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The Cosmo-political Background of Heaven's Mandate

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

David W. Pankenier
David W. Pankenier*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern Foreign Languages, Lehigh University, Bethlehem PA 18015
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Abstract

A preoccupation with cosmology and the correlation of celestial events with terrestrial activity dates back to the very beginnings of Chinese civilization. The existence of such a mindset is shown by archeo-logical discoveries from the Neolithic as well as the early Bronze Age. The belief in heaven-dwelling high gods like Shang Di and Tian also had antecedents in the pre-Shang period. In addition, analysis of scientifically verifiable accounts of planetary massings from the second millennium B.C. suggests that important cosmological and astrological notions took shape much earlier than previously thought. On the basis of this evidence it now appears likely that such conceptions are intimately connected both with influential later beliefs about a Mandate of Heaven, which asserted heavenly intervention as the cause of change in temporal governance, and with later Five Elements speculative schemes, which claimed to discern a preordained phenomenological pattern in the dynastic succession. The cosmicization of experience in the archaic period to which the evidence points and the vehement reassertion of Heaven's Mandate by the Zhou dynasty founders together confirm the epoch-making historical role of the Shang-Zhou transition in decisively reaffirming “patterning oneself in Heaven's image” (xiang tian 象天) as the fundamental metaphor in Chinese political legitimation.

對宇宙論的重視和把天命與人間事件相繋聯的傾向可以追溯到中國文明的早期.這種思想傾向的存在已爲新石器時代及靑銅器時代早期的考古發現所證實.對象״上帝״和״天״這種居住於天堂的神的信仰在商代以前就已存在.先民在公元前兩千年至一千年間已對一系列星聚現象作過觀測並加以記載,其中不少已爲現代科學所證實. 通過對這些記載所做的分析表明, 宇宙論和星占學之主要概念形成的時間比過去專家所假定的要早得多.基於這個事實,這些概念似乎與後來一些非常有影響的有關天命論和五行交替理論的信仰有密切的關係.天命論主張上天的干預是世俗統治改朝換代的原因, 而較晚的五行交替理論則聲稱能夠辨識王朝更替的某種冥中已定的現象模式.已爲事實所證明的中國古代用宇宙現象解釋人世經驗和周代統治者對天命論的不遺餘力的重申均進一歩證實了; 商周兩代王權的更替在强化中國古代政治立法中以״象天״爲其基本的比喩象徵中所起到的劃時代的歷史作用.

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Articles
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Early China , Volume 20 , 1995 , pp. 121 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1995

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References

1. Shiji 史記, “Tian guan shu” 天官書 (rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959)Google ScholarPubMed, 27.1342. All subsequent references to the standard histories are to this series.

2. That this was true to a significant degree at a much earlier date is shown by the orientation of graves and the doorways of dwellings as early as the fifth millennium B.C. The consistent pattern of cardinal orientation of graves among certain Neolithic cultures along the middle and lower course of the Yellow River as well as the lower course of the Yangtze River shows clearly that these peoples had already formed a concept of East and West based on the location of sunrise and sunset and had devised a method of determining the cardinal, and in some cases, intercardinal directions. Research has also shown that the entrances of early Yangshao 仰韶 dwellings at Banpo 半坡 were deliberately oriented toward the location of the mid-afternoon winter sun when at its warmest a month or so after the solstice. Some minority peoples of southwest China to this day call the month corresponding to this time “House-building month” (gaifangyue 蓋房月); see Yang, Lu and Wangping, Shao 召望平,“Kaogu yicunzhongsuofanyingdeshiqiantianwenzhishi” 考古遺存中所反映的史前天文知試, Zhongguo gudüi tianwen wenwu lunji中國古代天文文物論集 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1989), 1–16Google Scholar. Retrospective computation shows the asterism corresponding to the sun's location at this time in 4, 000 B.C. was that known as Yingshi 營室 “Lay out the Hall” in Warring States and Han times. Some centuries earlier it was also referred to as Ding 定 in the Odes (#50 定之方中)where this same structural planning function is alluded to: “When (the constellation) Ding was on the meridian, he started work on the Ch'u Palace; when he had measured it by the sun, he started work on the Ch'u Hall”; see Karlgren, Bernhard, The Book of Odes (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), 33Google Scholar.

3. This was also the view of Xu Fuguan 徐復觀; “We need only think of the astronomical achievements of ancient Babylon for it to seem not the least surprising that in the age of Tang 唐 and Yu 虞 there had already accumulated a certain knowledge of the order of the heavens, and that in government there were specific individuals who handed this knowledge down so that it was not affected by dynastic change, in that way being preserved for posterity”; see Xu, , Yin yang wu xing guannian zhi yanbian ji ruogan youguan wenxian de chengli shidai yu jieshi de wenti 陰陽五行觀念之演變及若干有關文獻的成立時代與解釋的問題 (Taipei: Minzhu pinglunshe, 1961), 14Google Scholar. For a recent, comprehensive account of the cross-fertilization between astronomy and government in ancient China, see Xiaoyuan, Jiang 江曉原, Tian xue zhen yuan 天學眞原 (Shenyang: Liaoning jiaoyu, 1991)Google Scholar. For the cosmization of the institution of kingship, see Berger, Peter L., The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1990), 36Google Scholar and notes 44-45 below.

4. Despite the ambiguity of the term “Heaven” as a translation for Chinese tian “sky; day; trascendent deity,” and despite the non-Chinese theological baggage assodated with it, for practical reasons I am disinclined to attempt an idiosyncratic substitute for the well-established “Heaven's Mandate.” The context will, I hope, enable the informed reader to find his or her bearings among the range of historical meanings of the term tian, from archaic sky divinity to anthropomorphized interventionist sky god to abstract cosmic power, over the span of time encompassed by this essay.

5. The phrase “the five planets gathered in one lodge” (wu xing ju yu yi she 五星聚于一舍) generally used to denote a massing of planets (see e.g., Shiji, “Tian guan shu” 27.1312) should be understood to refer to a clustering of planets within a span of at most 15° in longitude. The Mawangdui ms. “Prognostications of the Five Planets” (Wu xing zhan 五星占)clearly implies this by describing Venus's ca. 15° of retrograde motion as “travel in the opposite direction for one lodge” (fan xing yi (fan xing yi she 反行一舍); see Zezong, Xi 席澤宗, “Mawangdui boshu zhong de ‘Wu xing zhan’” 馬王堆帛書中的《五星占》, in Zhongguogudai tianwen wenwu lunji, 49Google Scholar. In contrast, Yi-Long, Huang 黃一農 (“A Study of Five-Planet Conjunctions in Chinese History,” Early China 15 [1990], 97)Google Scholar simply assumes a definition of 30° for yi she and then proceeds to generate an impressive number of supposedly qualifying planetary events. On this basis he then questions the rarity and purported significance of observable planetary massings. When the narrower 15° definition is applied instead, however, only four of twenty-four planetary clusters from the first two millennia B.C. computed by Huang are actually found to qualify, for an average of one every 500 years. In fact, the spectacular massings of 1953 and 1059 B.C. were much denser, spanning less than 4° and 7°, respectively.

6. See Pankenier, David W., “Astronomical Dates in Shang and Western Zhou,” Early China 7 (1981–1982), 2–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Mozi and the Dates of Xia, Shang, and Zhou: A Research Note,” Early China 9-10 (1983–1985), 175–183Google Scholar; Ban Dawei 班大爲 (David W. Pankenier), “Sandai de tianwen guanchahe wuxing jiaoti Hlun de qiyuan” 三代的天文観察和五行交替理論的起源 Yinxu bowuyuan yuankan 殷墟博物苑苑刊 1 (1989), 183–188,Google Scholar; Dawei, Ban, “Tianming he wu xing jiaoti lilun zhong de zhanxingxue qiyuan” 天命和五行交替理論中的占星學起源 (Astrological Origins of Heaven's Mandate and Five Elements Theory), in Allan, Sarah ∓ Tao, Wang ed.,中國古代陰陽五行說探源與思維模式 Yin Yang, Wuxing and Correlative Modes of Thought in Early China (Nanjing: Jiang-su guji chubanshe, 1996)Google Scholar.

7. For evidence that they were certainly looking, see Weir, John D., The Venus Tablets of Ammizaduga (Istanbul: Nederlands Historisch-Archaeologisch Instituut, 1972)Google Scholar, for historical analysis and dating of a cuneiform text which preserves a two-decade long sequence of precise observations of the planet Venus from the first half of the second millennium B.C.

