (“Liangzhou cishi Wei Yuanpi bei” 涼 州刺史魏元玉碑)；11.13a (“Ylzhou taishou Gao Yi bei” 益 州 太 守 高 頭 碑 ). 206. Brown, Thepolitics ofmourning in early China、96-100. Nylan (**Confucian piety and individualism in Han China/’ 15-16，19) also describes the “Han craze” for extending filial piety beyond the parents and rulers and the criticism that craze engendered, watering down actual filial piety to ones parents. It was being applied to numerous kinds of pacronclient relations, from the relationship between landlord and tenant to the relationship between recommending official and his recommended recruit, (cont.)

Over the course of the Han there was also a great upsurge in patron-client relations via the increasing power of regional families, a power that was not confined to blood relationships. As Lewis {The early Chinese empires^ 119) has described it: “[The networks of the great families] emerged from a graded series of links that began with the household proper, were extended to other households that shared a common ancestor, then to retainers (ke)%then to neighbors from the same or nearby villages, and finally to people from across the region or distant families linked by study or political service.” One can envision spreading networks that began with kinship ties but expanded beyond them to cover districts, commanderies and whole regions, in turn weakening the centralized rule of an imperial lineage by the middle of the Eastern Han. Powerful families increasingly flexed their muscles through opulent weddings and ceremonies on one hand and through vengeance and vendettas against other families on the other. The stelae themselves provide evidence of this increased local networking, both in terms of their content and in terms of who sponsored them. As Brown {The politics o f mourning in early China, 119-25) has analyzed at length, these inscriptions are less likely to highlight dynastic honors and more likely to dwell upon che local good their dedicatees brought about. 207. For a full discussion on how the conception of filial piety (including mourning rites) changed over the course of the Han, see Nylan, “Confucian piety and individualism in Han China.， ’ 208. SongbenJinshilu, 352 (“Han Danyang taishou Guo Min bei” 漢丹場 太守 郭旻碑). 209. Praised in two adjacent Songs canon poems, Nanzhong and Shaohu were Zhou military officials who had successfully pacified outlying areas on behalf of the king. There is some dispute as to whether they were contemporaneous with one another, as Gao "Wen’s discussion of this line (314) details. See Mao Shi zhengyi, 573 (“Jiang Han” 江漢)， 576 (“Changwu” 常武). no. Yi and Zhen are two of the twenty-eight lunar mansions, together representing the state of Chu, an earlier name for the region to which Heng Fang is here being sent. For a discussion of how lunar mansions became matched with states at least by the middle of the Han, see Sun and Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during the Han、106. 211. This poem laments the pain and toil suffered by one’s mother and how her sons were not worthy of her devotion. It is in che Pei 北P decade of the Songs canon, which this inscription renders as Bei 背. See Mao Shi zhengyi, 301 (“Kaifeng” 孰 風 ). 212. Like “Soothing wind， ” this poem (also cited in the chancellor of Pingdus stele above) laments the toil that parents suffer when raising children, and in self­ condemnation, the poet complains about how government duties kept him away from tending to his mother and father, who are now dead. The inscription renders 莪 as 儀. See Mao Shi zhengyi, 459 (“Liao’e” 蓼莪). 213. Hanbeijishi' 307-23 (“Heng Fang bei” 衡 方 碑 )_ 214. Xianyu Huang left office as a “prefect” {ling 令)，his salary thus between six hundred and a thousand shi 石，but returned to office as an “associate” (shu 屬) in the Bureau of the West, his salary falling to two hundred shi、 215. Ye Guolang, Shhcue litany34—36. He also notes chat a change of emperor can shake up the ranks, a fact also evinced by stelae. 216. For the edicts establishing mourning leave, see Hou Hanshu、$.226 and 7.299; for che edicts rescinding them, see Hou Hanshu、5.234 and 7.304. For arguments surrounding the An edict, see also Hou Hanshu, 39.1307 and 46.1560-62.

217. Hou Hanshu、7.302. 218. For Xun Shuang, see Hou Hanshu, 62.2051-52; for Xu Gan, see Jian *an qiztji, 319-20 ( Yiwen” 逸文) . Actually Xun Shuang is wrong about the “filial and incorrupt” recommendation system resulting from Han’s adoption of the fire phase, because the former dates back to at least Dong Zhongshus era, whereas the latter didn’t take place until the first century bce. For a good discussion on how filiality and the

Filial piety

canon in particular became dogma during the Han, see Nylan, Confucian piety and individualism in Han China,” 1-5, 8-11. 219. Loewe, “丁he operation of the government:/，317. 2.20. For the edict, see Hanshuy8.250-51, with more details at Hou Hanshu 46.1560； for the bamboo slips, see Fan Zhijun, “Cong chutu Han jian kan shubian lizu ji fuyaoyizhe de sangli， ” 97-98. 221. Li Zhenhong, Juyan Han jia n yu Han dai shehuiy 15-16. For examples of low officials taking leave because of the deaths of their mothers, fathers, elder brothers, or sons as preserved in the Yinwan strips, see Zhang Xiancheng and Zhou Qunli, Yinwan Han mujiandu jiaoli, 34-35. 222. For example, Xunzijijie , 366-72 (“Lilun” 禮 論 ). 223. For example, Xunzi jijie , 378 (“Lilun” 禮 論 )_ According to the Baihutong [Baihutong shuzheng, 567 [“Zongmiao” 宗廟])，the filial son at the sacrificial shrine imitates che living in order to serve the dead and respects the dead as if he were serving the living. The stele of Li Yi’s consort {Lishi, 12.17a [“Li Yi furen bei” 李翔夫人碑])， similarly states that they spread out the sacrifice and mimicked the activities of the living. Also stressing continuity, James L. Watson (KThe structure of Chinese funerary rites,H9), when describing Chinese funerary rites in general wrote that death does not terminate relationships of reciprocity and that “all rituals associated with death are performed as if there were a continued relationship between the living and the dead.” 224. Wu, The art o fthe Yellow Springs, 20-34; Rawson, Ancient Chinay 203-4. Some Han afterlife residences even included stables, wells, and toilets. 225. For examples, see Baihutong shuzheng, 556 (“Benghong” 崩養)；Wu Yue chunqiu jijiao huikao, 152 (“Gou Jian yinmou waizhuan” 勾 踐陰謀 外傳 )_ 226. Liu Weipeng and Li Zhaoyang, “Xianyang yaodian chutu de Dong Han zhu shu taoping,,>86-87. 227. Ikeda On, £ 108.2771 (and 2774 for explanation of variant), and Taipingyulany531.2411 (“Shenzhu” 神主)• The latter cites the Wujingyaoyi 五經要義 and Wujing tongyi 五 經 通 義 ，both of which are Liang commentaries. 9. Hou Hanshu, zhi 9.3199. Regarding the chamber of rest, Loewe (“Imperial tombs,” 219) suggests, “Qjn may perhaps be explained as signifying the place where the emperors body lay, or slept* in the interval between the preliminary rites and the interment, lasting perhaps for a hundred days.” Like the name tablet, here the clothing and accessories became another means of defining the outline of the ancestor. For the Western Han emperors, that clothing might make monthly trips between the private chamber and the ancestral shrine and, while in transit, would be revered as the emperor himself. (See Shiji, 99.2725.) In the Eastern Han, with its increased focus on the cemetery, other texts describe how ‘clothing and sacrificial vessels are taken to the Chamber of Long Nightu (衣裳 f i 簋 就 長 夜 室 )• See Jiao shi Yilin, 7 (“Kun: sui” 坤 I 隨) . For clothing standing in for the deceased during the Period of Disunion, see Bokenkamp, Ancestors and anxiety, 68-70. 10. Cai zhonglangji, 1.19b (“Fen qian shibei” 填 前 石 碑 ). 11. Translations include symbol, figure, representation, image, shape, emblem, imitation, depiction, appearance, picture, typus, simulacrum, analogue, and counterpart, among others. 12. Wechsler, Offerings o fjade and silk, 33. ‘ 13. Yu, The reading o fimagery in the Chinesepoetic tradition、40. • 14. Sharf, Coming to terms with Chinese Buddhism, 149. 15. This list of tangible locators that position the selfafter death is not exhaustive and could include, for example, the five types of mourning clothing worn by the survivors, each type of clothing (and the length of time it was worn) indicating the level of the livings relationship with the dead. I do not include it here simply because I am focusing on permanent (or at least long-lasting) locators rather than occasioned and temporary ones, {com.)

