T.He Geography of the Afterlife Altered Significantly During the Tran

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death and otherwordly journey guolong lai

Death and the Otherworldly Journey in Early China as Seen through Tomb Texts, Travel Paraphernalia, and Road Rituals

.he geography of the afterlife altered significantly during the tran- T sition from the Warring States (ca. 480–221 bc) period to the uni- fied empires of Qin (221–207 bc) and Western Han (206 bc–9 ad). One such alteration involved the abode of the dead, with resulting notions about an otherworldly journey. In recent years, bamboo and silk manuscripts, paintings, sculpture, and other artifacts excavated in south China have provided evidence for this. Since the conditions for preservation in southern China are better than in the north, excavations in the Chu cultural sphere of the Warring States period, including present- day Hunan, Hubei, southern Henan, and Anhui provinces, provide us with a diachronic section of continuing cultural deposits rarely seen in other regions. Chu and its adjacent areas, at times viewed as barbaric, exotic, and decadent, were in fact quite influential in the development of Chinese concepts of cosmology and the afterlife. Images, texts, and objects excavated from tombs in this region show us that burial rites furnished a tomb with proper travel outfits. Death was imagined by con- temporaries as a journey during which travelers required protection. It is also evident, from both the ritual canons and excavated manuscripts, that funerary rites incorporated road rituals, the purpose of which was to ward off evil influences on this postmortem passage. The notion of otherworldly journeys has been the subject of several recent scholarly treatises and academic conferences.1 Related

This article was first presented at a panel of the Fifty-sixth Annual Meeting of the Associa- tion for Asian Studies, San Diego, California, March 4–7, 2004. I would like to thank Lothar von Falkenhausen, Suzanne E. Cahill, Edward L. Davis, Mark E. Lewis, Yuri Pines, and Erica Brindley for their stimulating discussions. I am also grateful to the two anonymous readers for their criticisms and suggestions, and the editors of Asia Major, John Kieschnick and Howard L. Goodman, for their assistance and guidance. I am responsible for any errors. Funding for this project was partly provided by the University of Florida Office of Research and Graduate Programs through the Fine Arts Scholarship Enhancement Award Fund. 1 Carol Zaleski, Otherworld Journey: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times (New York and Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1987); I. P. Couliano, Out of the World:

1 guolong lai phenomena have also been discussed by scholars of early and medieval Chinese literature.2 But the origins of this idea and its early development have not yet been fully explored. In what follows, I utilize archeological finds, both texts and objects, to explore the religious dimensions of these journeys. First I briefly discuss the changing abode of the departed, and the temporal and spatial conceptions related to travel in early China. The clear distinction between the tame and the wild worlds motivated the construction of the tomb as a waystation — a liminal place for preparing and outfitting the departed soul. Then I discuss both the tomb objects that can be termed travel paraphernalia and funerary rites that were, in some sense, road rituals. This vision of the afterlife as an otherworldly journey resulted from an expansion of geographical knowledge of the outside world and from new and much- discussed models of cosmology during the Warring States period. The afterlife and its journey became a source for later literary, poetic, and figural representations.

BEYOND THE TOMB: THE NEW ABODE OF THE WAR DEAD

The cult of the dead has a long history, starting at least from the Neolithic period in China. During the Shang (ca. 1500–ca. 1050 bc) and Western Zhou (ca. 1050–770 bc) dynasties, the dead, at least those who were members of the royal families and the nobility, were generally thought to reside underground in family cemeteries. It seems that later on they were thought to reside in the Yellow Spring, or huangquan ”,႓ੈ, as suggested in a Zuozhuan ؐႚʳstory,3 or in the “underground