8. A parallel account in Mozi 墨子, “Fei gong xia” 非攻下 chapter expands on this: chi wu xian guijiang Zhou zhi cji she yue, tian ming Zhou Wen Wang fa Yin you guo 赤烏銜珪降周之岐社曰天命周文王伐殷有國 “a scarlet crow clasping a jade scepter in its beak descended on the Zhou altar to the soil at Mt. Qi saying, ‘Heaven commands King Wen of Zhou to attack Yin and take possession of the State’” The location lunar mansion “Room” (Scorpio) assigned to the planetary massing in the Bamboo Annals is a demonstrably late interpolation into the text, after the damaged bamboo slips on which the chronicle was written were recovered from a looted tomb in 281 A.D. and painstakingly reconstructed by scholars at the court of Emperor Wu of Jin 晉武帝. The planetary massing of 1059 B.C. actually occurred in Cancer just west of the Vermilion Bird asterism (see Fig. 2). The reasons for the interpolation of the erroneous location Scorpio are discussed in Pankenier, , “Astronomical Dates,” 7–8Google Scholar, and in further detail in “The Bamboo Annals Revisited: Problems of Method in Using the Chronicle as a Source for the Chronology of Early Zhou, Part 1” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 55.2 (1992), 279ffGoogle Scholar; see also n. 20 below.

9. See Youzeng, Zhu 朱右曾, Zhou shu jixun jiaoshi 逸周書集訓校釋 (Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1940)Google Scholar, 3.31. This dating of the eclipse was independently proposed both in China and the U.S. in 1981; see Changhao, Li 李昌顯 ed., Zhongguo tianwenxue shi 中國天文學史 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1981), 21Google Scholar; and Pankenier, , “Astronomical Dates,” 7Google Scholar. Another significant astronomical observation dating from this period is the probable record of a cometary apparition at the time of the Zhou Conquest. An earlier study by Zhang Yuzhe 張钰哲 identifying this as Comet Halley and dating the apparition of the comet to 1057 B.C. has been used by several Chinese scholars to date the Zhou Conquest to that year. Subsequent more rigorous analysis of Comet Halley's orbit correcting for gravitational perturbations using all recorded Chinese positional observations later showed Zhang Yuzhe's result to be in error by some two years. Comet Halley actually appeared in late 1059 B.C., some seven to eight months after the planetary massing the previous May announced the transfer of the Mandate of Heaven to King Wen. See Zhang Yuzhe, “Halei huixing de guidao yan-bian de qushi he ta de gudai lishiw 哈雷彗星的軌道演變的趨勢和它的古代歷史, Tianwen xuebao 天文學報 19.1 (1978), 109–118Google Scholar; and esp. Yeomans, Donald K. & Kiang, Tao 江澳, ”The long-term motion of comet Halley,” Mon. Not R. astr. Soc. 197 (1981), 633–646Google Scholar; also Pankenier, David W., “Early Chinese Astronomy and Cosmology: The Mandate of Heaven as Epiphany” (Ph.D. diss.: Stanford University, 1983), 185 ffGoogle Scholar.

10. The Yi Zhou shu and the Bamboo Annals both consistently indicate that King Wen died in his fiftieth year of rule, nine years after receiving the mandate and nine years after the planetary portent; see David W. Pankenier, 'The Bamboo Annals Revisited: Problems of Method in Using the Chronicle as a Source for the Chronology of Early Zhou, Part 2: The Congruent Mandate Chronology in Yi Zhou shu,” Bulletin of the Schooi of Oriental & African Studies 55.3 (1992), 498–510CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. Close scrutiny of the planet Jupiter's behavior the next previous campaign season shows that after steadily advancing eastward since summer, in late 1048 Jupiter suddenly ceased its forward motion toward the Bird Star a Hya, reversed direction, and began to retreat. This presumably unexpected development explains why the first Zhou campaign was called off at the last minute after the armies had already reached the Yellow River ford at Mengjin盟津.According to the Zhou benji 周本言己 account, it was at this point, after the Zhou allies had declared the time to be right (“all said, [Shang] Zhou can be attacked” [jie yue Zhou ke fa ye 皆曰糸寸可伐也]), that King Wu announced to his anxious comrades-in-arms “you do not know Heaven's Mandate, it may not yet be done” ru wei zhi tian ming, wei ke 汝未知天命י未可 and retreated from Mengjin to the Zhou homeland in the Wei Valley; see Pankenier, , “Astronomical Dates,” 15–16Google Scholar. Relating to this aborted campaign is a passage from the lost Zhou text Liu Tao 六韜 which is preserved in Wang Yi's王逸commentary on the Tian wen 天問 lines “On the morning of the first day we took our oath. How did we all arrive in time? When the geese came flocking together, who was it made them gather? (cf. Hawkes, David tr., Ch'u tz'u: The Songs of the South, an Ancient Chinese Anthology [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959]Google Scholar); Chuci buzhu 楚辭補注 (Sibu beiyao ed.), 3.19a. The answer to the first questions, clearly, appears to be ”they followed what was happening in the sky!“ For more light as shed by Liu Tao on the circumstances of the aborted campaign, see Pankenier, ”Astyronomical Dates,” 30, n. 79.

12. For tianxian and tianwei, see below n. 47. Here it is worth pointing to such statements in early sections of Shangshu 尙書 such as “Da gao “大詰 chapter, ”Heaven brightly manifests its awesome majesty and supports our very great foundation” (tian ming wei bi wo pi pi ji 天明畏(威)弼我基); “Duo fang” 多方,” Heaven then searched in your numerous regions and greatly shook you by its severity; it would spare those who had regard for Heaven, but in your numerous regions there were none who were able to have regard for it” (tian wei qiu er duo fang, da dong y i wei, kaijue gu tian, wei er duo fang wang kan xian 天惟求爾多方大動以威開厥顧天, 惟爾多 方罔堪顧之) “Duo shi” 多士, “Their successor in our time (i.e., Di Xin) greatly lacked a clear manifestation in Heaven … He had no consideration for Heaven's manifestations, nor for what the people revere” (zai jin hou si wang dan wang gu yu tian … wang gu yu tian xian min zhi 在今後嗣王誕罔顯于天…罔顧于天顯民祗); cf. n. 65 below. That the early texts should refer only obliquely to the phenomena is not, in itself, remarkable. A similar reticence has been observed by John S. Justeson in classic Mayan texts: “[A]s Maya astronomy concerned the behavior of the sky gods, ‘deities whose activities vitally influenced human affairs’ … astronomical correlates of historical events have begun to be recognized in the essentially historical narratives. Classic texts almost never mention these correlates; seldom do they make any explicit astrological statements, referring instead to associated human events. As in the interpretation of structure alignments, these unstated correlates must be inferred from distinctive patterns and demonstrated by statistical argumentation”; see “Ancient Maya Ethno-astronomy: An Overview of Hieroglyphic Sources,” in World Archaeoastronomy, ed. Aveni, A.F. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 76Google Scholar. Justeson also discusses (p. 104) how particular celestial events (e.g., stationary episodes of Jupiter and Saturn) were used to schedule human affairs “ostensibly as sacred mandates for elite decision-making,” and concludes (p. 115): “So the features that may correlate with specific astronomical events generally are not reflected by direct textual statements; if their presence is marked at all, it is in accompanying scenes,”

13. See, for example, the account of the future Duke Wen of Jin, Chong Er's 重耳, restoration in “Jinyu” 晉語 chapter of Guoyu (Sibu beiyao ed.), 10.11a-12a, where prognostication based on the passage of precisely one twelve-year Jupiter cycle plays a crucial role, perhaps as a reflex of the Zhou Conquest precedent.

14. See Pankenier, “Mozi and the Dates of Xia, Shang, and Zhou.”

15. This was identified by the late Zhou astrologer Shi Shen石申as lunar mansion Yingshi; see Jinshu 晉書, “Tianwen zhi” 天文志, 11.301 where Shi Shen's pre-Han astrological nomenclature is preserved.

16. See Pankenier, “Mozi and the Dates of Xia, Shang, and Zhou”; also Weitzel, R.B., “Clusters of Five Planets,” Popular Astronomy 53 (04, 1945), 159–161Google Scholar.

17. In criticizing the use of planetary conjunctions in chronological studies Huang Yi-Long opts to treat such events in isolation, virtually ignoring the plethora of historical and chronological evidence adduced in verifying the recorded observations. Instead Huang offers his own unexamined assumption that later textual accounts, if not wholly correct, must be entirely spurious. Hence, even though the densest massing of the planets in nearly a thousand years in either direction demonstrably occurred in 1059 B.C., because the actual planetary event occurred in Cancer rather than in Scorpio as most later textual sources state, Huang concludes the whole report of the observation must be dismissed as a late invention. Even though he admits the recorded date in Han shu of Liu Bang's much less impressive “mandate” conjunction in 205 B.C. was manipulated for political reasons, Huang finds it impossible to imagine that an authentic account of the 1059 event could have been similarly adapted to conform with Han period Five Elements speculations. Huang dismisses the fact that the true location of the 1059 event in the beak of the Vermilion Bird asterism is implicated in the authentically pre-Qin account in Mozi and disregards that the relative chronology of the Bamboo Annals for the period can be shown to yield the true date, if one simply recognizes the location “Fang” for what it is —a late interpolation arising from Han portentological revisionism (for which, see n. 20 below). To reduce a corroborating chronological datum to its simplest terms: if one merely adds 8 years to the 509-year span separating the two planetary events as recorded in the Bamboo Annals to account for the true location of the Zhou event in Cancer rather than Scorpio, one arrives at the figure 517 years (i.e., Bamboo Annals 1580-1071=509; 509+8=517), precisely the period separating the actual astronomical events to which I called attention (i.e., 1576-1059=517). Given the scholarly consensus that the Zhou Conquest occurred in the mid-eJeventh century, there is no possiblity here of picking and choosing among a variety of less impressive planetary phenomena as Huang implies in his misrepresentation of the situation. Xiaoyuan, Jiang (Tian xue zhen yuan, 115, 242)Google Scholar, simply follows Huang Yi-Long in rejecting the authenticity of the early records of planetary massings without examining the historical evidence. Both Jiang and Huang ignore the record of the bingzi lunar eclipse in King Wen's thirty-fifth year recorded in Yi Zhoushu, “Xiao-kai” chapter mentioned above; see Huang, , “Five-Planet Conjunctions,” 96–112Google Scholar.