Both received literature and archaeological evidence attest to the presence of this clothing system in the Han, the latter in the form of a diagram excavated at Mawangdui. In Ancestral memory in early China (87—88)，I suggested (as others had before me) that the inconsistencies between the received descriptions and diagram might be explained because the system had to be readjusted to accommodate the premature death of this particular man. Lai Guolong (“The diagram of the mourning system of Mawangdui,” 63’ 98) convincingly argues that, while the Yili description and diagram are not the same, the latter is more generic (although still an adaptation of the former) and had not been modified to fit this particular man’s death. For example, unlike the funerary banner it was found among other documents that did not directly reference the occupant of the tomb. 16. L ijijijie 、764 (“Neize” 内則). 17. Zhouli zhengyiy 26.1034 (“Meishi” 媒 氏 ). * 18. Zhongguojiandu jicbeng 12: 8. 19. Da D ai liji jiegu, 161-62 (“Qiancheng” 千乘). ^o. For a summary of the census statistics and the various problems associated with compiling them, see Loewe, “The structure and practice of government,M483-85. 21. Wei Liaozi quanyi, 106 (“Bingling” 兵令) .The same treatise argues chat generals who deserted their positions should in fact have their names “removed from the records” qij i 去其籍）in addition to being executed, having their family graves exposed, and their children pressed into servitude. Such steps ensured complete eradication of personal identity. See Wei Liaozi quanyi, 72 (“Zhongxingling” 重 刑 令) . For the formal checking of names in the army each summer in the idealized bureaucracy of the Zhouli, see Zhouli zhengyi, 55.2311 (“Dasima” 大 司 馬 ). 22. Guo, “Concepts of death and the afterlife reflected in newly discovered tomb objects from Han China,” 95—104. 23. Shiji, 8.344；Hanshu, 1.3. 24. Shiji, 56.2053，103.2763. 25. Hanshu, 68.2950. 26. Lianyungang shi bowuguan, “Jiangsu Donghai xian Yinwan Han mu qun fajue jianbao, 20； Liu Hongshi, “Ye， ” 139-43；Zhang Xiancheng and Zhou Qunli, Yinwan Han mu jiandu jia o li、 125. It is unclear just why this undelivered card from the tomb occupant was stored in the tomb. Note that the personal and courtesy names are here not based on the relative ranks of giver and recipient but merely on the giver generally being humble and the recipient generally being honored. • 27. Baihutong shuzheng, 414 (“Xingming” 姓名 ). 28. Simin yueling jiaozhu, 1 (“Zhengyue” 正 月 )，j i (“Shiyiyue” 十一月)，74 (“Shieryue” 十二月). 2Cf. Changsha Dongpailou Donghan jiandu, 111, 30. From the Durkheimian perspective, it might be argued that the divine force of the family~whether ancestor or totemic principle— was really the family transfigured outside of itself and imagined in the tangible form of such “sacred things.” The family ritually gathered around its concrete symbols as a rallying point, and while in reality it was the act of periodic gathering that made it survive and flourish, chat survival and flourishing was attributed to the symbols around which it gathered, which in our case would consist of these ancestral tablet sets, shrines, and sacrifices. Durkheim {The elementary forms of religious life’ 230) explains: KWe can understand now how it happens that the totemic principle and, more generally, how any religious force comes to be external to the things

in which it resides: because the idea of it is not at all constructed from the impressions the thing makes directly on our senses and minds. Religious force is none other than the feeling that the collectivity inspires in its members, but projected outside the minds that experience them, and objectified. To become objectified, it fixes on a thing that thereby becomes sacred; any object can play this role.” Durkheim gives us an intriguing possible relationship between a lineage and its ritual objects that warrants investigation with the available evidence. It behooves us to test out his hypothesis by examining how the objects of ancestral veneration enhance the cohesion of the collectivity, the integrity of the relationship net. 31. For a recent discussion on shrine calculations, see McNeal, Conquer and govern, 116-22. 32. Shenjian、556 (“Shishi” 時事). 33. Kong con^zijiaoshi, 298 (“RuRi” 儒服). 34. Shiji, 106.2834; Hanshu, 7.230，8.245, 8.269. For a modern synopsis on the administration of the Western Han imperial shrines, see Jiao Nanfeng and Ma Yongyings articles “Xi Han zongmiao chuyi” and “Xi Han zongmiao zaiyi.” Wearing mourning clothing for five days seems to have been a standard expression oflimited mourning, as we will see again in the introduction to Part V, when for example the empress dowager wears mourning clothing for five days after the death of the imperial tutor. 35. Zhuangzi jtshU 805 (“Gengsang Chu” 庚 桑 楚 )• His point is simply that one must recognize how rightness shifts with circumstance. There is an exceptionally large Hah model of a manor house in the mingqi 明器 tradition, excavated in 1981 in Henan province, the roof of which can be removed to reveal its various rooms. One of these rooms could perhaps be interpreted as the ancestral shrine, given its raised location behind the courtyard with two sets of stairs leading up to it and the fact that inside it a number of (perhaps) offering vessels are lined up on one side and a half dozen kneeling or crouching musicians are lined up on the other. See Mysteries ofancient China^ 203-5; Zhang Yong, “Huaiyang caihui taoyuanluo de niandai wenti,” 63-7. This three-dimensional depiction of a chamber devoted to ancestral sacrifice might be contrasted with a rwo-dimensional depiction of a stand-alone ancestral shrine (or so it is usually interpreted) in a stone relief at Yinan; see Shandong sheng Yinan Han mu bowuguan, Shandong Yinan Han mu huaxiangshiy 18-19. 36. For examples, see Simin yuelingjiaozhu, 19 (“Eryue” 二 月 ） ，49 (“Liuyue” 六月)， 60 (“Bayue” 八月） ，74 (“Shieryue” 十二月） . 37. L ijijijie ，343 (“'Wangzhi” 王制)； Kongzijiayu, 87 (“Miaozhi” 扇制)• 38. For examples, see Hou HanjU 14.286,15.303. 39. Mao Shi zhengyi、614 (“Bigong” 閟宮). 40. The nature of the “various examinations” is uncertain. Earlier the inscription states this prerequisite as 經 通 一 藝 , 雜 試 通 利 . The term yi 藝 instead ofjin g 經 for “classic” is attested elsewhere. For example, see Hanshuy73.3123, 41. Hanbeijishiy 168 (“Yi Ying bei” 乙琪碑)；Qin Han beishu, 204—5 ("Lu xiang Yi Ying qing zhi baishi zushi bei” 魯 相 乙 琪 請 置 百 石 卒 史 碑 ) . The term zong 宗，here rendered as “trunk lineage,” could also be translated as “ancestor,” referring directly to Confucius alone. This inscription is an example of how Eastern Han stelae sometimes record a local request made for an official sacrificial site and then document how that request climbed up the bureaucratic ladder to Luoyang and then descended it to become translated into local action. t