Otherworldly Journeys from Gilgamesh to Albert Einstein (Boston and London: Shambhala, 1991); John J. Collins and Michael Fishbane, eds., Death, Ecstasy and Other Worldly Journeys (Albany: State University of New York P., 1995). 2 Robert Ford Campany, “Return-from-Death Narratives in Early Medieval China,” Journal of Chinese Religions 18 (1990), pp. 91–125; idem, “To Hell and Back: Death, Near-Death, and Other Worldly Journeys in Early Medieval China,” in Collins and Fishbane, Death, Ecstasy, pp. 343–60. David Hawkes and David Knechtges have discussed the literary conventions of spirit journeys in the Chuci and in the rhapsodies of the Han; see David Hawkes, “The Quest of the Goddess,” in Cyril Birch, ed., Studies in Chinese Literary Genres (Berkeley: U. California P., 1974), pp. 42–68; David R. Knechtges, “A Journey to Morality: Chang Heng’s The Rhap- sody on Pondering the Mystery,” in Chan Ping-leung et al., eds., Essays in Commemoration of the Golden Jubilee of the Fung Ping Shan Library (1932–1982): Studies in Chinese Librarian- ship, Literature, Language, History and Arts (Hong Kong: The Fung Ping Shan Library of the University of Hong Kong, 1982), pp. 162–82. 3 The story of lord Yin ឆֆʳmeeting his estranged mother in an underground tunnel is in -୺, annot., Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu ਞટؐႚࣹ (Beijing: Zhong܄Zuozhuan; see Yang Bojun ᄘ hua, 1981; hereafter, CQZ Z ), pp. 14–15. See also Xiao Fudeng ᘕ壂࿆, Xian Qin Liang Han .৸უ൶଺ (Taipei: Wenjin, 1990), ppט٣఻ࠟዧଭ੺֗壀 mingjie ji shenxian sixiang tanyuan 16–23; Mu-Chou Poo, In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion (Al-

2 death and otherworldly journey as mentioned in bronze inscriptions.4 Family ties were as important in the afterlife as in life. The fact that the family of the diseased willingly invested so much energy and resources in the disposal of the dead body is a good indication of the great religious power the dead possessed. Moreover, the souls of the ancestors were thought, as the oracle bone and bronze inscriptions testify, to ascend and to descend ℉૾ from the place of the High God (disuo ০ࢬ, or ০ݪ) and bring blessings to their descendants below. Thus, clearly there existed the idea of a vertical axis between the place of the High God and the human realm (and by extension, the Yellow Spring and the “underground”), through which the royal ancestors communicated with their offspring. Their passage between Heaven and Earth is technically also a journey, but this journey differs significantly from the otherworldly journey that I plan to explore in the following pages. First, in the Shang and early-Zhou cases, the protagonist in the journey was either one of the venerated and almighty ancestors or a religious specialist (such as a spirit medium),5 while in the otherworldly journey in the Warring States period, the protagonist was, as Robert Ford Campany has explained, “an ordinary guy,” who “could be anybody.”6 The ordinariness of the protagonist brings to light a defining characteristic of the everyday religion that emerged during the Warring States period. The second difference between these two types of journeys is the shift in the orientation of the axis from a vertical one to an East–West horizontal one. The idea of a “journey to the west (or northwest)” in the afterlife became prevalent during the Warring States. Along with this change was the relocation of postmortem paradises to this world. The mythical places were located at the margins of the universe, such as Mount Kunlun ࣒ࠗ՞ in the west and the Penglai ᓒဒ archipelago in the east. They were parts of the imagination about the afterlife. And after the middle of the Western Han, transcendental paradises, such

bany: State University of New York P., 1998), pp. 62–68; Laurence G. Thompson, “On the Prehistory of Hell in China,” Journal of Chinese Religions 17 (1989), pp. 27–41. ײ ࠸ቓᤩ֮, in Guwenzi yanjiuګZhang Zhenglang ്ਙ≅, “Aichengshu ding shiwen” ঩ 4 ઔߒ 5 (1981), collected in Zhang Zhenglang, Zhang Zhenglang wenshi lunji ്ਙ≅֮׾ᓵڗ֮ ႃ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2004), pp. 581–86; Hayashi Minao, “Concerning the Inscription ‘May Sons and Grandsons Eternally Use This [Vessel],’” Artibus Asiae 53.1–2 (1993), pp. 51–57. 5 K. C. Chang, “The Animal in Shang and Chou Bronze Art,” H J AS 41.2 (1981), pp. 527– 54; idem, Art, Myth, and Ritual: The Path to Political Authority in Ancient China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U.P., 1983), pp. 44–55. 6 Campany, “To Hell and Back,” p. 343.