18. For the Shang evidence, see Keightley, David N., “Akatsuka Kiyoshi and the Culture of Early China; A Study in Historical Method,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.1 (1982), 272, 296CrossRefGoogle Scholar, where Keightley concludes: “ … I believe that Akatsuka is correct in discerning a tension, finally resolved in Western Chou in favor of Ti (or T'ien), between the worship of an impartial Ti and the worship of the partial ancestors … and in suggesting that Shang Ti did not restrict his assistance to only the Yin court... so that one may indeed conceive of a ‘Mandate of Ti’ precursor to the Chou ‘Mandate of Heaven,’ which could inflict such disasters as crop failures and enemy attacks on the Shang.…”

19. In his Chinese Thought, Society, and Science (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1991), 123Google Scholar, Derk Bodde notes that Joseph Needham “points out that conjunctions of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars recur every 516.33 years, which, he thinks, could be the basis for Mencius's belief'; see Needham, , Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 408.Google Scholar Actually, Needham was merely following Herbert Chatley in this matter (see Pankenier, ”Astronomical Dates,” 24), but it is worth noting here that, although neither Bodde nor Needham makes this plain, the only way the Zhou Chinese could have surmised the existence of a 517-year period would be if both the 1576 and 1059 B.C. planetary massings had been observed and recorded in a chronicle such as the Bamboo Annals, from which their relative chronological relationship could later be deduced. I know of no record of the potentially observable but less impressive dus-tering of all five planets in the same 517-year series which occurred in November/ December of 543 B.C. (when Confucius was presumably a youngster). The next in the cycle, in April of 26 B.C., was observed and recorded in Hanshu, but as a conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars only (see Hanshu, 3.1310), since, unlike the three previous occasions, Mercury and Venus remained at some distance.

20. A particularly striking example which bears repeating here is the account of King Wen's receipt of the Mandate found in Huan Tan's 桓譚 (d, A.D. 28) Xin lun 新論 (quotedin Taipingyulan 太平御覽, 84.5b):

其後有鳳凰銜書於郊。文王曰殷帝無道, 虐亂天下。皇命已移, 不得復久。乃作鳳凰之歌曰翼翼翔翔驚凰兮銜書來遊以命昌兮膽天案圖殷將亡兮蒼蒼皓天始有萌兮五神連精合謀房兮

…afterward there was a Phoenix in the suburbs that grasped a ‘Writing’ in its beak. King Wen said, ‘The Yin Lord does not act according to the Way, [he] tyrannizes and disorders all under Heaven. The August Mandate has already shifted, [he] will not persist for long/ Thereupon King Wen composed the ‘Song of the Phoenix/ which goes:

The Phoenix soars [down] on spreading wings; Clasping a ‘Writing’ it comes gamboling, thereby to command Chang (i.e., King Wen).

I gazed up at Heaven and examined the Diagram; Yin is about to expire [it portended].

Great Heaven is azure, azure; First there (sc. in the heavens) was a presage (lit. ‘sprouting’).

The linked essences of the Five Spirits (i.e., the planets in Han usage) met in (lunar mansion) Fang (Scorpio) to deliberate.

Although obviously composed at a late date, around the time the planetary massing was being assigned to lunar mansion Fang 房, there is no mistaking the identities of the Five Essences. The element associated with Zhou was first changed from “Fire” to “Wood” during the Han dynasty as a consequence of debates about the element by whose virtue Han ruled; hence from the apocrypha of mid-Han date on the location of the Zhou conjunction began to be reported as “Fang”; see, for example, in Wen xuan 文選 (59.28), the gloss on the line “the three humane [officials] deserted the [Shang] state and the five luminosities entered Fang” (san ren cju guo wu yao ru fang 三仁去國五曜入房);

《春秋元命苞》曰; 殷紂之時五星聚房。房者蒼神之精, 周據而興

Chunqiu yuan ming bao says; ‘In the time of Zhou of Yin the five planets gathered in Fang. Fang is the essence of the azure spirit, based on it the Zhou arose/ In addition, specific allusion to the curious behavior of the planets during the transition from Xia to Shang can also be found among the astronomical portents cited in the voluminous official correspondence surrounding the abdication of the last Han Emperor Xiandi 獻帝 in favor of Cao Pi 曹丕 in A.D. 220; see San guo zhi 三國志, 2.74, where wu wei cuo xing 五緯錯行 is listed as a portent of the transfer of the Han mandate to the new dynasty. For mention of the Five Essences in Yilin 易林 in connection with Heaven's Mandate, see Jiegang, Gu 顧額岡, “Zhouyi gua yao ci zhong de gushi” 周易卦爻辭中的故事, in Gu shi bian 古史辨, vol. 3 (rpt., Taipei, n.d.), 27, 34Google Scholar.

21. For the planetary massing of 205 B.C.E. in Gemini/Cancer that was taken as a sign of the transfer of the mandate to Han, see Shiji, 27.1348 and 89.2581, and also Han-shu, 26.1301 and 36.1964.

22. HuHouxuan 胡厚宣, “Yindaizhitianshenchongbai”殷代的天神崇拜, 卅guxue Shang shi luncong (chuji, shang) 甲骨學商史論叢 (初集上), 1-29.

23. See Jiegang, Gu, “Wude zhongshi shuo xia de zhengzhi he lishi” 五德終始說下的政治和歷史, in Gu shi bian, vol. 5, 425Google Scholar.

24. For some of the methodological issues involved, see Barnard, Noel, “Astronomical Data from Ancient Chinese Records: The Requirements of Historical Research Methodology,” East Asian History 6 (Memorial Volume for Prof. CP. Fitzgerald; 12, 1993), 47–74, esp. 69–72Google Scholar; also Barnard, “A Discussant's Thoughts,” prepared for the AAS panel “Astrology and Chronology in Shang and Zhou,” April 8, 1995.

25. Above (n. 2) I cited the example of an acute awareness of directionality in the orientation of burials and houses. For further discussion, see Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilisation in China, Vol 2, History of Scientific Thought, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 261Google Scholar; also Fuguan, Xu, “Yin yang wu xing guannian,” 12Google Scholar: “Everywhere in ancient times conspicuous terrestrial phenomena were employed to speak of heavenly phenomena. The functions of water and fire are different, but they are two things whose uses are also mutually implicated. Appropriation of the two in astronomy to speak about analogous heavenly phenomena is probably very ancient.”

26. Zhu Kezhen 竺可楨 demonstrated early on that the disparate sizes of the celestial palaces exactly matches the duration of the corresponding seasons, so that the division of the heavens into palaces would have closely followed the identification of the seasons; see “Ershiba xiu qiyuan zhi shidai yu didian” 二十八宿起源之時代與地點, Sixiang yu shidai yuekan 思想與時代月刊 34 (1944), 12Google Scholar. On the Fire Calendar, huoli 火曆, and use of the Fire Star, dahuo 大火 (α Sco), as a fundamental seasonal benchmark in Shang and earlier times, see Pu, Pang 龐樸,“Huoli chu tan” 火曆初談, Shehui kexue zhanxian 社會科學戰線 1978.4, 131–137Google Scholar; Ecsedy, I.et al., “Antares Year in Ancient China,” in World Archaeoastronomy, 183–186Google Scholar; and Shi, Feng 據時, “Yinli sui shou yanjiu” 殷曆歲首硏究, Kaogu xuebao 考古學報 1990.1, 19–42, esp, 28ffGoogle Scholar; and “Zhong-guo zaoqi xingxiangtu yanjiu” 中國早期星象圖硏究, Ziran kexueshi yanjiu 自然拳史硏究 9.2 (1990), 109ffGoogle Scholar; and “Henan Puyang Xishuipo 45 hao mu de tianwenxue yan-jiu” 河南濮陽西水坡45號墓的天文學硏究, Wenwu 文物19903, 55.