42. For these examples, see Mengzi zhengyi, 852 (“Gaozi” 告子 )；Chunqiu Zuozhuan ⑷“，998 (Xiang 襄 13); and Huainan hongliejijie 、312 (“Zhushu” 主 術 ) . See also the role of “overseer of agreements” (siyue 司約）in the Zhouli (Zhouli zhengyi, 2847 [“Qiuguan” 秋 官 ])’ in which the major affairs of stare— those governing the spirits, the people, the territory, and so forth— were theoretically inscribed on ancestral vessels. 43* For examples, see Shiji, 130.3296, 130.3319; Hanshu, 1.81，16.527，16.528, 62.2716; Hou Hanshuy 10.438，zhi 7.3170；Sanguo zhi, 5.163. Their storage in stone chambers and metal coffers may have been to prevent damage from fire, a constant danger in wooden shrines. It has been speculated that, in ancient Greece, temples served as archives because they provided divine protection; see Thomas, Literacy and orality in ancient Greece, 142. 44. Branner, “Phonology in the Chinese script and its relationship to early Chinese literacy， ”m. 45*See Mao Shi zhengyi, 614 (“Bigong” 問宮)， and Chunqiu Guliangjin^zhuan buzhu, 362 (Wen 2 文)，respectively. 46. Baihutong shuzheng, 576 (“Zongmiao” 宗廟). 47 *Lunhengjiaoshi、703-4 (“Luanlong” 亂龍)_ Employing paronomastic logic, Wang Chong here equates zhu 主 ，the “tablet,” with zhu 主 （ variably zhu 注)，“to concentrate” or “to channel•” 48. Zhonglun，579 (“Wangguo” 亡國). 49. Fengsu tongyijiaoshiy 172-73 (“Shifan” 十反). 50. For examples, see the early commentaries to Chunqiu Gongyangzhuan zhushu, 2266 (Wen 文 2) or Chunqiu Guliangzhuan zhushu} 2404 (Wen 文 2). 51. Lishiy 16.5b (“Silao shenzuo shenzuoji,> 四 老神坐 神 祚 机 ) . For juan 圈，Ban Gu and others have yuan 園. Hong Gua in his commentary discusses the various variations on all four names. 52- On the four hoary-headed ones, see Shiji, 55.2044-47；Hanshu, 40.2033-36, 72.3056. 53. Han Wei Nanbei chao muzhi huibian, 3. 54. Wu Hung (The art o fthe Yellow Springs，64—68) describes a “spirit seat” [lingzuo 靈 坐 or shenwei 位) as an assemblage of artifacts surrounding an empty space where the spirit sits, possibly to receive his or her sacrifices, as is evident in the burial plans of many excavated tombs. In the examples above, the “spirit seat” in these texts instead seems to indicate the tablet at the shrine. It could in fact be a generic term for both situations, both being placeholders for the spirit. 55-Takashima, “Literacy to the south and the east of Anyang， ， ’ 166-67. He argues that words such as bin 賓 （ “to treat a spirit as a guest”）and zuo 坐 （ “to seat a spirit in situ 35 in a shrine”) refer to the positioning of tablets relative to one another and that these positions were sometimes changed for particular sacrifices. 56. For a fuller description and discussion of the prescriptive and descriptive sources, see Brashier, Ancestral memory in early China, $5-66. 57_ Hou Hanshu, 61.2029-30；Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 523 (Wen 文 2), 1568 (Ding 定 8); Brashier, Ancestral memory in early China, 165-69. 58. Falkenhausen, Chinese society in the age o fConfucius, 48. 59. Li Feng, “Literacy and the social contexts of writing in the Western Zhou,” 292, 300 *Falkenhausen has likewise highlighted how inscription proclamations may have been addressed to kings rather than to ancestors, as we had once thought. See Falkenhausen,

“The royal audience and its reflections in Western Zhou bronze inscriptions,M243; his article as a whole well demonstrates how bronzes were a nexus of ties among kings and court visitors, patrons and beneficiaries, the living and their dead, as well as the inscribers and their future readers. 60. Sena, “Arraying the ancestors in ancient China， ” 79. See also Constance Cook (“Ancestor worship during the Eastern Zhou,,> 261) who similarly concludes that in such inscriptions “we see that ancestor worship involved the relationship of the human subjects (rulers, awardees, daughters) set within an ancestral hierarchy consisting of an un-named or legendary founder ancestor, former rulers, or deceased parents. The musical entertainment and ritual dramas performed by the descendants during the di ceremony to the ancestors reinforced the traditional corporate identity, a group of allied lineage branches or lineages with shared political and cultural goals often linked to a locale (zu 族).” 61. Jay, Throughoutyour generationsforever, 36. 62. Liang Han jinshiji， iz.ib (“Han gu Gucheng chang Dangyin ling Zhang jun biaosong” 漢 故 穀 城 長 蕩 陰 令 張 君 表 頌 )■ 63. Rawson, Mysteries o fAncient China, 261-62. 64. Falkenhausen, Chinese society in the age o fConjuciuSy 302; Cook, “Ancestor worship during the Eastern Zhou,” 252-54. 65. To give credit where credit is due, my undergraduates suggested this possibility. 66. See, for example, Shiji，30.1433. 6 j. So, “The waning of the Bronze Age,” 326. 68. ShijU 10.433. 69. Hanbeijishi, 182 (“Liqi bei” 禮 器 碑 ). 70. See Zong Ming’an，Handai wenzi kaoshiyu xinshang， 168-70, and Li Jianguang, “Jiangsu sheng Hanjiang xian wenguanhui shouzang de yijian jinian tong xunlu， ” 69， respectively. ji. Xinyu jiaozhu, 102 (“Zizhi” 資質). 72. Huainan hongliejijie , 59-60 (“Chuzhen” 椒 眞 ） . 73. Shiji, 28.1385. 74. Shiji, 12.464-65, 476; 28.1392. For an Eastern Han imperial case of recovering a bronze and taking it to the ancestral shrine, see Hou H anji、9.177. 75. Shuoyuanjiaozhengy270-71 (“Shanshuo” 善説 j6 . For an example of a Han memorial that uses Shijing references to ritual vessels, see Shiju 12.464-65. 77. For what little we know about Kong Kui— mainly that he was forced to assist in a revolution putting Duke Zhuang 莊 in charge of Wei, after which Kong Kui fled to Song~sec Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu., 1694-1700 (Ai 哀 15 and 16). 78. Some Han writers argued that the Spring and Autumn annals also taught how one should “select a person’s strong points and discard the weak, record his small goodnesses but throw out his major faults” （ 選 人 所 長 ，棄 其 所 短 ，綠 其 小 善 ，除 其 大 過 )；see Hou Hanshu,

41.1405. See also L ijijijie y1228 (“Jiyi” 祭義).■

Boyer {Religion explained，210) writes that it is typical to be selective when remembering details about the dead: wThe dead remain as ancestors, but most features of their personal histories are lost. As anthropologist Meyer Fortes put it: ‘What must be particularly stressed is that ancestors behave in exactly the same ways, in the ways expected of them