3 guolong lai as the realm of the Queen Mother of the West, 7 Mount Tai ௠՞,8 and other local, sacred gathering places of celestials and immortals,9 became the destinations to which the departed souls were supposed to make their otherworldly journey.10 The picture of the afterlife during the crucial six centuries between the early Warring States and the middle of the Western Han is, however, still far from clear. Various theories have been proposed concerning the abode of the dead.11 The dominant one is that “[b]efore the idea of a transcendent paradise had been fully developed, a happy conclusion to the soul’s story might simply be to return to its homeland,”12 and the tomb is considered as the “happy home,” or the underground “permanent home,” of the deceased.13 Certainly, as many scholars have pointed out, the compartmentalization of mortuary space does evoke the organization of a domestic dwelling, for instance, the famous early- Warring States tomb of marquis Yi of Zeng at Suizhou, Hubei, with its four compartments resembling the ruler’s private quarters, ceremo- nial court, armory, and harem.14 Furthermore, replicas of buildings, servants and domestic animals, rice fields, and even toilets, in later Eastern Han tombs give the impression that the tomb was designed to copy the domestic house. However, this idea of tombs as underground houses is at best an incomplete picture of the conception of tombs in early China. In this essay, I start from an assumption that this sort of replication does not necessarily mean that tombs were essentially con-

7 Michael Loewe, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (Taipei: SMC Publish- ing Inc., 1994); Wu Hung, “Where Are They Going? Where Did They Come From? Hearse and ‘Soul-carriage’ in Han Dynasty Tomb Art,” Orientations 29.6 (1998), pp. 22–31. Jingtian yu chongdao, zhonggu jingjiao Daojiao xingcheng de sixiang shi beijing ,ڟLiu Yi Ꮵ 8 .ऱ৸უ׾હན (Beijing: Zhong hua shuju, 2005), pp. 86–87ګᆖඒሐඒݮײᄃ֚ፖശሐխ 9 Terry F. Kleeman, “Mountain Deities in China: The Domestication of the Mountain God and Subjugation of the Margins,” JAOS 114.2 (1994), pp. 226–38. 10 This does not mean that the East-West horizontal axis completely replaced the vertical one, rather the dimensions of the spirit journey expanded to multiple directions. The vertical axis was still an important one even in later Han tomb texts and land contracts. One example is the Xuning wooden strips, which states that the deceased Xuning “below enters the Yel- low Spring, [and] above enters Blue Heaven;“ see Donald Harper, “Contracts with the Spirit World in Han Common Religion: The Xuning Prayer and Sacrifice Documents of A.D. 79,” CEA 14 (2004), pp. 227–67. 11 For a most recent survey, see Mu-chou Poo, “Afterlife: Chinese Concepts,” in Lindsay Jones, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion, new edn. (New York: Macmillan Co., 2005) 1, pp. 169–72. 12 Wu Hung, “The Earliest Pictorial Representations of Ape Tales,” TP 73 (1987), p. 99. 13 Wu Hung, “Art in Its Ritual Context: Rethinking Mawangdui,” EC 17 (1992), pp. 111–45. 14 Wu Hung, “The Art and Architecture of the Warring States Period,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. (Cambridge, Cambridge U.P., 1999), pp. 721–23.

4 death and otherworldly journey ceived as underground domestic places, but that it was the result of an elaboration of an earlier concept of tame versus wild space. In order to argue how these spaces worked and the impact that the dichotomy had on the otherwordly journey, I look first at early evidence concerning the abode of the war dead in the Warring States period, in which we see a disruption of the “happy home” model. New evidence suggests that the war dead were supposed to reside in a place “at the edge of Mount Fu and in the wilds of Buzhou լࡌ” in the northwest of the universe. In Tomb Number 56, excavated at ສ, in Hubei (reported to be comparable inۂ Jiudian ԰ࢋ, Jiangling date to Baoshan Tomb Number 2, ca. 316 bc), archeologists discovered an incantation written on bamboo slips.15 The incantation (strips 43–44) was a prayer for men who were slain by weapons, as in the following passage.16 (Please note: for quoted Chinese passages I use the □ symbol to represent illegible or somehow missing characters; square brackets [ ] to indicate restored words or phrases; and parentheses ( ) to show the equivalent in conventional script. In English translational passages, I use this journal’s system of [ ] for those words needed to fill out the intent of the original syntax and ( ) for any remark or added datum that the translator offers. Translations quoted from previously published sources, however, copy exactly as printed.) (strip 43) [*Kəw!17 I] dare to declare to Wuyi, the Son of X. You reside at the edge of Mont Fu and in the wilds of Buzhou. God18 said that you had no occupation and commanded you to direct those who died by weapons. Today, so-and-so will wish to eat. So-and-so dares to take his wife… to be your wife. (strip 44) Cut strips of silk and fragrant provisions are offered for the sake of so-and-so at the place of Wuyi. Lord, in the past you received so-and-so’s cut strips of silk and fragrant provisions. Would you let so-and-so come back home