27. The regulation colors are also mentioned individually in the chapters “Jiao te sheng” 郊特牲 and “Ming tang wei” 明堂位, however, the most complete statement is found in Liji, “Tan gong shang”植公上; see Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 (rpt. Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, nd), 6.12Google Scholar.

28. Yu, Su 森輿, Chunqiu fanlu yi zheng 春秋繁露義證 “San dai gaizhi zhi wen” 三代改制賈文 (rpt. Taipei: Heluo tushu chubanshe, 1974), 7.10bGoogle Scholar. In yet another strong confirmation of Zhou traditions concerning the Shang, Qiu Xigui 裘錫圭 has demonstrated the accuracy of the traditional attribution to the Shang of a preference for the color white in ritual contexts; see ”Cong Yinxu jiagu buci kan Yin ren dui bai ma de zhongshi“ 從殷墟甲骨卜辭看殷人對白馬的重視, Yinxu bowuyuan yuankan 1 (1989), 70–72Google Scholar. More recently, Li Ling 李零 reached a similar conclusion: ”The Five Elements are one category of divinatory techniques whose connection with astronomy is most intimate“; see ”Shitu yu Zhongguo gudai de yuzhou moshi” 式圖與中國古代的宇宙模式, Part 1, Jiuzhon xuekan 九州學刊 4.1 (1991), 22Google Scholar.

29. The possiblity of an astronomical origin for the Five Elements was alluded to some time ago by Xu Fuguan, who nevertheless held that there was no direct connection between archaic astrological notions and the later Five Elements theory; see Xu, Yin yang wu xing guannian, 12.

30. In the now famous Puyang burials, which appear to be of shamans or religious figures of high social status, the archetypal figures of a tiger and a dragon were carefully laid out using shells and placed, with cosmological accuracy, to the west and east of the corpse, the latter being oriented along the north-south axis. For a recent assessment of the find, see Keightley, David N., “Chinese Religions — The State of the Field, Part I, Neolithic and Shang Periods,” Journal of Asian Studies 54.1 (02 1995), 130Google Scholar. For a speculative study of the find's purported astronomical significance, see Shi, Feng, “Henan Puyang Xishuipo 45 hao mu de tianwenxue yanjiu,” 52–60, 69Google Scholar; and especially his “Zhongguo zaoqi xingxiangtu yanjiu,” 108-118. Equally astonishing, from a cos-mological point of view, was the discovery of the jade model of a turtle with inscribed plaque found together in 1987 in a neolithic tomb dating from 2, 500 B.C.E. at Hanshan Lingjiatan 含山家灘 in Anhui; see Jiujin, Chen 陳久金and Jingguo, Zhang 張敬國, “Hanshan chutu yupian tuxing shikao” 含山出土玉片圖形試考, 1989.4, 1417Google Scholar. This remarkable find confirms the turtle's archaic role as a sacred simulacrum of the cosmos, for which see Allan, Sarah, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991)Google Scholar. The rectangular jade plaque found sandwiched between the upper and lower shells of the turtle bears an incised design that resemblés nothing so much as a compass rose (which, needless to say, it is not). This clearly suggests a very early conceptualization of the world as a center from which influence radiates outward toward the eight cardinal and intercardinal directions. For a detailed discussion tying this graphic representation to subsequent cosmological conceptions and artifacts, see Xueqin, Li 李學勤, “A Neolithic Jade Plaque and Ancient Chinese Cosmology,” National Palace Museum Bulletin 故宮通訊英文雙月干 27.5-6 (11/Dec 1992-Jan/Feb 1993), 1–8Google Scholar. Feng Shi has also studied the stone altars of the Hongshan 紅山 culture dating from 3, 000 B.C., concluding that they were used for sacrifices to a sky god and/or heavenly bodies such as the sun and moon; see “Hongshan wenhua san huan shi tan de tianwenxue yanjiu” 紅山文化三環石壇的天文學硏究, Beifang wenwu 北方文物 33.1 (1993), 9–17Google Scholar, and Changwu, Tian 田昌五, “On the Legends of Yao, Shun, and Yu and the Origins of Chinese Civilization,” in Chinese Studies in Philosophy 193 (1988), 21–68Google Scholar.

31. For documentation of Xia contacts with other peoples, see Louisa Fitzgerald-Huber's article in this volume.

32. In a recent paper presented to the International Conference on Western Zhou Civilization (Xi'an, July 1993), Lin Yun 林伝 established that the inscription wang you da li, wang pan si fang, wang si yu tian (da) shi, jiang 王有大體י王凡四方, 王祀于天(大)室, 降on the Tian wang gui 天亡墓 from the reign of King Wu refers to a grand fengshan 封襌 sacrifice conducted on Mt. Song by King Wu on his way back from the victory over Shang at Muye. 天室 as a reference to Mt. Song is also found in Zuozhuan 左傳(Zhao 昭 4). The inscription corroborates accounts of the event found in both Yi Zhou shu, “Du yi”度邑 chapter (Yi Zhou shu jixun jiaoshi, 5.70-72) and the “Basic Annals of Zhou” in Shiji (4.129); see Lin Yun, “Tian wang gui ‘si yu tian shi’ xin jie” “《天亡簋〉׳祀于天室'新解.”

33. Sima Qian implies that supernatural influence emanates from the pole by calling the Big Dipper “Di's chariot” and by portraying the Dipper's movements as the efficient cause of transformations of yin and yang, the five elemental forces, the seasons, and all natural periodicities; see 'Tian guan shu,” 27.1291; cf. Major, John S., Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four, and Five of the Huainanzi (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), 107Google Scholar. Given the polar-equatorial orientation of Chinese astronomy from the outset and the obvious cosmological correspondence between heaven and earth from the earliest times, it is probable that this conception of the high god's dwelling place harks back to the Neolithic. It is, of course, by analogy with the pole that the ideal temporal ruler is supposed simply to occupy his place facing south, while his minions revolve about him doing his bidding. This is the basis of Confucius' famous analogy between the temporal ruler and the pole in Lunyu, 2/2/1:

爲政以德,譬如北辰居其所而衆星共之

Govern by means of virtue, like the Northern Dipper which occupies its place while the myriad stars revolve about it.

34. See Hsu, Cho-yun and Linduff, Katheryn M., Western Zhou Civilization (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988), 98Google Scholar; for Shang cosmography, see Sarah Allan, The Shape of the Turtle and the discussion of “centrality” by David N. Keightley in “Time, Space, and Community: The Imposition of World Order in Late Shang Divination” (forthcoming); for the principle of axial centrality in Han, see Major, John S., Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought, 37Google Scholar. For an anthropological perspective, compare Clifford Geertz's discussion of the “exemplary center” model of political organization in traditional Indonesia in “Ideology as a Cultural System,” The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 222–223Google Scholar.

35. Shiji, “Feng shan shu” 封禪書, 28.1358. See also Kaltenmark, Max, “Religion and Politics in the China of the Ts'in and the Han,” Diogenes 34 (1961), 20 ffGoogle Scholar.

36. Needham, , Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 2, 246Google Scholar.

37. See Graham, A.C., Disputers of the Tao (LaSalle, IL: Open Court, 1989), 346Google Scholar. As Karl Löwith has pointed out, the belief in antiquity that future events can be foretold by special means such as divination and astrology implies a presupposition that the future is in some sense preordained. Divination and portent astrology, therefore, were methods of “reading” the dispositions of supernatural forces as if they were accomplished facts or knowledge, hence the revealed character of portents and omina from this early date; see Löwith, Karl, Meaning in History: The Theological implications of the Philosophy of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 10Google Scholar.

38. Witness the myth of Ε Bo 閼伯 and Shi Chen 實沈 in Zuozhuan (Xiang襄9): 古之火正, 或食於心, 或食於咮, 以出內火。是故咮爲鶉火, 心爲大火。陶唐氏之火正閼伯居商丘, 祀大火, 而火紀時焉。相土因之, 故商主大火。商人閱其禍敗之, 必始於火

The ancient Regulator of Fire was offered sacrificial nourishment either in the asterism Heart (α Scorpio) or in the asterism Beak (α Hydra) in order (for the people) to take out and bring in their fires. For this reason Beak is Quail Fire and Heart is Great Fire. Tao Tang's (i.e., Yao's) Regulator of Fire, E Bo, dwelt at Shang-qiu and sacrificed to Great Fire, using Fire to mark the seasons there. Xiang Tu (grandson of Xie and father of the Shang people) continued in like manner and so the Shang principally focus on Great Fire. The Shang observed that the signs of their calamities and defeats inevitably had their inception in Fire;

and the declaration in Guoyu “Jinyu”:

大火閼伯之星也實紀商人

Great Fire is the star of Ε Bo; in truth it marked the periods of the Shang people; see Pankenier, , “Astronomical Dates,” 7, 21Google Scholar.