and permitted to them in the ancestral cult, quite irrespective of what their lifetime characters might have been.’ ” Here the “Jitong” would concur when it states that “the intent of inscriptions is to declare their good points, not their bad.” 79 -L ijijijie ，1250-52 (uJitongw祭 統 ). 8o. Lunheng jiaoshi、 850—51 (“Xusong” 須頌) . Elsewhere in the same essay (855), he similarly lamented the lack of Han stone inscriptions like that of the First Emperor of Qin. Bi. Simin yuelingjiaozhu, 1 (“Zhengyue” 正 月). 82. For examples in the Songs canon in which a full sacrifice, with a fully present family, is described, see Mao Shi zhengyi、408 (“Changdi” 常棟 ),411 (“Famu” 我 未 ) ，481 (“Kuibian” 頦弁). 83. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zbuy 1487 (Zhao 昭 27). Elsewhere the Zuozhuan (Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 861 [Cheng 成 13]) contends that the two greatest affairs of state were sacrifice, where the cooked meat was presented, and war, where the fresh meat was received: “Such are the great junctures with the spirits” （ 神 之 大 節 也 ) . For a detailed study on these two roles of the state, see Lewis, Sanctioned violence in early China. 84. Guanzijiaozhu, 413 (“Xiaokuang” 小匡） . 85. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 1378 (Zhao 昭 16). Some commentaries contend that people of the same surname attend the ancestral feast, whereas those of different surnames enjoy the meat distributed after the feast. See Hou Hanshu, 44.1496 (commentary). 86. Guanzijiaozhu, 678 (“Chimi” 移 靡 ). 87. Mengzi zhengyi, 834 (“Gaozi” 告 子)■ • 88. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 427 (Xi 僖 24). For a few details on the ceremony of sharing the meat, see L ijijijie , 954 (“Shaoyi” 少儀). 89. Shiji, 5.205. 90. Shiji 56.2052. 91. Shiji 56.2052. 92. Taixuanjizhuy72 (“Qin” 親). 93. In his Xinlun' Huan Tan derived these rwo lists from what was offered Confucius in sacrifice once the sage became treated as a spiritual entity. See Taiping yulan, 3822 (“Yinshi” 飲 食 ). 94 - Yantielun jiaozhu, 351 (“Sanbuzu” 散 不 足 ) . The same source .elsewhere (309 [KXiaoyangM孝養]) laments how unfilial sons provide so little for their parents that the only time they see meat is at the liik sacrifice. For an anecdote arguing that sacrificial meat and alcohol should be kept separate from ordinary banqueting, see Lieniizhuan jinzhujinyu 23-32 (“Lu Ji Jing Jiang” 魯 季 敬 姜 ). 95* Taipingyulan，3835 (“Yinshi” 飲 食 )，quoting Huan Tan^ Xinlun. 96. Hou Hanshuy 90.2979-80. 97. Laozi Xianger zhujiaojian, 34. 98. Traditionally, Sanglin was where Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty, offered, his own body in sacrifice to end a multiyear drought. 99. Zhejiangdaxue cangZhanguo Chujian, 161 (“Chunqiu Zuo shi zhuan” 春秋左氏 傳)；Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu, 977-78 (Xiang 襄 io); Cook, “Ancestor worship during the Eastern Zhou,” 264-65. 100. Wu Yue chunqiu jijia o huikao, 171 (“Goujian fa Wu waizhuan” 勾 踐伐吳 外傳 ). 101. Hanbeijishi, 62 (“Jing jun bei” 景 君 碑 );Lishi、6.9b (“Beihai xiang Jing jun ming” 北海 相 景 君銘 ) . For “lineage,” see Gao Wen’s reading on p. 66 of Hanbeijishi.

102. Dongguan H anji jiaozhu，164 (“Jiaosizhi” 郊 犯志) . See also Hanshu， 5.137, and

Hou Hanshu, zhi 9.3196, where the commentary cites a Wang Cang fragment.

103. Cai zhonglang jiy io.2b-3a (“Mingtang yueling lun” 明 堂 月 令論 ) . For a Zhou example from a bronze inscription suggesting that “ecstatic dancing was an important part of paying respects to the descended ancestral spirits,” see Cook, “Moonshine and millet,” 15. 104. Baihutong shuzheng，103-4 (“Diwang liyue” 帝 王 禮樂 )• 105. L ijijijie 、770 (“Neize” 内貝,J). This dance is cited in several other L iji texts. That it was not only an imperial court dance is also suggested by the fact chat Xiang does not figure in the discussions on dances exclusively dedicated to past emperors. See Hanshu, 22.1044; Dongguan H anjijiaozhu, 5.162-67. There is an alternative (although perhaps unlikely) interpretation as to the meaning of Xiangy namely that here it means “elephant.” The Lii shi chunqiu (Lu shi chunqiu jishi, 5.20a—b [“ Guyue” 古樂])， apparently followed by the H uainanzi {Huainan honglie

jijie 、358 [“Qisu” 齊恪]，425 [“Fanlun” 范論])，describes how the Duke of Zhou had to

suppress a Shang revolt, in which the Shang used trained elephants; the duke therefore composed the Sanxiang 三象 or “Three elephants,Hwhich the Huainanzi in a parallel passage seems to truncate co just Xiang or “Elephants.” It is possible that Xiang and Sanxiang were different performances or that the Lii shi chunqiu has followed or created its own explanation for the title. Regardless, it is clear that the Baihutong (et al.) does not take this interpretation, instead explaining the title to mean ^imagining/schematizing the grand peace” ( 象 太 平 As m ost other titles for early royal perform ance pieces are vague_ “Martiality,” “Great melody,” “Nine harmonies,5> and so forth— the more generalized meaning of “Schemata” would seem in order. io^. Cook, “Ancestor worship during the Eastern Zhou,” i 6j. 107. Here I am following Yan Shigu， s gloss on zhi ♦!]，that it is “one’s own creation” ( 自制作也). 108. Hanshu，22.1044; Baihutong shuzheng，100-104 (“Liyue” 禮 樂 ） ■See also Hanshu、 5.137-38, 8.243，75.3156-57; H anji 17.2.98. Emperor Ming’s brother Liu Cang 劉 蒼 （ d. 83 ce) in 59 c e contended that the “A bundant virtue dance” had been assigned to Em peror

W en and not Em peror W u, saying nothing about a dance for the latter; see Hou H anji、 9.170. 109. Cook

(“Yue ji

， 樂記一 Record of music,” 44-45) summarizes Kong Yingdas

explanation o f the line “ T h e natures

[qin^[

o f R itual and M usic are united, thus

enlightened kings follow each other in them” as follows: “Thus successive rulers would be expected to generally follow the examples of ritual order and the employment of music of their ancestors, yet with enough leeway to vary the specifics according to the needs of

their time. Indeed, it will be seen later that successive rulers were expected to make their own contributions in the naming and creations of musical compositions that would bear the distinctive mark of their reign.” The “Musical records” may be specifically relevant to the Han emperors’ hymn series that began with “Martial virtue” because it details the “Martial” dance about King Wus conquest of the last Shang tyrant. no. Hanshu’ 22.1044. See also Dongguan H anjijiaozhu, 164-66 (“Jiaosizhi” 郊才巳志). The First Emperor of Qin is said to have changed an old Zhou dance into his “Five phases dance” {Wuxingum 五行 舞 )，and this dance was later performed at the Han imperial

shrines. The Han did not change the title of this Qin-nam ed dance, suggesting that it

didn’t see itself as radically separate from the Qin. For a Han prescriptive text contending that each dynasty be responsible for its own music, see Baihutong shuzheng, 100 (“Liyue” 禮 樂 ). in ,

Songshu, 19.545. The commentator is U u Hong 劉 宏 （d. 458 ce).