-ઔߒࢬ, ed., Jiangling Jiu dian Dongײەઊ֮ढקHubei sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo ྋ 15 -ສ԰ࢋࣟࡌች (Beijing: Kexue, 1995), pp. 49–51, 53; see also Hubei sheng wenۂ zhou mu wu kaogu yanjiusuo and Beijing daxue zhongwenxi, eds., Jiu dian Chu jian ԰ࢋᄑ១ (Beijing: Zhong hua, 2000; hereafter, Jiu dian), pp. 149–55, 161–70. 16 Translation (with modifications) follows Donald Harper, “A Warring States Prayer for Men Who Die by Weapons,” unpub. ms.; Chinese version, “Zhanguo shidai bingsizhe de dao- ऱᡷ᢯, trans. Chen Songchang ຫ࣪९, is published in Jianbo yanjiu yi congृڽ܎זci” ᖏഏழ ១ࢇઔߒ᤟ហ 2 (1998), pp. 30–42. 17 The phonetic reconstruction of “gao” follows Axel Schuessler, A Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese (Honolulu: U. Hawaii P., 1987), p. 190. 18 Here I follow Harper’s translation of “di” as “god,” but it should be noted that this “di” is certainly not the same as the High God (di, shangdi) in Shang and Western Zhou religions. For discussion of the difference between these two, see Liu, Jingtian yu chongdao, pp. 131–47.

5 guolong lai

㢒ʳ(ዿ) ࡺʳʳ ʳ(༚) ՞հ :(ڎ)հ՗ࣳʳ ʳ□□ܫto eat as usual. [㽔! 19] ཊ ֲ(վ)ܶ .ृڽഗ), լࡌհ⅒ʳ(ມ), ০ષ(ᘯ) 㢒(ዿ)ྤࠃ, ࡎ㢒(ዿ)׹܎) ၦ) ( ᦰ) ਬ࣍) א៮] ኞ॑២] .(ڿ)ࠡࡠ□ࡠՖאਬʳ ʳ(ല)඿堞(ଇ), ਬཊ ʳ20 ࠹ਬհ ʳ(៮)ኞ॑២, ᪩(৸)ਬ㾔(ࠐ)ូ堞(ଇ)ਚ.21ٻܩհࢬ:ʳ(ڎ)ࣳʳ ʳ Structurally, Tomb 56 is a typical small-scale vertical-pit burial with a single coffin and two niches for storing grave goods; these features are commonly seen in Warring States Chu tombs.22 The grave goods and the manner in which they were buried are also popular in tombs of this scale. It contains about thirty pieces of grave objects. In the head-niche there are a ceramic ding-tripod and a hu-vessel (both are imitations of the bronze ritual vessels), a bronze spoon, two lacquer ear-cups, a lacquer box, and a set of lacquered armor. The side-niche contains a bronze sword in a wooden box, a bamboo quiver holding seventeen arrow heads, a bamboo bow, a wooden bow, a coarse- and a fine-toothed comb (both made of wood), and a scroll of bamboo slips encompassing an iron book knife and an ink box that contains a block of black pigment, claimed to be the earliest ink cake ever discovered.23 The incantation is among the bamboo slips discovered in the side- niche. The precise organization of these slips is unclear, since most of the slips have been reduced to fragments. However, based on its for- mulaic ritual language and its association with almanac manuals, the daybooks” (rishuֲ஼), written with the same style and in the same“ physical format, I consider this incantation to be a “model text” — a written template — included in the tomb as part of the scribe/ritualist’s manuals, rather than a real, situational incantation for the tomb occupant, as some scholars have suggested.