39. For example, according to Jiang Xiaoyuan, King Wen's hurried construction of a ritual astronomical observing platform or “spirit tower” (lingtai 靈台)in the eighth year of the Mandate, or 1051 was just such a rebellious act, since this was exclusively a royal prerogative already in Shang times; see “Tianwen, Wu Xian, Lingtai — tianwen xingzhan yu gudai Zhongguo de zhengzhi guannian” 天文、巫咸、靈台-天文 星占與古代中國的政治觀念, Ziran kexue bianzhengfa tongxun 自然科學辨證法通訊 1991.3, 56Google Scholar.

40. See Jacobsen, Thorkild, “The Historian and the Sumerian Gods,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.2 (1994), 46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Jakobsen's discussion, although focused on ancient Sumerian religious thinking, is entirely relevant to the conceptual world of the Shang and early Western Zhou. To this characteristic way of experiencing the world and causality Jakobsen gives the name the “theocratic mode of experiencing.” Of course, an essential facet of this mode of experiencing was a reliance on the efficacy of divination. As Karl Löwith has remarked: “What separates us most deeply from the ancients is that they believed in the possibility of foreknowing the future, either by rational inference or by the popular means of questioning oracles and of practicing divination, while we do not”; see his Meaning in History' 10.

41. See also Fuguan, Xu, Yin yang wu xing guannian, 52Google Scholar: “Zou Yan's theory of the succession of Five Virtues represents a revival in another form of primitive religion. The Virtues of the Five Elements, in their sequential alternation, are a concretization of the ming ‘mandate’ of Heaven's Mandate tianming.”

42. See Shiji, 27.1321, 1342. Phenomena involving the five planets above signal corresponding operations of the Five Elements here below. Therefore, yi xing 易行 in Sima Qian's statement above must mean “change, alteration (bianyi 變易) of element/ power” in a direct reference to Five Elements theory. “Lacking in virtue” 無德 in this context no doubt refers to the consequences of being out of step with the prevailing “virtue” of the times.

43. See also the conclusion reached by Li Ling in his recent study of ancient cos mology: “Such [Yin Yang Five Elements] theories reached their greatest efflorescence in late Warring States, Qin, and Han. Although one encounters new turns of thought and they contain many superfluous embellishments as a result of efforts to regularize and systematize, still they absolutely cannot be subsumed under the queer talk of Zou Yan and his ilk. Rather, they are the legacy of numerous ‘hemerologists’ and those who devised theories based on the past, deriving their material from high antiquity. With primitive thought as their backdrop, these ideas flowed straight from exceptionally archaic sources, their influence yielding nothing to the mainstream thinking comprising the theories of the various philosophical schools”; see Ling, Li, “Shitu yu Zhongguo gudai de yuzhou moshi,” Part 2, Jiuzhou xuekan 4.1 (1991), 75Google Scholar. Compare John Majoras discussion of the cosmological chapters of Huainanzi 淮南子 in the light of the Huang-Lao School's dominant idea that “knowledge of the natural world translates into political power”: “cosmogony, cosmography, astronomy, calendrical astrology, and other features of cosmology form a seamless web, the principles of which a ruler would ignore only at his peril. … The credibility of the Huang-Lao School in the early Han may have rested in part on the degree to which it was grounded in widely-shared assumptions that went back to the foundations of Chinese civilization”; see Major, , Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought, 43Google Scholar.

44. Wheatley, Paul, The Pivot of the Four Quarters: A Preliminary Enquiry into the Origins and Character of the Ancient Chinese City (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1971), 414–416Google Scholar. Compare this with David Carrasco's characterization of the ancient locative view of the world which parallels in important respects that of New World cultures: “This locative view, which has been discerned in the traditional societies of Mesopotamia and Egypt, in which everything has value and even sacrality when it is in its place, is an imperial view of the world designed to ensure social and symbolic control on the part of the king and the capital. It is informed by a cosmolog-ical conviction consisting of 5 facets which dominated human society for over 2, 000 years in the Near Eastern world, including (1) there is a cosmic order that permeates every level of reality; (2) this cosmic order is the divine society of the gods; (3) the structure and dynamics of this society can be discerned in the movement and patterned juxtaposition of the heavenly bodies; (4) human society should be a microcosm of the divine society, and the chief responsibility of priests and kings is to attune human order to the divine order”; see “The King, the Capital and the Stars: the Symbolism of Authority in Aztec Religion,” in World Archaeoastronomy, 49. Carrasco's authority for this locative view “that guarantees meaning and value through structures of conjunction and conformity” is Smith's, Jonathan Z.Map is not Territory: Studies in the History of Religions (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1978)Google Scholar. For a sociological analysis of the microcosm/macrocosm mythos as the most ancient form of religious legitimation, see Berger, , The Sacred Canopy, 24, and esp. 34 ffGoogle Scholar.

45. See Berger, , The Sacred Canopy, 38Google Scholar: “Where the microcosm/macrocosm understanding of the relationship between society and the cosmos prevails, the parallelism between the two spheres typically extends to specific roles. These are then understood as mimetic reiterations of the cosmic realities for which they are supposed to stand. All social roles are representations of larger complexes of objectivated meanings.” In discussing the history of Chinese astronomy from the Han period on, Yabuuchi Kiyoshi makes the point that, “there are two sorts of celestial phenomena. One was cyclical in a simple way, and its regularity or periodicity could be discovered with relative ease; the other could not be predicted by human effort, but only observed. The former was systematized within the framework of calendrical science, while the latter became the object of astrological interpretation. Since they were complementary, they were equally important to the Chinese administrators. … The breadth of the Chinese ephemerides reflected the grave concern of Chinese rulers constantly to expand the demonstrable order of the sky, while reducing the irregular and ominous. The parallel with the ruler's responsibility in the political realm is obvious.” Though Yabuuchi is writing here about a later period, the general point he makes is equally applicable to the Bronze Age; see “Chinese Astronomy: Development and Limiting Factors,” in Nakayama, Shigeru and Sivin, Nathan ed., Chinese Science: Explorations of an Ancient Tradition (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973), 93–94Google Scholar.

46. Porter's, Deborah recent article “The Literary Function of K'un-lun Mountain in the Mu T'ien-tzu Chuan,” (Early China 18 [1993], 74–106)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, while focusing on the latter three legendary figures, contains a wealth of groundbreaking insights on the relationship between asterisms, astronomical phenomena, ancient cosmological myths and history, literature, and culture in early China.

47. Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 45/9Google Scholar; modified. Karlgren translates tianxian 天顳 “heaven's clear laws', on the strength of parallel passages in which xian 憲 is substituted for xian 顯. I am uncomfortable with his use of ”laws“ here, though I agree that the instructive or normative function of heavenly displays is implied. It is also likely that ”Heaven's bright manifestations“ (tianxian) also includes ”Heaven's awesome displays“ (tianwei 天威), i.e. more unpredictable demonstrations of Heaven's awesome-ness. In the ”Jin teng“ 金勝 chapter of Shangshu, tianwei refers explicitly to disastrous meteorological phenomena, while the ”Jun shi“君爽 chapter dwells on how Kings Wen and Wu came to know ”Heaven's awfulness” and to wield it in decimating their enemies (e.g.,武王誕將天威咸劉厥敵). For the intimate connection between revealed wisdom and the legitimate application of martial force in Warring States thought, see n. 97 below.

48. Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 33/29Google Scholar; modified.

49. For a concise review of the literature on the astronomical portions of “Yao dian,” see Changhao, Li ed., Zhongguo tianwenxue shi, 8–12Google Scholar.

50. This point is elegantly made in Barnard's, MaryTime and the White Tigress (Portland, Oregon: Breitenbush Books, 1986), 23Google Scholar: “Sun worship, someone has said, goes with kingship. Rather, the solar year goes with kingship, with organization, with agriculture and irrigation and towns. The folk, wherever they are — whether following game or herding cattle, on plains, in valleys, on mountains — can see the moon, its phase, its attendant stars. But to name the day when the sun turns ageyneward — the solstice, summer or winter—the calendar-priest needs a temple or simply a gnomon enclosed for its own protection in sacred precincts; and that will turn into a temple. After the sun-watching priest has found out for certain the length of his gnomon's shadow at midsummer noon, and measured the angle between the two solstice points — if he then moves north or south, his labor is wasted. His work is all to do over. Reason enough why calendars pegged to the sun are useless to nomads.”

51. Guoyu (Sibu beiyao ed.) 2.9a; tr. Hart, James A., “The Speech of Prince Chin: A Study of Early Chinese Cosmology,” in Rosemont, Henry Jr. ed., Explorations in Early Chinese Cosmology, JAAR Thematic Studies L/2 (Chico: Scholar's Press, 1984), 49Google Scholar. For examples from Xia xiao zheng, see Wenguang, Zheng 鄭文光, Zhongguo tianwenxue yuan-liu 中國天文學史源流 (Beijing: Xinhua shuju, 1979), 44Google Scholar. Note that in the Guoyu passage cited here only the first five lunar mansions are adduced in sequence by way of illustration. Similar seasonal and behavioral correlations would certainly have existed for the remainder as well.