112. For the communal nature of the Eastern Han shrines and their effect on dance performances, see Dongguan H anji、 i6$-66 (“Jiaosizhi” 郊 祀志 )；Hou H anji, 9.170. According to Baihutongshuzheng, 103 (“Liyue” 禮樂)， the various performances dedicated to the early Zhou rulers were also grouped together under the name Dawu 大 武 . There were other musical performances created for offering food sacrifices in the ancestral hall, and Songsbu, 19.538, lists the names of a large number of songs, many personally composed by Emperor Zhang. 113. Li Xueqin, uXi Han wanqi zongmiao bianqing kaoshi， ” 24-26. Li Xueqin notes that the “Sishi” 四 時 need not be the “four seasons” but could be the four times o f day or

the four periods of agricultural activity. While possible, these alternatives seem less likely when this dance is grouped with another called the “Five Phases.” While these stones refer to Western Han emperors through Emperor Xuan (meaning that they must date after 48 bce), I am uncertain why it is assumed they are Western Han. In the Eastern Han, Gaozu

continued to be worshiped with the ^Martial virtue” dance, and the stones refer only to his shrine. The other Western Han emperors (who are referenced only by name in these stones) were jointly worshiped there. Conversely, we don’t know whether the communal Gaozu shrine received homage outside of Luoyang in the Eastern Han. 114. Li Jianguang, “Jiangsu sheng Hanjiang xian wenguanhui shoucang de yijian jijian cong xunlu,” 69. 115. The Monthly ordinances thus demonstrates there was indeed a distinction between sacrifices at the ancestral shrine and sacrifices at the graves. The former offering was more corporate in nature一 a sacrifice to the lineage ancestry as a whole— whereas the latter was more individualized to each particular ancestor at his or her graveside. Such was also the case on the imperial level. See, for example, Hou Hanshu, zhi 9.3197, in which the imperial ancestors all received cheir sacrifices in two com m unal shrines, except for

emperors who had died young, who only received grave sacrifices. 116. Zhang Heng began his “Poetic exposition on the grave mound” {Zhongfu 冢 賦）with the couplet, “Through geomancy and measured steps, the lay of the land is the subject of observation” （ 載 與 載 步 ，地 勢 是 觀 )；see Zhang Heng shiwen jijiaozhut 253-The Xiaojing (Xiaojingyizhu, 86 [“Sangqin” 喪親]) also commanded the filial son to divine his parents’ burial place, and sometimes stelae (e.g., Lishi、 10.12a [“Anping xiang Sun Gen bei” 安 平 相 ‘ 根 碑 ] ;12.11b [“Q i Bozhu bei” 戚 伯 著 碑 ] )confirm chat divination was carried out, such as by using handfuls of grain. Other inscriptions refer to simultaneous turtle shell and yarrow stalk divinations with differing prognostications, sometimes resulting in the grave sites eventually crumbling into a river. See Shuijingzhu beiluy 425, 429; Quan Shanggu Sandai Qin Han Sanguo Liuchao wen' 1046 (“Quan Hou Hanwen”). Sometimes a site might have been selected using rishu 日書 or “daybooks” ； see Kalinowski, HDivination and astrology,” 350. Other times the site was selected by prodigy, such as in the case of Yuan An (Hou Hanshuy45.1522), who, when searching for a place to bury his father, encountered a mystical scholar who disappeared as soon as he pointed out the proper place. In another case {Sbuijingzhu beilu, 67), a hill was deselected because white snakes and white rabbits were uncovered during the digging.

117. Excavated grave deeds often delineate the plot’s borders, such as one from Hebei dated 182 ce, which states, “Therefore we erected

fengbordcr markers on the four corners

[of the plot]” （ 故 立 四 角 封 界 )■See Ikeda On, KChugoku rekidai boken ryakk6， ” 222. 118. A Henan grave deed dated 171 ce states, “Wb used large stones as borders on the

eastern, western, southern, and northern sides of the field” (田 東 西 南 ;it* ， 以大石爲 界 )• See Ikeda On, “Chiigoku rekidai boken ryakko/' 219. Zhang Heng, in his “Poetic exposition on the grave mound,” records that “a line of stones marked the perimeter of the aitar>>(歹J 石P艮其壇)；see Zhang Heng shiwen jijiaozhu 、 253. Sometimes Li Daoyuan also notes that piles o f stones designated the cem etery borders; see

Shuijingzhu beilu, 194,

In the Han, field borders were sometimes marked with cut stones; see Hanshu、89.3642, and Hanbei quanji 6.2235-37. 119. For examples, see Shuijingzhu beilu 、194, and Zhang Heng shiwen jijiaozhu, 253. 120. For a discussion on the property aspects of the grave plot from the point of view of grave deeds, see Kleeman, “Land contracts and related documents， ” 1-34. 121. Luoyang shi dier wenwu gongzuodui and Yanshi shi wenwu guanli weiyuanhui, “Yanshi Yanlou Donghan beizang muyuan， ， ，74-78. 122. Liu Xixiang3“Xinxiang Fenghuangshan Zhanguo Lianghan mudi yanjiu， ， ’ 46-49. 123. Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu， 1526-27 (Ding 定 i). Commentators speculate the ditches extended outward from Duke Zhao’s tomb to the rest, although if the ditch was a divisive construction, as the ditch between Duke Zhao and the rest would have been, it seems more logical that the ditch was dug around the whole of the cemetery to demarcate the ducal family. Perhaps the caves dug to circle the main burial chamber at places such as Mancheng performed a similar function. 124. Loewe, “Imperial tombs,” 218. 125. Hanshu, 99.4132. 126. For a discussion and examples, see Jiang Xiaochun and Li Dadi, “Sanxia diqu Qin Han shiqi jiazu mu chutan/* For a possible reference to the zhaomu pattern in a stele inscription, see Hong Gua’s commentary in Lishi, 8.13a («*), 129； on portraiture, 307; on recitation examinations, 45

Han FeizU 16， no, 308, 326 heaven: and bloodlines, 126; and bronze vessels, 282; and cosmic order, 156-57,173; and dependence, 239; and distance, 200, 204; and 216, 354; and che earth earth, 119,140，204，

altar, 93; and five-phase cosmology,13^-37; looking up to, 355; and counterpart: 127-32; punishment for opposing, 259；return of to, 113; Western concept of, 152, 208 Heng Fang, 192-93, 335-36，359 、12， 18 on buying and selling of grades, 164; on King Wu, 218; on music, 324; on recitation, 25；on punishment, 256; on surnames, 105,139 134; on abstentions, 325；on age veneration, 173,180；on archiving, 274; on chanting, 33; on distance, 204；on geography, 108; on ritual conformity, 323；on a sacrificial goblet, 281; on the s^e, 129; on scholars, 38; on taboos, 72; on the three-year mourning period, 189; on 327 Huan (Emperor), 193，298

{pei),

qi

Historical documents Historical records {Shiji):

sanzu

Huainanzi,

xiang, $6,

identity, 2-4; of ancestor, 200, 275; of the author, 123；of deceased child, 156; and names, 59，65, 68; of nobles, 105; posthumous, 198, 302，296; and posthumous names, 82，88-89; standardization of, 83; and surnames, 115; twentieth-century discourse on, 261; Western compared with early

Chinese, 211-12, 46211128. Seealso self, the imitation, 16，54,188 infants: abandonment of, 58-59,124; death of, 209，260; naming of, 69-70，91， 154-55； value of’ 153 instructional model, 36-39,180 Jiang Yuan (mother of Houji), 58， 124-25, 229, 239， 273 Jing (Emperor): and dance, 290； and posthumous names, 84; and recitation，36 JingYun, 1—4，57，167; stele of, 317-18, 321,

366-67 land: ancestral, 92-98,102—4; ownership of,

110-14; and surname, 107-8. Seealso return; territory

Laozi: chanting of, 31，48; in education, 20; and reduction, 332；on smiling, 69

Later Han documents {Hou Hanshu)'. on cemetery shrines, 266; on entry into officialdom, 47；on exceptional youths, 11; on excessive mourning, 246; on grade promotions, 164; on mastery of texts, 18，23， 25, 28; on textual devotion, 33—34; on yan

duy35B

Li Daoyuan, 107, 296, 303, 311 lifeline (ascending), 172，205, 207

courtesy name (zi), personal name (ming), posthumous name

literacy, 5-7, 9,18，26 Liu He: as negative example, 41-42, 219,

{shi), surname

old age, 144-46,148-51,172-81; and afterlife,

208. Seealso under veneration

255- 56’ 370

Liu Qing, 242-44, 248 Liu Shao, 530，354-55, 361 Liu Xin, 75，202-3, “lord-father analogy,” 179-80 Lu Jia, 11, 40,112，281