19 The characters in square brackets are added based on Zhou Fengwu ࡌᏕն, “Jiu dian ૹ൶, ZYYY 72.4 (2001), pp. 943–45. This isڎࣳܫChu jian Gao Wuyi chongtan” ԰ࢋᄑ១ ,ڈpart of the formula that often appears in the beginning of incantations. See Qiu Xigui ᇗᙔ ڗ֮ײ Mawangdui yishu shidu suoyi” ್׆ഔ᠔஼ᤩᦰጅᤜ, collected in his Guwenzi lunji“ ᓵႃ (Beijing: Zhong hua, 1992), pp. 532–33; and Donald Harper, Early Chinese Medical Lit- erature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (London and New York: Kegan Paul Interna- tional, 1998), p. 291, n. 3. 20 Li Jiahao ޕ୮௯ identifies this graph as xi ࣏ and reads as xi Ք; see idem, “Jiudian Chu ,ઔߒ, in his Zhuming zhongnian yuyanxuejia zixuan jiڎࣳܫjian Gao Wuyi yanjiu” ԰ࢋᄑ១ ;୮௯࠴ (Hefei: Anhui jiaoyu, 2002), pp. 325–26ޕ ,፿ߢᖂ୮۞ᙇႃڣխॹټLi Jiahao juan ထ see Guodian Chu mu zhujian ພࢋ ;ٻ but Qiu Xigui thinks this is a corrupted form of xiang 亞 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1995), p. 120. For different explanations of the graph, see Tangێᄑች Yuhui ྏ塒༡ and Wu Baoliang 㤴ߜᣪ, “Guodian Chu jian wenzi shiling (si pian)” ພࢋᄑ ᖂႧʳand Xie Guihua ᝔ெဎ, eds., Jianbo yanjiu ១ࢇޕ ਕሿ, ؄ᒧ, in Li Xueqinڗ១֮ ઔߒ, 2001, vol. 1, p. 200; Ji Xiaojun ᕧ՛૨, “Shi Chu jian zhong de ‘X’ zi” ᤩᄑ១խऱ ’www.bamboosilk.org, July 21, 2002; Wang Ning ׆ኑ, “Shenlun Chu jian zhong de ‘xiang ,ڗ .www.bamboosilk.org, August 15, 2002 ,ڗٻᓵᄑ១խऱع ”zi 21 Jiangling Jiu dian Dongzhou mu, pl. 113; see also Jiu dian, pp. 13, 50. 22 Jiangling Jiu dian Dongzhou mu., pp. 49–51. 23 Jiu dian, pp. 150–53.

6 death and otherworldly journey

My argument is partially based on the occurrence of the place- holding pronoun mou ਬ, a pronoun for an unspecified person, date, or location, in the incantation text. In a real situation, mou would be replaced by a person’s name, the person who will be the beneficiary of the ritual. It is a practice that is common in early ritual texts (for example, Yili Ꮪ៖),24 in such medical texts as “Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments” and “Recipes for Various Cures” from the Mawangdui medical literature,25 and in medical recipes from Han Tomb Number 30 Hubei,26 and in exemplary legal documents and ,؀at Zhoujiatai ࡌ୮ “daybooks.”27 Scholars have debated the referent of mou. Was it a ritual specialist,28 a person killed by weapons,29 or the dying patient who was eventually buried in this tomb?30 My view is that the multiple mou in the text do not necessarily represent a single entity, but rather, as the examples in the Mawangdui medical incantation clearly show,31 it could