52. Cf. He guan zi 鵑冠子 (ch. 5, “Huan liu” 環流): ”When the handle of the Dipper points to the east (at nightfall), it is spring to all the world. When the handle of the Dipper points to the south, it is summer to all the world. When the handle of the Dipper points to the west, it is autumn to all the world. When the handle of the Dipper points to the north, it is winter to all the world. As the handle of the Dipper revolves above, so affairs are set below …“; see Graham, A.C., ”A Neglected Pre-Han Philosophical Text: Ho-Kuan-Tzu,“ Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, 52.3 (1989), 517CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, Vol. 3, The Shoo King or The Book of Historical Documents, Prolegomena (rpt Taipei: Wen shi zhe, 1972), 93Google Scholar. This was the age, according to Gu Yanwu 顧炎武 (1613-1682), ”before the Three Dynasties [when] everyone knew astronomy”; see Ri zhi Zw 日知錄(Sibu beiyao ed.), 30.1a.

53. Gwoyw, 18.1a ff.

54. Bodde, Derk, “Myths of Ancient China,” in Kramer, Samuel N. ed., Mythologies of the Ancient World (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 390–91Google Scholar; cited by Chang, K.C., Early Chinese Civilization: Anthropological Perspectives (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 162Google Scholar; cf. also Keightley, David N., “Shamanism in Guo yu? A Tale of Xi and Wu,” paper prepared for the Center for Chinese Studies Regional Seminar, 7-9 04 1989, UC BerkeleyGoogle Scholar; “Royal Shamanism in the Shang: Archaic Vestige or Central Reality?” Workshop on Chinese Divination and Portent Interpretation, Berkeley, 20 06-1 July, 1983Google ScholarPubMed.

55. Chang, KG, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 44Google Scholar. On this point, see also the remarks in reference to this passage by Lothar von Falkenhausen elsewhere in this volume.

56. For the relationship between astronomical observation, astrology, and govern-merit in ancient China, see Xiaoyuan, Jiang, “Tianwen, Wu Xian, Lingtai,” 53–58Google Scholar; and especially his Tian xue zhen yuan, 83 ff. The Shiji “Who's Who” of heaven-observing functionaries from the dawn of history lists all of the above “shaman/astrologers” and more in chronological order. Interestingly, Zhuan Xu, Chong, and Li all figure prominently in the legendary genealogy of the Chu royal house; see “Tian guan shu,” 27.1343, and “Chu shi jia,” 楚世家, 39.1689. Significantly, the famous Chu silk manuscript (ca. 300 B.C.) deals at considerable length with calendrical and astrological themes, exemplifying in the process the perennial preoccupation with the ominous consequences of neglecting the calendar, thereby offending the high god and incurring disaster; see Xueqin, Li, “Lun Chu boshu zhong de tianxiang” 論楚帛書中的天象 Hunan kaogu jikan 湖南考古輯刊1982.], 68–72Google Scholar; and esp. Li Ling, “The Chu Silk Manuscript,” in Defining Chu, ed. Constance A. Cook and John S. Major (forthcoming).

57. This was also the conclusion of Yang Xiangkui 楊向奎: “The kings severed the communication between heaven and the people, and they took as their monopoly the great right of communicating with God”; quoted in Chang, K.C., Art, Myth, and Ritual, 164Google Scholar. See Xiangkui, Yang, Zhongguo gudai shehui yu gudai sixiang yanjiu 中國古代社會與古代思想硏究, vol. 1, (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1962), 164Google Scholar; cf. also Xiaoyuan, Jiang, Tian xue zhen yuan, 91Google Scholar. Given the cosmic bailiwick of figures like Chong and Li, perhaps it is also possible to see in this account a rationalization of the consequences for the sky divinity of what Mircea Eliade has denoted the “progressive descent of the sacred into the concrete,” a regular historical process whereby “the supreme divinities of the sky are constantly pushed to the periphery of religious life where they are almost ignored; other sacred forces, nearer to man, more accessible to his daily experience, more useful to him, fill the leading role”; see Eliade, , Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: Meridian, 1958), 43Google Scholar. Often, the leading role comes to be occupied by the cult of the dead ancestors, with the supreme divinity of the sky being relegated to a more specialized role such as that of guarantor of the harvest, seasonable weather and the like. In Eliade's words, “men only remember the sky and the supreme deity when they are directly threatened by a danger from the sky; at other times, their piety is called upon by the needs of every day, and their practices and devotion are directed towards the forces that control those needs”; Patterns in Comparative Religion, 50.

58. On the significance of this indication of the obsolescence of Arcturus as a seasonal marker due to precession, see Needham, , Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 3, 251–252Google Scholar. Liu Xin 劉歆 identifies this and other calendrical dislocations as portents of dynastic change in Hanshu, 36.1964 (my thanks to Juri Kroll for this latter reference). For an account in Hesiod (700 B.C.) of Arcturus's use as a seasonal signpost in the second millennium B.C. Greece and its obsolescence there, see Worthen, Thomas D., The Myth of Replacement: Stars, Gods, and Order in the Universe (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1991), 210Google Scholar.

59. Shiji, “Li Shu” 曆書, 26.1257.

60. For another version of the cosmic conflict and subsequent disaster seen as marking the end of the Urzeit of cosmogony, see Major, , Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought, 26, 44 ffGoogle Scholar. The version given here parallels that found in the “Lüxing” 呂幵 chapter of Shangshu where the breaking of the communication between heaven and earth was an act of volition on the part of Huangdi, the Yellow Thearch: “The charge was given to Chong and Li to break the communication between earth and heaven so that there was no descending or ascending.” A chief difference between the two versions, apart from the etiology of the rupture, lies in the different methodologies admitted by each for resolving the resulting dilemma, the one quasi-mystical or religious and the other, that presented here, fundamentally cosmo-political or bureaucratic. For an insightful analysis of the cosmic disaster and its cultural legacy, see Fiction, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1996)Google ScholarPubMed, Chapter 2, “See Yu Later: A New Interpretation of Chinese Flood Myths.”

61. After study of this passage and related issues, Jiang Xiaoyuan reached a similar conclusion: “The early astrologers evolved out of those ancient shamans and shamanesses who communicated with Heaven”; see Tian xue zhen yuan, 98. In Stolen Lightning: A Social Theory of Magic (New York: Vintage, 1983)Google Scholar, Daniel O'Keefe has argued for the co-existence of astronomy and shamanism as sub-cult formations that took shape in reaction to dominant religion, however this does not appear to account adequately for the Chinese evidence. Even allowing for the distinctively Han retrospective flavor of Sima Qian's portrayal of Three Dynasties developments, the ascendancy among the ruling elite of a fundamentally cosmological world view and of the doctrine of Heaven's Mandate, together with a positive lack of evidence of shamanistic practice in the strict sense, indicates that astrological and shamanistic diagnostics probably did not, in fact, coexist at that level. (I am grateful to Lionel Jensen for calling my attention to O'Keefe's work.)

62. As Thomas Worthen writes: “Culture seeks to bring nature into its own sphere, which is always regular and always prescriptive. Rituals are performed not to imitate the regularities in nature but to induce nature to imitate a culturally effected regular-ity”; see The Myth of Replacement, 16. As has been noted by Guy Swanson, “We begin to see in the connection between sovereign groups and spirits a direct empirical link connecting the independent decision-making structures in a society—the structures by which goals are chosen and responsibilities allocated —and the supernatural”; see Swanson, , The Birth of the Gods: The Origin of Primitive Beliefs (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1960), 190CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of particular relevance for the period in question are Swanson's findings (The Birth of the Gods, 20, 55-81) that there is a strong correlation between deities and the constitutional structure of sovereign groups. According to Swanson, high gods are present, almost invariably, in societies where there are three or more types of such sovereign groups ranked in hierarchical order (e.g., household, clan-village, chiefdom). The model of a powerful, centralized government may be a sufficient condition for the appearance of a high god, but Swanson's extensive data show it is not a necessary one, as some have argued; cf. e.g., Chang, K. C., Early Chinese Civilization, 190Google Scholar.

63. Hart, , “The Speech of Prince Chin,” 40Google Scholar.

64. Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 55/5-10Google Scholar; modified.

65. Karlgren translates tianxian 天顯 as “Heaven's clear laws” and minzhi 民抵“the respect due the people”; however, if I am correct in taking tianxian to mean something like “what Heaven brightly manifests above,” then parallelism would seem to demand that minzhi be taken here to denote “what the people revere,” i.e., popular beliefs, rituals, or festivals of the people which have not been respected by the elite. This passage is also noteworthy for the equivalency typically posited in early Zhou texts between Di of the Shang and Tian of the Zhou.

