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Michael Loewe, Divination, Mythology and Monarchy in Han China. University of Cambridge Oriental Publications 48. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xix + 353 pp.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

Mark Csikszentmihalyi
Mark Csikszentmihalyi*
Affiliation:
Department of Religion, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28036
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Early China , Volume 21 , 1996 , pp. 201 - 211
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Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1996

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References

1. Cf. Hanshu 漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962), 95.3842Google Scholar.

2. Particularly noteworthy studies are Harper, Donald, “The Wu shih erh ping fang: Translation and Prolegomena” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1982)Google Scholar and Kuriyama, Shigehisa, “Varieties of Haptic Experience: A Comparative Study of Greek and Chinese Pulse Diagnosis” (Ph.D. diss.. Harvard University, 1986)Google Scholar. Many of the recently discovered medical texts also receive treatment in Keiji, Yamada 山田慶兒, ed., Shin hatsugen Chūgoku kagakushi shiryō no kenkyū 新發現中國科學史資料 研究 (Kyoto: Kyoto daigaku jinbun kagaku kenkyūjo, 1985)Google Scholar; and Jixing, Ma 馬繼興, Mawangdui gu yishu kaoshi 馬王堆古醫書考釋 (Changsha: Hunan kexue jishu, 1992)Google Scholar. A summary and review of some relevant secondary materials is in Pregadio, Fabrizio, “The Medical Texts of Ma-wang-tui,” Cahiers d'Extrême-Asie 5 (1989–1990), 381–86Google Scholar.

3. The publication of the six volume Jūshū issho shūsei 重修緯書集成, ed. Kōzan, Yasui 易居香山 and Shōhachi, Nakamura 中村章八 (Tokyo: Meitoku, 1971–1992)Google Scholar, has opened access to these materials; work such as Seidel's, Anna “Imperial Treasures and Taoist Sacraments: Taoist Roots in the Apocrypha,” in Taoist and Tantric Studies in Honour of K.A. Stein, v. 2, ed. Strickmann, M. (Brussels: Institut Belge des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1983), 291–371Google Scholar, gives a good introduction to how these texts may have fit into late Han and post-Han religious developments.

4. Loewe follows Noel Barnard in dating the discovery of the manuscript to 1934. For the 1942 date, see Ling, Li 李零, Zhongguo fangshu kao 中國方術考 (Beijing: Renmin zhongguo, 1993), 171Google Scholar.

5. Allan, Sarah, “Sons of Suns: Myth and Totemism in Early China,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 44 (1981), 290–326CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and The Shape of the Turtle (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991)Google ScholarPubMed. Allan sees totemism as a means to order the world “which includes an analogy between man and animals or other natural objects” (The Shape of the Turtle, 46). This sort of reading would imply hybrids might be instances of a more universal impulse to locate humans in terms of the natural world. However, elsewhere Allan contrasts the “illustrative” nature of the Chu Silk Manuscript figures with the more “mythic” figures from Shang dynasty materials (The Shape of the Turtle, 127). This is more consistent with a functional explanation of the figures similar to the ones Loewe proposes, for example as depictions of shamans.

6. The event is recorded in Hanshu, 7.228; Mu Hong's interpretation is in Hanshu, 75.3153-54. Qi Shaonan 齊召南 sees this as the first time that the Han is related to the Yao, sage-king (Hanshu buzhu 漢書補注 [Beijing: Zhonghua, 1983], 75.1b)Google Scholar and therefore to the element fire. Li Hansan 李漢三 has singled this event out as the first evidence of the change between the conquest and the natural growth models of the five phases (Xian Qin Hang Han zhi yinyang wuxing xueshuo 先桑兩漢之陰陽五行學說 [Taibei: Weixin, 1981], 118)Google Scholar.

7. It is possible that the chart was compiled from three texts or that three diviners, whose names and readings are provided in the chart, were on hand to provide their interpretations of a common set of diagrams. See Keiji, Yamada, Shin hatsugen Chūgoku kagakushi, v. 1 (Yakuchū hen 譯注篇), 45–86Google Scholar. Yamada adopts the reconstructed arrange¬ment of the chart and transcription of the Guojia wenwuju guwenxian yanjiushi pub¬lished in Zhongguo wenwu 中國文物 1 (1979), 1–4 and 26–29Google Scholar. A more detailed color reproduction of a different arrangement of the chart may be found in Juyou, Fu 傅舉有 and Songchang, Chen, Mawangdui Hanmu wenwu 馬王堆漢墓文物 (Chang-sha: Hunan, 1993), 154–56Google Scholar. For an attempt to situate the methods of the chart in the intellectual context of the time, see Csikszentmihalyi, Mark, “Emulating the Yellow Emperor: The Theory and Practice of HuangLao, 180-141 B.C.E.” (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1994), 242–46Google Scholar.

8. A good example of evidence of the authority of Zhou divination during the Han is the divination scheme invented by Yang Xiong揚雄based on the Yijing 易經. See Nylan's, MichaelThe Canon of Supreme Mystery (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993)Google Scholar.

9. See especially chapter five of Lewis, Mark Edward, Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York, 1990)Google Scholar, which provides another perspective on the issue, but by no means supplants Loewe's discussion; and Michael Puett's perceptive treatment of the formation of myth and structural parallels with earlier myths in chapter four of his “The Ambivalence of Creation: The Rise of Empire in Early China” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1994)Google Scholar.

10. See Queen, Sarah, “From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the ‘Spring and Autumn Annals’ According to Tung Chung-shu” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1994)Google Scholar; and Arbuckle, Gary, “Restoring Dong Zhongshu (B.C.E. 195-115): An Experiment in Historical and Philosophical Reconstruction” (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1991)Google Scholar.

11. Loewe's thesis is developed further by Sarah Queen in chapter three of From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn According to Tung Chung-Shu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)Google Scholar.

12. See also the early article by Kalinowski, Marc, “Les traités de Shuihudi et l'hémé-rologie chinoise a la fin des Royaumes-Combattants” T'oung Pao 72 (1986), 175–228CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For examples of more recent research, see Moto'o, Kudō 工藤元男, “The Ch'in Bamboo Strip Book of Divination Qih-shu) and Ch'in Legalism,” Acta Asiatica 58 (1990), 24–37Google Scholar; and Lexian, Liu 劉樂賢， Shuihudi Qinjian rishu yanjiu 睡虎地秦簡日書硏究， (Taibei: Wenjin, 1994)Google Scholar. Also noteworthy is Mu-chou's, Poo (Pu Muzhou) 蒱慕州 broader and more provocative article “Shuihudi Qinjian rishu de shijie” 睡虎地秦簡日書的世界, Zhongyang yanjiuyuan lishi yuyan yanjiusuo jikan 中央硏究院歷史語言硏究所集干1」 62.4 (1993), 623–75Google Scholar.

13. It is not clear that such a conflict existed anywhere in the early period–it has been argued that for the early Greeks, natural philosophy was originally more of a “faith,” only later to become subject to empirical verification. See, for example, Tanvbiah, Stanley Jeyaraja, Magic, Science, Religion, and the Scope of Rationality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 10Google Scholar.