24 Numerous examples are in Yili Ꮪ៖. The most instructive is in sect. “Shisang li” Փໜ ៖: after the death of a person, a banner is made, on which is written “the coffin of so-and-so by the surname of so-and so ਬּਬհ਱.” In fact, archaeologists found three banners in the Han tombs (M22, M23, M2) at Mozuizi in Wuwei, Gansu province, bearing the inscriptions: հ਱; ࡤፔ۫㸵⿄ᖄߺ໹՗ᆓհ[਱]. See Yili zhushu֒܄ࡤፔ྄॰ߺ് □□ հ਱; ؓສᄃࠃߺ് Ꮪ៖ࣹง (SSJZS edn.; rpt. Taipei: Yiwen yinshuguan, 1997), “Shisangli,” pp. 411–12; Zhong- guo kexueyuan kaogu yanjiusuo and Gansu sheng bowuguan, Wuwei Han jian ࣳ৖ዧ១ (Bei- .ʳ25, pl. 23ءjing: Wenwu, 1964), pp. 148–49, moben ᐲ Mawangdui Han mu boshu zhengli xiaozu, Mawangdui Han mu boshu ್׆ഔዧችࢇ஼ 25 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985) 4, pp. 38, 45, 49, 50, 67, 69, 128–29. In all these cases, “mou” appears in medical incantations. See also Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, pp. 243, 253, 260, 262–64, 291, 294, 370–71, cases in which he translates mou as “so-and-so.” 26 Hubei sheng Jingzhou shi Zhouliangyuqiao yizhi bowuguan, comp., Guanju Qin Han mu jiandu ᣂऊ఻ዧች១ᡪ (Beijing: Zhong hua, 2001), pp. 129–32, 136. 27 Several e.g. in Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian zhengli xiaozu, ed., Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian ጕ ១ (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990; hereafter, Shuihudi), pp. 58, 149–64, 210, 247. In theێ఻ችچॡ .Ԭ, ׇ, ԭ, etc.) are also used as place-holders ,ظ) legal texts, the Ten Heavenly Stems .ᖂ໴ 1999.2, p. 145ײە ሿ, “Du Jiudian Chu Jian” ᦰ԰ࢋᄑ១, Kaogu xuebaoޕ Li Ling 28 29 Harper, “Warring States Prayer”; Zhou, “Jiu dian Chu jian Gao Wuyi chongtan,” pp. 953–54. 30 Li, “Jiudian Chu jian Gao Wuyi yanjiu,” pp. 318–38; Zhou, “Jiu dian Chu jian Gao Wuyi chongtan,” pp. 941–959. Li Jiahao’s argument about the nature of the Jiu dian incantation was based explicitly on the parallel he tried to construct between Jiu dian M56 and Baoshan M2. But these two sets of manuscripts are of a very different nature. The Baoshan manuscripts are “real” legal cases, divination and sacrificial records for the tomb occupant, while the Jiudian incantation is a normative manual that is closer in nature to manuscripts such as the daybooks and legal texts from the Shuihudi Qin tomb (M11). 31 The text states: “If by misfortune you are shot by the yu, venomous snake, and bees, chant an incantation and spit at it thrice. Name the creature that did the shooting with its name, saying ‘So-and-so. Your five brothers, so-and-so knows all your names … . (At this point the text is missing.) So-and-so is a murderer. If you do not cause so-and-so’s ailment to desist, once նԳ, ਬ౉ཕכݬ(ڿ)հ, ֳ: “ਬ, Ֆټټࠡ୴ृא ,լࢉ੡⪮ۧ๢ᇎ୴ृ, ఴ, ໤հԿܛ ”’.again ;ਬᇶ, ዿլࠌਬհఐբ, ׊༚ □ . See Mawangdui Han mu boshu 4, pp. 128–29…… ,ټव)ࠡ) Harper correctly points out that in these two sets of mou the first “so-and-so” represents the

7 guolong lai stand for different persons involved in the magico-religious performance: among the five mou in the Jiudian incantation, the first, third, and fifth all refer to the soul of the war dead, and the second and the fourth represent the person who initiates the incantation. The initia- tor (either a relative of the war dead or the ritual specialist) addresses Wuyi, Director of the War Dead, to request the soul of the war dead to come back to receive sacrificial meals. In short, the Jiudian incantation is not an isolated incident but a normative prayer that could speak to the everyday religious beliefs and practices in the Chu area during the Warring States period. In spite of the different interpretations of mou, the above incantation clearly states that the foot of Mount Fu and the wilds of Buzhou were the places of Wuyi (notice the word suo ࢬ “place” in parallel expression, such as the aforementioned disuo “the place of the High God” of Shang and Western Zhou times). It is also worth noting that cut strips of silk (in other words, “spirit money”) and fragrant provisions were used to entreat Wuyi. Such strips and food provisions were found among the grave goods buried with the dead in many tombs of the period.32 As for Fu Mountain, Donald Harper has argued on phonological grounds that it is a double of Buzhou.33 Buzhou Mountain is mentioned in various Warring States and early-Han works such as “Lisao” ᠦᤵ ٨՗, and Huainanzi ෢ত՗. Mount in Chuci ᄑ᢯), Shanhaijing ՞௧ᆖ, Liezi) Buzhou was considered the nexus of the spirit world, the axis connecting the spirit and human worlds, or the Gate to the Dark Capital ৩ຟհ॰,34 name of the creature, the second the name of the person; Harper, Early Chinese Medical Lit- erature, pp. 370–71. Zhou Shirong ࡌ׈ዊ, “Mawangdui Han mu ‘niebi’ yu Jiangling Mashan yi hao Chu 32 ઔߒ 21ڗ֮ײ Guwenzi yanjiu ,ەສ್՞ԫᇆᄑችࢇኞۂmu ‘bobi’ kao” ್׆ഔዧች៮ኞፖ (2001), pp. 330–48; Zhao Dexin ᎓ᐚᤲ, Chuguo de huobi ᄑഏऱຄኞ (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe, 1995), pp. 123–49. 33 Donald Harper, “Warring States Prayer.” The phonetic reconstructions for “fu,” “bu,” and “zhou” are *bjəwk, *pjə, and *tjəw, respectively; Schuessler, Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese, pp. 181, 48, 847. Li Jiahao dismisses Harper’s interpretation as “unfounded” and “unbeliev- able” but without any substantial counterevidence. His hypothesis that Buzhou and Fushan refer to two mountain peaks in the Shanhaijing is based on phonological connections alone. Moreover, he suggests that “later people called this mountain with two uncircumscribed peaks Buzhou, and thus the name of Fushan was gradually forgotten.” Thus Li Jiahao and Harper end up at the same conclusion. See Li, “Jiu dian Chu jian Gao Wuyi yanjiu,” p. 321. Other scholars have attempted to locate the mythological Mount Buzhou and Fushan in specific lo- calities in China, which I think is taking the mythology at face value. See the discussions in ፖ(ܩ)ڎRao Zongyi 墌ࡲᙲ, “Shuo Jiu dian Chu jian zhi Wuyi (jun) yu Fushan” ᎅ԰ࢋᄑ១ࣳ ڎፖࣳܩຟڜ ”༚՞, WW 1997.6, pp. 36–36; Liu Zhaorui Ꮵਟᅗ, “Andu jun yu Wuyi jun .Wenshi ֮׾ 2002.2, p. 55 ,ܩ 34 John S. Major, Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four, and Five