(ming),

personal name 69-77; and calling cards, 269-70; changing of, 90; in contrast to courtesy name, 78-82; example of, 142;

of women, 240-41. Seealso names: types of;

marriage, 3; and age, 235’ 4481190; and counterpart 241; and father-son relationship, 242；proposal of, 214-16; and self-mutilation, 52; as union of lineages, 233, 236-38, 245. Seealso relationship nets: splicing of; women meat, 174-75, 284-86

memory, public. Seepublic memory Mencius: on conversion, 333; on having no children, 254; in hierarchy, 135；mistakes of, 9; on recitation, 40, 42,52 Ming (Emperor), 131-32,143,174，190-91 Mohism, 14，55, 235-37, 289

Monthly ordinances o fthefour classes ofpeople {Siminyueling): on education, 20-21, 22,

25-26, 27; on sacrifice, 121, 248, 271, 273, 284, 292 mourning: for children, 154-55,158；of commoners, 195； criticism of, 14; duties of, 120; for elderly, 207; impact on career, 169, 192-94; proxy in, 234; as a public matter, 317, 358; and society formation, 221; three-year period of, 116，186-95; variation in duration

of, 236. Seealso clothing: mourning music, 287-92; and education, 25; and lineage narratives, and counterpart 127; and recitation, 32; and reduction, 323-24; and remembrance, 263，337—38; and surname

6;

{pei),

pronunciation, 137; and xiang, 266-67 mutual responsibility, 250-52, 257，260，285 myriad things, 119,123,134-37 names, 2-5，58-143， 366-70；and divination, 238; and memory, as a tool to establish relative positions between people, 78-82; as a tool co position the self, 65, 68; trafficking of, 268-72, 315; types of, 65-68; Western compared with Chinese, 141， 366， 402x192; of

67;

women, 240-41; and xiang, 327-29. Seealso

taboo Pindar, 320, 338 Plato, 61, 213-14, 3781176

portraiture, commemorative, 263，266-68，

xiang

305-15; Roman, 46511169；as ，267 posthumous name 3, 82-91; admonishing, 252; archiving of, 274; example of, 142; and tablets, 276; of women, 241. names: types of progenitor, 115-33; as counterpart 200

{shi),

See also

public memory, 2-5, 56， 262；and age, 152； and association, 349-61; its benchmarks, 334-36, 347-48; exit from, 296; and grades, 161; and a Greco-Roman understanding of remembrance, 321; and music, 292；and names, 87, 92，115，123,138,141, 367; and portraiture, 313； and reduction, 333；and stelae, 302; and text, 9，54; and time, 63；in the U.S., 369-70; and the “void” 199-200

68,

qi, 67， 115-18; and 咕e， 144-46; and. ancestor, 140; and death, 111，113; and dependence, 262; and earth altar, 93; and five-phase • cosmology, 134-38; and human personality, 354; malignant, 227—29；and punishment, 259; and sentience, 187 quintessence, 183-84, 296 rank, 3, 262; and alcohol distribution, 284; and ancestral offerings, 247，258; bestowal of,

217, 222; of counterpart {pet)y128; as distinct from grades, 159， 172; inheritance of, 183; and portraiture, 313, 41411267; and women,

403ni00. Seealso grades (jue) reading, 30-31 recitation: in education, 5-57; and conversion, 333， 336-38 reduction, 319, 321-33；and association, 349,

35^; and memory, 363; and xiang, 365

relationship nets, 65-67, 223-231；and ancestral shrines, 274； and Buddhism, 260; and cemeteries, 294-95；dr^ging down on, 250­ 60; and line^e, 115-16; and mourning duty, 192; and posthumous names, 82-91；and property, 406-711146; pulling up on, 245-50； and the self, 180-81, 214’ 220; and souvenirs, 267-68; splicing of, 231-45；and stelae, 302-3; and surnames, 123—24; and taboo observance， 71’ 75-77; territorial, 108 religion, 221；and bureaucracy, 204; and community, 254；in contrast to magic, 41711315; Durkheim, Emile on, 4441142; and land, 40711146; Weber, Max on, 38511163 remembrance: birchleaf pear as object of, 344; of deceased children, 156-58, gradations of, 155，244, 250； and individualism, 2; inscribers role in, 345； intangible tools of, 317-65; of lineage progenitor, 104; name as tool of, 71，82-84，89; of nonkin, 191; role

206;

in manuscript culture, 6; role of xiang in, 266-67; tangible tools of, 4’ 267-316, 359-61; territory and, 96, 98-99; of women, 241， 243-44 return: to fulfill mourning obligations, 190；as m e a n i n g ( “a place to return”)，111, 223-25， 239, 261, 295; in old ^e , 112-13， 工 73 reverence: and 坪e， 153，174；and the birchleaf pear, 344; and distance, 203, 326; in meaning of “lineage shrine,” role of music in, 324; and cablet positioning, 201; through substitution, 224; toward women, 243.

l4^>

266;

See

also veneration ritual: and cosmology, 134-36; to cut off lineage, 256; inscription and death, 114; and gender, 43；and kinship, 230-31; marriage, 214-15; and mourning, 187-88，222; and net splicing, 236; and reduction, 322-26, 331—33, 365; and the self, 4, 68, 212, 216-18; shift in, 278-79；three roots of, 118; of tombstones,

319； and Wang Mang, 19. Seealso mourning Ritual records {Liji): on age, 174; on ancestral

95-96;

tablets, on the body, 220; on bronze vessels, 282-84, 298, 369； on burial, 182, 242; on chanting, 23; on commoners conducting sacrifice, 273; on courtesy names, 77-78, 81; on death ritual, 221; on disfiguration, 253；on the earth altar, 93；on filial respect, 178, 246­ 47; on individual agency, 216-18; on Ji Zha,

113; justification of ceremony, 205; on leaving， 103; on lineage ritual, 230; list of socially locative parameters, 3；on marri^e, 236, 238-39; “Meaning of sacrifices,” no； on meat distribution, 160; on name taboo, 72，74; on naming, 69-70, 268; on posthumous names, 83-84; on preservation of remnant line^es, 97; on reverence, 203；on ritual as corrective, 323-24, 326; on sacrifice to Houji, 128-129; on sentience, 187; on souvenirs, 314; on study, 180；use of in association, 89；on Wang Yi, 156 )：on the body, 220；on crime and punishment, 259; on name trafficki'ng, 269；on counterpart 127; on recitation, on the three roots of ritual, 118

Ritual records o fDai the elder {Da Dai lijt ipei),

22;

sacrifice: and abstentions, 324—25； collective, 200；counter to norm, 277; and disfigurement, 253; and the earth altar, 93­ 103; and five phases, 134; frequency of, 202—3, ；and imitation, 196, 43711223; ineffective, 113；and lineage exclusivity, 117-21; location of, 273; and marriage, 233，235-38; as means of generating tangible ties across generations, 279；and meat, 285-87; and counterpart 127-32; and place of return, 225; prolonging of, 75; to recent ancestors, 185-86; and status of sacrificer, 199, tangibility of, 232 self, the, 2-4; and age, 144，152; Buddhism, and collective memory, 349; definition of, 179-81; diminishment of, 216-19 and kinship, 209-10, 213; knot-like, 246, 263, 302, 365, 368, 4441142; and. names, 65-9,123-24,141; posthumous, 88，301-2; and recitation, 48; transformation of, 40-47; Western notions of compared with early Chinese, 70，212—13; and 315 Shao, Earl of, 342-44, 372 shrines: and accumulation of written texts, 7， 274, 315；and art, 311; cemetery, 303—4; and children, 155; collapse of, 295; construction and maintenance of, 181; location of, 273; and music, 324; and naming, 70，76; and pictorial depiction, 342-44；request for closure of, 119; and ritual, 200-3, 216-18，238; service to, 223， 229, 253； and territory, 93-97,103-4; and