66. Shiji “Xia benji”'夏本記, 2.85. In Zuozhuan (Zhao 17) the specific failing of the astronomers that led to their punishment is quoted from “The Books of Xia”: “The Dipper [handle] did not alight on the [proper] quarter/stellar abode” (then fu ji yu fang 辰弗集于房).For a criticism of the traditional interpretation of this phrase as a veritable record of a solar eclipse, see my contribution to “Early China Forum,” Early China 15 (1990), 124 ffGoogle Scholar.

67. This is perhaps the most concrete aspect of the meaning of the “Gao Yao mo” passage: “You (sc. the sovereign) should not set an example of laziness or desires to the possessors of states; it is fearsome, it is awe-inspiring, in one day, in two days' there are ten thousand first signs of happenings (sc. which you should be prepared for). Do not empty the various offices. The works of Heaven, it is man who carries them out on its behalf” [tian gong ren qi dai zhi 天功人其代之]: Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 9/5Google Scholar; modified; emphasis mine.

68. For an analysis of the myth of the flood as a symbolic response to the disruption of established cosmological verities and the threatening irruption of chaos, see Porter, , “The Literary Function of K'un-Lun Mountain,” 82 ff, 92Google Scholar. Nature is first brought into the sphere of culture by observing patterns and regularities, and the causal relations among phenomena, which is the beginning of science. But, as Worthen reminds us (The Myth of Replacement, 74): “Ritual and science regularize things, but … [o]ur science and our rituals and religions do not really satisfy all of our doubts about the mysteries of life and the beyond. There is still the tension of the unknown, and chaos lurks behind every formula.” Cf. Berger, , The Sacred Canopy, 23, 26, 27Google Scholar.

69. Shangshu “Weizi,” tr. Karlgren, Book of Documents, 27/1; modified.

70. According to David Keightley, a “concern with timeliness was characteristic of the divinations of Wu Ting, who reigned when the sacrificial schedule was still being formulated, when the date of each sacrifice might still be submitted for spiritual approval. By period V temporal flexibility had been lost. The ritual schedule was now rigidly formulated; the day on which a particular ancestor would receive sacrifice was already established; the divination was no longer concerned with determining the auspicious time, but only with announcing that the sacrifice would take place as scheduled”; see Keightley, , “Late Shang Divination,” 18Google Scholar.

71. Keightley, , “Late Shang Divination,” 14Google Scholar.

72. Changhao, Li, Zhongguo tianwenxue shi, 13–15Google Scholar.

73. Shiji, 2.104; cf. also Guoyu, 3.21a.

74. Shiji, 8.324. Compare this conception with that cited above from Shangshu, “Jiu guo.”

75. Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 63/3Google Scholar.

76. Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 27/6Google Scholar; modified.

77. Mozijiangu 墨手閒話 (Zhuzi jicheng ed.) 7 vol. 4, 39.

78. In this connection it is also worth recalling the traditional accounts of the late Shang king Wu Yi's 武乙 deliberate sacrilege in shooting full of arrows a blood-filled leather sack said to represent “Heaven,” and Di Xin's contemptuous dismissal of the risk of usurpation in light of his divine appointment to rule; see Shiji, 3.104.

79. Nevertheless, such reform seems not to have gone beyond the symbolic. In Yi Zhou shu, “Zhou yue” 周月 chapter (6.87) there is the passage: “When it came to our Zhou kings, [they] were brought to attack the Shang, and to change the First Month of the year and the royal regalia, to make manifest the Three Fundaments. But as for respectfully delivering the seasons to the people (jing shou min shi 敬授民時), royal progresses and sacrifices, [they] still followed the Xia.” There appears to be a longstanding distinction here between the officially-disseminated civil calendar, with all its cosmo-political symbolism, and a more primitive calendar of seasonal festivals, market days and the like, like the Xia annuaiy, which the common folk continued to follow irrespective of the changes at the top. This distinction is also apparent in the same “Hong fan” passage quoted above, where the traditional observational habits of the people are distinguished from those of the elite: “What the common people (scrutinize) is the stars. There are stars which favor wind, there are stars which favor rain. (Owing to) the course of sun and moon there is winter and summer. According as the moons follow the (various) stars, there is wind and rain”; Karlgren, , Book of Documents, 33/32Google Scholar. See, too. Major, , Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought, 91. 80Google Scholar.

80. See Pankenier, , “Early China Forum,” Early China 15 (1990), 132Google Scholar.

81. Mircea Eliade's comparative researches suggest that the “notion of universal sovereignty … owes its development and its definition of outline largely to the notion of the sky's transcendence.” According to Eliade, “even before any religious values have been set upon the sky it reveals its transcendence. The sky ‘symbolizes’ transcendence, power and changelessness simply by being there. It exists because it is high, infinite, immovable, powerful … the whole nature of the sky is an inexhaust¬ible hierophany. Consequently anything that happens among the stars or in the upper areas of the atmosphere — the rhythmic revolution of the stars, chasing clouds, storms, thunderbolts, meteors, rainbows—is a moment in that hierophany. When this hiero-phany became personified, when the divinities of the sky showed themselves, or took the place of the holiness of the sky as such, is difficult to say precisely. What is quite certain is that the sky divinities have always been supreme divinities … that their hierophanies, dramatized in various ways by myth, have remained for that reason sky hierophanies; and that what one may call the history of sky divinities is largely a history of notions of ‘force’, of ‘creation,’ of ‘laws’ and of ‘sovereignty’; see Patterns in Comparative Religion, 39, 40.

82. Burke, Kenneth, The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), esp. 1–42Google Scholar. For a classic sociological study of religion which, as well as being more ecumenical, reinforces that of Burke in many respects, see Berger, , The Sacred Canopy, esp. 1–51Google Scholar.

83. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 258Google Scholar.

84. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 37Google Scholar.

85. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 15Google Scholar.

86. The use of writing to communicate with the supernatural world is itself implicated here; indeed, the “revealed” nature of the writing system attests to its sacred function. On the evolution of writing in ancient China from its sacred origin as “chiffres magiques,” see Vandermeersch, Léon, Wangdao ou la voie royale: Recherches sur l'esprit des institutions de la Chine ancienne, vol. 2 (Paris: École Française d'Extrême-Orient, 1977), 473–488Google Scholar.

87. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 3Google Scholar.

88. Similarly, according to Berger: “Whenever the socially established nomos attains the quality of being taken for granted, there occurs a merging of its meanings with what are considered to be the fundamental meanings inherent in the universe. Nomos and cosmos appear to be co-extensive. In archaic societies, nomos appears as a microcosmic reflection, the world of men as expressing meanings inherent in the universe as such. … Whatever the historical variations, the tendency is for the meanings of the humanly constructed order to be projected into the universe as such”; see The Sacred Canopy, 24. Cf. also Swanson's discussion of the origin of the supernatural in The Birth of the Gods, 27.

89. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 238Google Scholar.

90. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 36Google Scholar. In China this process proceeded in stages culminating in the late Warring States Confucian conception of human nature or personality as essentially wendowed“ by Heaven, by which formulation Confucians implicitly affirmed the derivation of human personality from that of the supernatural power. For example, there is the famous passage in Zhongyong 中庸 ”The Doctrine of the Mean“ which says: ”What is mandated by Heaven is called [human] nature“ (tian ming zhi wei xing 天命之謂性).In this same vein, Peter Berger points to the transformation in classical China of the preexisting macrocosm/microcosm scheme legitimating the social order, typical of archaic societies, beyond a strictly mythological worldview: ”In China, for instance, even the very rational, virtually secularizing, demythologi-zation of the concept of tao (the ‘right order’ or ‘right way’ of things) permitted the continuing conception of the institutional structure as reflective of cosmic order”; see The Sacred Canopy, 35 (emphasis mine).

91. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 41, 187Google Scholar.

92. As Marcel Granet so perceptively observed about the use of metaphor and allegory by Chinese writers; “Imagery is not employed merely to simplify the idea or to make it more attractive: in itself it has a moral value. This is evident in the case of certain themes. For example, the picture of birds flying in couples is, in itself, an exhortation to fidelity. If, then, metaphors borrowed from Nature are used to give expression to the emotions, it is due not so much to a consciousness of the beauty of Nature as to the fact that it is moral to conform to Nature”; Festivals and Songs of Ancient China (London: Routledge, 1932), 50Google Scholar. See also A.C. Graham's discussion of the synthesis of fact and value in Chinese correlative thinking: “a cosmos of the old kind has also an advantage to which post-Galilean science makes no claim; those who live in it know not only what is but what should be”; Disputers of the Tao, 350.

93. Thus, “the sheerly natural order contains a verbal element or principle that, from the purely empirical point of view, could belong only in the socio-political order. Empirically, the natural order of sheerly astro-physical motion depends upon no verbal principle for its existence. But theologically x it does …”; see Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 185Google Scholar.

94. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 185Google Scholar.

95. For the developmental continuum of legitimations (“socially objectivated knowledge that serves to explain and justify the social order”) according to historical circumstances, from pre-theoretical through theoretically self-conscious, see Berger, , The Sacred Canopy, 29, 31–32Google Scholar.