8 death and otherworldly journey where spirits resided. Buzhou literally means “uncircumscribed,” de- scribing a state of geographic incompleteness and imperfection.35 This incompleteness results from the mythological battle between the two -٥ՠ and Zhuanxu ᠴቆ, a battle that ex legendary figures Gonggong plains the cosmology and topography of China: [W]hen Gonggong was fighting Zhuanxu for the Empire, he knocked against Mount Buzhou in his rage, breaking one of the pillars of heaven, snapping one of the threads which support the earth. For this reason heaven leans North West, and the sun, moon and stars move in that direction; the earth does not fill the South East, so the rivers and rainfloods find their home there. ࣏ृ٥ՠ ਚֲִਣ߭ ,קፂ࿪. ֚ႜ۫چ ,މፖᠴቆञ੡০, ৷ۖᤛլࡌհ՞,ʳ֚ਪ լየࣟত, ਚᑤቺୗូ෫.36چ ;ฝ෫ The battle between Gonggong and Zhuanxu was well known in the Chu region during the Warring States period, as implied in the “Heavenly Ques- tions” (“Tianwen” ֚ം), a text of Chu origin dated to the same period.37 Moreover, the northwest location of Mount Buzhou not only is attested in the abovementioned received texts but also can be safely deduced from excavated manuscripts. A passage similar to that in Liezi, quoted above, appears in the bamboo slips recently discovered in a War- ring States tomb at Guodian ພࢋ, Jingmen, in Hubei,38 and at Tomb Number 8 (early Han) at Kongjiapo ֞୮ࡕ, Suizhou, in Hubei.39 These texts suggest that when geographical knowledge expanded and people of the Warring States period recognized the topographical features of China — high altitudes in the northwestern mountains and lowlands in the southeastern plains and coast, they tried out different cosmological theories to explain why heaven was tilted to the northwest and the earth unfilled in the southwest. The Kongjiapo text in particular relates this of the Huainanzi (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993), pp. 162–63. 35 Ibid., pp. 78–79. 36 A. C. Graham, The Book of Lieh-tzu (New York: Columbia U.P., 1960), p. 96; For the date of Liezi, see Michael Loewe, ed., Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide (Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China, Inst. E. Asian Studies, U. California, Berkeley, 1993), pp. 299–301. For a similar passage in Huainanzi, see Liu Wendian Ꮵ֮ࠢ, Huainan honglie jijie ෢তព௺ႃᇞ (Beijing: Zhong hua, rpt. 1989), p. 80. See also Major, Heaven and Earth, pp. 62–64. 37 David Hawkes, The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology of Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets (Harmondsworth, Middlesex and New York: Penguin Books, 1985), pp. 127, 135–36. 38 Guodian Chu mu zhujian, p. 14, strip 14. ՒנچLiu Guosheng Ꮵഏ໏, “Chudi chutu shushu wenxian yu yuzhou jiegou lilun” ᄑ 39 ១ࢇ৸چࡶ࿨ዌ෻ᓵ, in Ding Sixinԭ؄ᄅ, ed., Chudi jianbo sixiang yanjiu ᄑڙᑇ๬֮᣸ፖ უઔߒ (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2005), pp. 238–52, esp. 252.