202

{pei),

250;

z6o;

，221i

i6 iy

xiang,

tools of remembrance, 272-92； and xiang, 266

Sima Qian: on association, 356; biography of Zheng Dangshi, 79-80; on che birth of Houji, 59; castration of, 254-55; and chanting, 23，31; on Confucian disciples, 361; on Confucius, 310; as exemplar of literary expression, 355; on Han Xin, 258, 357-58; on manuscript culture, 53-54; on meat distribution, 285-86; on the mutual responsibility system, 250; on the prescriptive ritual canon, 223; on shared burials, 241; on taboo violation, 75-76; and travel, 27; treatise on che Xiongnu people, 173; virtue list of, 352-53

sicuacedness, 393-9^3; concerning age, 146-50； concerning individualism, 210-14, 442m4; concerning remembering the dead, 318-21, 362; concerning souvenirs, 264-67; concerning time, 60-65; and names, 366 allusion to, 89, 229, 341-42; “Bigong” (Hie remote temple), 128-29; cited, 139; “The birchleaf pear,” 343, 372; and bronze vessels, 284; burning of, 54; and ’ ， discussion of, 174; “The immaculate shrine， 181, 289；and inscription, 356—37，345—46; memorization and recitation of, 370；music, 323; quoted, 50，52, 247, 351-52; “Hie remote temple,” 273; “Shengmin” (Birth of our people),.58,124,125,127, 229, 239; storage of, 52；used to justify joint burial, 242; “Xiawu” (Descendants continue in the footsteps), 126-27. education： role of texts in spirits: as agents of physical diminishment, 145； cut off from lineages, 256-57；dependence of, 224-26, 229，275; and distance, 203; driving away, 225；encounter with, 310；exorcism of, 197; receiving sacrifice, 117-18,120；rights

Songs canon.,

See also

of to labeled food, 299； of the Sanglin

Spring and autumn annals ofWu and Yue, 94, 355

Stratagems o fthe Warring States {Zhanguoce), 22，37, 78 surname 3，92—115; and borderland peoples, 287; and calling cards, 270; denoting geographic origins, 262, 367; and five-phase cosmology, 136-40; and genealogy, 123-24;

{xirtg),

and marriage, 230, 240. Seealso names: types of tablets, 275-78; attendant of, 350；and death, 186; and names, 271-72; positioning of, 200-203, 315; and the self, 263, 268; as “spirit seat,H457nj4； and territoriality, 95-96, 294, 40811165; of women, 241; and xiang, 266 raboo, 3，65, 69-77，91; and. change of name,

66,

170; in presence of emperor, 79； and qi continuity, 116; and the Xiongnu, 106 Tairen (mother of King Wen), 227，229， 360， 362 Taisi (mother of King Wu), 227, 229, 360 territory: and ancestral worship, 93—96,179; and remembrance, 67; and surnames, 92， 106,139 time: between death and burial, 182; bifurcated, 139; and chronology, 120-22, 3971120; cyclic, 35)5-961116; disjointed, 157; and five phases, 101; and memory, 161; and portraiture, 307; and remembrance region, 98; sacred, 325, 395-961116] Western notions of compared with Chinese, 60-65,141，395n l4

tomb mound, ascent of. Seeascent of the grave mound veneration: of age, 160,172-74,178-80，370;

tools of, 166. Seealso reverence

performance, 288; shaming of, 238; taking

shape, 125; value of the selfrelative to, 218-19 splicing, of relationship nets. See under relationship nets

Spring andAutumn annals: cited, 277; on the earth altar at Bo, 93； mastering of, 21，23，274, 339; and names, 65, 74; “reading out” 31;

(du),

on sacrifice, 119；use ofxiang in, 328 Spring and autumn annals ofMr. Lu (Lii shi chunqiu): on the body, 220, 253; on instructional models, 37; on music, 324; on nomadic peoples, 173；and pattern unity, 134; on standardization of sacrificial vessels, 325

vessels (bronze), 278-84，315；and stone stelae, 297-98

Wang Chong: on the Analects^ 20；on ascent of the grave mound, 252；on calamity and punishment, 259-60；and conversion, 333，347，3^2., 364; criticism of portraiture, 308-9, 312-13；on death and the body, in; on distance, 204; on dynastic labels, 104; on the education of his contemporaries, 47; on figurines, 330; on grades 159；on his own education, 27, 43; on names and the five phases, 137-38; on posthumous names, 84-85,

(jue),

87; on recitation, 36; and ritual vessels, 284; on scholars and texts, 8-9, 21，29, 40-41, 52；

on tablets, 275 Wang Fu, 105,117,138-40

Wang Mang: bestowal of posthumous name, 87; and cemeteries, 294; codifications of, 19-20, 27; compositions of, 46-47; and earth

altars, 93; and the Filialpiety canon, 130; and mourning, 190，234; and pattern unity, 134; and promotions, 247-48; and remembrance regions, 98-99,102； and sacrifices, 225; and

sanzu punishment, 258-59 Wen (Emperor): and ban of bronze vessels, 280; final testament of, 189； and mourning, 189， 194; and posthumous names, 87；and punishment, 257; shrine of, 96 Wen (king): as counterpart to the Lords on High, 130,132；maligning of, 259; image of, 310 on

White Tiger HaU. discussion (Baihutong):

counterpart {pei), 128-29； on courtesy names, 77-78; on dance, 289；on double bows, 270­ 71; on the earth altar, 93-95；on exclusion

from sacrifices, 253； on infants, 69； on name usage, 80; on posthumous names, 85; on rank, 247; on the self, 217-19；on surnames,

137; on tablets, 275; on tabooes,74； on the “threefold dispensation” (santong)1101; on

xiang, 166; on yin and yang, 239-40

women, 226-45; and education,12; and loss of name, 367; and portraiture, 313-14; and caboo observance, 75-76. marriage

See also

writing: in contrast with speaking, 37-38; in education, 5-9，27，44-45；and lengthyverbatim recall, 49; and longevity, 53； of hexagrams, 345; of names, 268; in recordkeeping, 6

Wu (Emperor): and association, 350， 352； and bronze vessels, 281; and dance, 291; name of, 88，170; and portraiture, 309; remembrance of, 75; sacrificial sequence of, 130; shrine of, 96; and study, 45，54; on the Xiongnu, 173 Wu (king): as “Crown prince who carries out,” 218; dance dedicated to, 289; enfeoffment of lineages by, 97， 99,102; illness of, 224-25; maligning of, 259; sacrificial feast to mark victory of, 349-50

26,

xiang (“schema”), 263, 266-67; aJid ancestral shrine, 275; and figurines, 4711151; as imago,