96. Burke, , Rhetoric of Religion, 186Google Scholar.

97. It is noteworthy that the prefaces to the “Monograph on Astrology” (Tianwen zhi) in both the Jin shu and Hou Han shu explicitly identify the “River Diagram” (Hetu) as a text in which was recorded revealed wisdom concerning the heavenly bodies. For example, the latter (Hou Han shu, 10.3214) has: “Xuan Yuan (i.e. the legendary Huangdi or Yellow Emperor) first received the Hetu doubaoshou 河圖鬥苟授 which plotted out the images [formed by] the sun, moon, planets, and constellations. Therefore, books concerning the starry offices begin with the Yellow Emperor” (cf. also Jin shu, 11.277). For the “Cinnabar Writing” danshu 丹書bestowed on King Wen, see the “You shi lan”

•有始覽chapter of Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋(Sibu beiyao ed.), 13.4a: 及文王之時, 天先見火赤烏銜丹書集于周社。文王曰; 火氣勝。故其色尙赤, 其事則火

In the time of King Wen, Heaven first manifested fire. A scarlet bird clasping a Cinnabar Writing alighted on the Zhou altar to the soil. King Wen said, The qi of fire is in the ascendant/ Therefore, for his color he exalted scarlet and in his affairs he emulated fire. The standard account of the transmission of esoteric knowledge in the form of “River Diagrams” (Hetu 河圖)or “Luo Writings” (Luoshu 洛書) is found in Hanshu, 27.1315. Cf. also Liu Xiang's劉向comment (Hanshu, 36.1966) “The patterns of Heaven are difficult to communicate. Your minister, even after submitting a diagram, still needs to explain it in words, and then it can be understood” (tianwen nan yi xiang xiao, chen sui tu shang, you xu kou shuo, ranhou ke zhi 天文難以枏燒, 臣雖圖上, 猶須口說, 然後可知).For a discussion of the military application of such revealed “texts” in Eastern Zhou, “in imitation of divine patterns that inform the cosmos/k” see Lewis, Mark Edward, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990)Google Scholar, especially chapter 4, “Cosmic Violence,” 98 ff and 137-163. Of course, Lewis also goes on to argue for a Warring States date for the “textualization” of the cosmos. In view of the evidence presented here regarding the privileged role of celestial portentology, cosmology, and cosmic legitimations in the second millennium B.C., however, I cannot concur with Lewis's view that the notion of a cosmic kingship, wherein the legitimate authority of the king is derived from his ability to “read” the hieroglyphics of the cosmos, is a Warring States invention. It is worth noting here that the Mawangdui illustrated catalogue of twenty-nine cometary apparitions and their associated prognostications connects virtually all with military activity. The appearance of one type of comet (no. 28) is actually denoted “Chi You's Banner” in commemoration of the prototypical cosmic conflict between Huangdi and the demiurge Chi You豈尤; see Sanctioned Violence in Early China, 148, 182, and Zezong, Xi, “Mawangdui Han mu boshu zhong de huixing tu” 馬王堆漢墓帛書中的營星圖, in Zhongguo gudai tianwen wenwu lunji, 1989, 31Google Scholar. Needless to say, the accumulation of this much observational data pertaining to naked-eye comets and novae took a very long time.

98. My general argument as presented here is consistent with Berger׳s observation that, “Probably the most ancient form of [religious] legitimation is the conception of the institutional order as directly reflecting or manifesting the divine structure of the cosmos, that is, the conception of the relationship between society and cosmos as one between microcosm and macrocosm. Everything ‘here below’ has its analogue ‘up above’”; see The Sacred Canopy, 34.

99. Eliade, , Patterns in Comparative Religion, 75Google Scholar.

100. Here again it is useful to recall the myth (see n. 38) that relates the history of Gao Xin's appointment of E Bo and Shi Chen as Regulators of two of the most important seasonal asterisms of that era, Scorpio and Orion. The central premise of the narrative — the incompatibility of the two feuding siblings — reveals the etiological function of the myth. It accounts, again by means of a familial analogy, for the diametrical opposition between the brothers' astral correlates, which cannot appear in the sky simultaneously.

101. Chen Mengjia 陳夢家, for his part, was convinced that the Five Minister Regulators belonging to Shangdi in the oracle bone inscriptions correspond to the later wu gong chen 五公ë in Zuo zhuan (Zhao 17) where they figure as officials in charge of the seasons of Heaven (zhang tian shi zhe 掌天時者).Elsewhere (Zhao Gong 29th year), they become cosmic functionaries in charge of the Five Elemental Forces, conceived as five kinds of useful materials; see Yinxu buci zong shu 殷墟卜辭綜述 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1956), 572Google Scholar. In “Tian guan shu,” 27.1350, Sima Qian is explicit about the celestial identity of Heaven's five ministers: “These five planets are Heaven's five assistants” (ci wu xing zhe tian zhi wu zuo 此五星者天之五佐). By the Han, illustrations of the five planets with associated gods may be found to depict each holding a construction tool of one kind or another. From this John Major concludes, “there is perhaps also a hint that the planetary gods are the architects of the sub-celestial world as it comes into being in its multiplicity of forms”; see Major, , Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought, 27Google Scholar.

102. As Berger has shown, the “rootedness of religion in the practical concerns of everyday life” means that, “The religious legitimations … make little sense if one conceives of them as productions of theoreticians that are then applied ex post facto to particular complexes of activity. The need for legitimation arises in the course of activity. Typically, this is in the consciousness of the actors before that of the theoreticians. … To put it simply, most men in history have felt the need for religious legitimation — only very few have been interested in the development of religious ‘ideas’”; see The Sacred Canopy, 41.

103. With the advent of religious reform and the universal sovereignty of Zhou clear progress may have been made toward the time, still some centuries ahead, when according to Eliade, “the ubiquity, the wisdom and the passivity of the sky god were seen afresh in a metaphysical sense, and the god became the epiphany of the order of nature and the moral law … the divine ‘person’ gave place to the ‘idea’; religious experience … gave place to theoretic understanding, or philosophy, see Patterns in Comparative Religion, 110. My portrayal of the emergent contrast between late Shang and early Zhou religious dispositions is informed by Clifford Geertz's elaboration (following Max Weber) of the distinction between ”traditional“ and ”rationalized“ religions; see Geertz, ”‘Internal Conversion” in Contemporary Bali,” The Interpretation of Cultures, 172.

104. In structuralist terms, therefore, one might characterize this transition as an ideological shift away from the “metonymie-connexion axis” back to the “metaphoric-similarity axis” (for an application of structuralist analysis to ancient Chinese correlative thinking, see Graham, Disputers of the Tao, 315). In this respect the choice of wen “pattern, form, style” to denote the paradigm represented by the concept of the Mandate of Heaven, and the “vehement reassertion of the transcendental power of the high god” which it entailed, appears particularly apt. By implication, of course, this same paradigm applies equally to the Zeitgeist of Xia, with whom the Zhou clearly identified themselves; see Schwartz, Benjamin, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985), 38Google Scholar. Note especially Schwartz's choice of the word “reassertion” above. See also Schwartz's remarks (p. 48 ff.) concerning the reemphasis on correct performance of ritual with the advent of the Zhou, especially “the striking observation of the Book of Ceremonies … [that] the Shang people had put the spirits in the first place and the rites second, while the Chou put the rites first and the spirits in second place.”

105. Keightley characterizes the taming of Shang belief by convention this way: “These later inscriptions record, I would suggest, the whisperings of charms and wishes, a constant bureaucratic murmur, forming a routine background of invocation to the daily life of the last two Shang kings, who were now talking, perhaps, more to themselves than to the ultra-human powers”; see Keightley, , “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 382Google Scholar.

106. “Heaven's Mandate is not easy to keep, it is not to be counted on,” it was said. One reason, as Karl Löwith incisively remarked in another context, is that “the conjunctionist thesis leads imperceptibly and unconsciously to the idea of variability and pluralism in religious and political regimes. If changes depend on the movements and conjunctions of the upper planets with certain signs of the zodiac, then major historical events can only be considered ‘providential” in the metaphorical sense”; see Meaning in History, 20. Relèvent in the present context too is Clifford Geertz's cultural analysis of ideology and his conclusion that “the function of ideology is to make an autonomous politics possible by providing the authoritative concepts that render it meaningful, the suasive images by means of which it can be sensibly grasped. … And it is, in turn, the attempt of ideologies to render otherwise incomprehensible [or undefined] social situations meaningful, to so construe them as to make it possible to act purposefully within them, that accounts both for the ideologies' highly figurative nature and for the intensity with which, once accepted, they are held. … Whatever else ideologies may be … they are, most distinctively, maps of problematic social reality and matrices for the creation of collective conscience”; see Geertz, , “Ideology as a Cultural System,” 218–220 (insertion mine)Google Scholar.

107. Keightley, , “Shang Divination and Metaphysics,” 388Google Scholar.