363; and music, 288-89, 337; and portraiture, 305, 307-8; as preservation of ties between self and others, 315-16; and reduction, 321-22, 326-33，365 Xianyu Huang, stele of, 167一72， 206， 301-2, 360-62, 369 Xu Gan, 44,188，194, 275 Xuan (Emperor)： and the 20; bestowal of grades by, and the 19; and name usage, 79；portrait gallery of, 312，314， 359； and portraiture, 309 Xuan (king), 335-36, 339-40 Xunzi: and counterpart 129；on death and mourning, 181-82,188，196, 221; and education, 16-18, 21，52； in hierarchy, 135; on instructional models, 36-37; on recitation, 22, 29， 40; on ritual, 323; on social function of lineage rituals, 230, 254; and xiang, 329

i68,

canon,

i6o-6vy

Analects^ Filialpiety

{pet),

yang, 93; and calamity, 259; counterpart to, 130-31; and discontinuity of the living and the dead, 196; and marriage, 240; in old age, 145; Spring as height of, 100 Yang Xiong: and association, 356-57, 361; and conversion, 333； on portraiture, 308; on preservation of forms, 332; on veneration of the old, 180 93; and calamity, 259; as complement to earth, 130-31; and discontinuity of the living and the dead, 196; and marriage, 239-40; in old age, 145; and postmortem existence, 197, 332; and tetragram^, 222 Ying Shao: and ascent of grave mound, 252; and dependence vocabulary, 223-24; and pattern unity, 135-36; on posthumous names, 91; on surnames, 105， 139 100， 196，40911187

yin,

yinyangy

Zuo commentary, on archiving, 274; and cemeteries, 294; on chanting, 31—32; on courtesy names, 77; on dance, 289; on disfiguration, 252-53; on the ghost Boyou, 99, 224-251 on invocators, 45; on King Jing, 340; on meat distribution, 285; on proper inscriptions for bronze bells, 336; recitation of, 43；on relationship to land, 109，117; on ritual, 322; on sacrifice, 118-20, 201; on surnames, 105-6，139; on Wang Yi, 156; and

xiang, 328

H a r v a r d -Ye n c h in g I n s t it u t e M o n o g r a p h S eries (titles now in print)

24. Population, Disease, and Land in Early Japan, 645-900、by W illiam Wayne Farris 25.

Shikitei Sanba and the Comic Tradition in Edo Fiction, by Robert W. Leutner

z6.

Washing Silk: The Life and Selected Poetry of Wei Chuang (8^4?-gio), by Robin D. S. Yates

28.

Tang Transformation Texts: A Study of the Buddhist Contribution to the Rise of Vernacular Fiction and Drama in China, by Victor H. Mair

30. Readings in Chinese Literary Thought、by Stephen Owen 31.

Remembering Paradise: Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan, by Peter Nosco

33.

Escape from the Wasteland: Romanticism and Realism in the Fiction o f Mishima Yukio and Oe Kenzaburo, by Susan JollifFe Napier

34. Inside a Service Trade: Studies in Contemporary Chinese Prose’ by Rudolf G. Wagner 35.

The Willow in Autumn: Ryutei Tanehiko, 1/83-1842, by Andrew Lawrence Markus

36.

The Confucian Transformation o f Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology, by Martina Deuchler

37.

The Korean Singer o f Tales, by Marshall R. Pihl

38. PrayingforPower: Buddhism and theFormation ofGentrySociety in Late-Ming China， by Timothy Brook 39.

Word, Image, and Deed in the Life ofSu Shiyby Ronald C. Egan

41. Studies in the Comic Spirit in Modern Japanese Fiction, by Joel R. Cohn 42. 43.

WindAgainst the M ountain: The Crisis o fPolitics and Culture in Thirteenth- Century China, by Richard L. Davis

Powerful Relations: Kinship, Status, and the State in Sung China (960-1279),

by

Beverly Bossier 44. Limited Views: Essays on Ideas and Letters, by Qian Zhongshu; selected and trans­ lated by Ronald Egan 45.

Sugar and Society in China: Peasants, Technology, and the World Market, by Sucheta Mazumdar

49. PreciousVolum.es:AnlntroductiontoChineseSectarianScripturesjromtheSixteenthand Seventeenth Centuriesby Daniel L. Overmyer 50. Poetry and Painting in Song China: The Subtle A rt ofDissent、by Alfreda Murck 51.

Evil andlorlas the Good: Omnicentrism, Intersubjectivity, and Value Paradox in Tiantai Buddhist Thought, by Brook Ziporyn

53. Articulated Ladies: Gender and the Male Community in Early Chinese Texts, by Paul Rouzer

55*

Allegories of Desire: Esoteric Literary Commentaries o f Medieval Japan，by Susan Blakeley Klein

56. Printing for Profit: The Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (uth-iyth Centuries'}、by Lucille Chia 57.

To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China、by Michael J. Puett

58.

Writing and Materiality in China: Essays in Honor of Patrick Hanany edited by Judith T. Zeitiin and Lydia H. Liu *

59.

Rulin waishi and Cultural Transformation in Late Im perial China, by Shang Wei

60. Words Well Put: Visions o f Poetic Competence in the Chinese Tradition、 byGraham Sanders 61. Householders: The Reizei Family in Japanese History, by Steven D. Carter 62. TheDivine Nature ofPower: Chinese R itualArchitecture at the Sacred Site ofjinci, by Tracy Miller 63. Beacon Fire and Shooting Star: The Literary Culture of the Liang (502—557)、by Xiaofei Tian 64. Lost Soul: ^Confucianism*' in Contemporary Chinese Academic Discourse, byJohn Makeham 65.

The Sage Learning of Liu Z hi: Islamic Thought in Confucian Terms, by Sachiko Murata， William C. Chittick, and Tu Weiming

66. Through a Forest o f Chancellors: Fugitive Histories in Liu Yuans Lingyan ge, an Illustrated Bookfrom Seventeenth-Century Suzhou, by Anne Burkus-Chasson 67. Empire of Texts in Motion: Chinese’ Korean, and Taiwanese Transculturations of Japanese Literature^ by Karen Laura Tliornber 68. Empire's Twilight: NortheastAsia Under the Mongols^ by David M. Robinson ^9 * Ancestors, Virgins, and Friars: Christianity as a Local Religion in Late Imperial China, by Eugenio Menegon 70, Manifest in Words, Written on Paper: Producing and Circulating Poetry in Tang Dynasty China，by Christopher M. B. Nugent 71.

The Poetics of Sovereignty: On Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty、by Jack W. Chen

72- Ancestral Memory in Early China, by K. E. Brashier 73,

Dividing the Realm in Order to Govern: The Spatial Organization o fthe Song State} by Ruth Mostern

74.

The Dynamics o fMasters Literature: Early Chinese Thoughtfrom Confucius to Han Feizi、by Wiebke Denecke

75-

Songs of Contentment and Transgression: Discharged Officials and Literati Communities in Sixteenth-Century North China, by Tian Yuan Tan 76. Ten Thousand Scrolls: Reading and Writing in the Poetics o fHuang Tingjian and the Late Northern Song, by Yugen Wang

77.

A Northern Alternative: Xue Xuan (138^-1464) and the Hedong School, by Khee

Heong Koh 78. VisionaryJourneys: Travel Writingsfrom Early Medieval and Nineteenth-Century China, by Xiaofei Tian 79. Making Personas: Transnational Film Stardom in Modern Japan, by Hideaki Fujiki 80. Strange Eventful Histories: Identity, Performance, and Xu Wets Four Cries of a Gibbon, by Shiamin Kwa 81.

Critics and Commentators: The Book of Poems as Classic and Literature, by Bruce Rusk

82. Home and the World: Editing the Glorious M ing in Woodblock-Printed Books ofthe Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’ by Yuming He 83.

Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult ofFemale Fidelity’ by Beverly Bossier

84. Chinese History: A New M anual, by Endymion Wilkinson 85. A 'Comprehensive Manchu-English Dictionary, by Jerry Norman

86.

D rifting among Rivers and Lakes: Southern Song Dynasty Poetry and the Problem of

Literary History、by Michael Fuller 87. M artial Spectacles ofthe M ing Court, by David M. Robinson 88. Modern Archaics: Continuity and Innovation in the Chinese Lyric Tradition, ipoo明 7，by Shengqing Wu 89. Cherishing Antiquity: The Cultural Construction ofan Ancient Chinese Kingdom, by Olivia Milburn 90. The Burden ofFemale Talent: The Poet Li Qingzhao and Her History in China、by Ronald Egan 91. Public Memory in Early China3by K. E. Brashier