9 guolong lai

-topographic feature to the wuxing ն۩ (Five Phases) type of cosmol ogy. Titled “Sui” ᄣ, the text is written at the end of a hemerological text (rishu). The beginning of “Sui” reads: The heaven was not filled in the West, then the pillar of heaven broke. The earth was not filled in the East, then the thread sup- porting the earth snapped. Thus, name the East and establish it as Wood, and call it Azure. Name the South and establish it as Fire, [and call it Red. Name the West and establish it as] Metal, and call it White. Name the North and establish it as Water, and call it Black. Name the Center and establish it as Earth, and called it ֱࣟۖᖫټፂԯ࿪. ࣍ਢچ ,լߩֱࣟچ ;މYellow. ֚լߩֱ۫, ֚ਪԯ קټ .ᖫհ] ८, ᘯհػֱۖ۫ټ .ᘯհߧ] ,־তֱۖᖫհټ .հֵ, ᘯհॹ .խ؇ۖᖫհՒ, ᘯհ႓ټ .ᖫհֽ, ᘯհ႕ֱۖ As in the famous Chu Silk Manuscript, this passage concerns the repair of the damaged cosmos, using five-colored elements to support it.40 Although in these texts Mount Buzhou is not specifically mentioned, they all refer to the imperfection of the northwest (or more generally, the west). Such a term as “the wind from Buzhou” also appears in Huai- nanzi,41 the “Lüshu” ৳஼ʳchapter in Shiji ׾ಖ,42 Baihutong ػॡຏ,43 and Buzhou” thus seems almost synonymous“ 44.ڗin Shuowen jiezi ᎅ֮ᇞ with the northwestern direction. Furthermore, a diagram associated with a text named “Divination on the Placement of Doors” ऴ(ᆜ)৛॰ in the bamboo strips discovered in Qin Tomb Number 11 (ca. 217 bc) at Shuihudi, Yunmeng, in Hubei province, supports the idea that Buzhou is located in the northwest of the universe (see figure 1).45 All these cosmographical texts show that the Chinese fascination with the northwest did not start from the middle of the Western Han dynasty after the Queen Mother of the West became popular, as Anna Seidel posited,46 but rather at least three centuries earlier, in the late

40 For the passage in the Chu Silk manuscript, see Li Ling, Changsha zidanku Zhanguo Chu boshu yanjiu ९ޥ՗ᐘ஄ᖏഏᄑࢇ஼ઔߒ (Beijing: Zhong hua, 1985), pp. 64–73; and an Eng- lish translation by Li Ling and Constance A. Cook, in Constance A Cook and John S, Ma- jor, eds., Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China (Honululu: U. Hawai’i P., 1999), pp. 171–76. 41 Liu, Huainan honglie jijie, pp. 92, 133. See also Major, Heaven and Earth, pp. 77–79. .Sima Qian ׹್ᔢ, Shiji ׾ಖ (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), p. 1243 42 .Baihutong shuzheng ػॡຏงᢞ (Beijing: Zhong hua shuju, 1994), p. 346 ,مChen Li ຫ 43 .Beijing: Zhong hua shuju, 1963), p. 284) ڗXu Shen ๺შ, Shuowen jiezi ᎅ֮ᇞ 44 45 Shuihudi, pp. 98–99, 198–203; Liu Lexian Ꮵᑗᔃ, Shuihudi Qin jian rishu yanjiu ጕॡ .఻១ֲ஼ઔߒ (Taipei: Wenjin, 1994), pp. 148–52چ 46 Anna Seidel, “Afterlife: Chinese Concepts,” in Mircea Eliade, editor-in-chief, Charles J. Adams et al., eds., The Encyclopedia of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1987), p. 126.

10 death and otherworldly journey

Warring States period. The fascination is the result of an intensive in- tellectual effort at cosmological construction, an attempt to understand the structure of the cosmos and the geography of the afterlife. Cosmol- ogy and the conception of the afterlife are inextricably connected. As Joseph Needham and Colin Ronan aptly summarized, “[a]ll cosmolo- gies — or at least all early conceptions of the universe — have a religious aspect. ...In China the religious aspect of cosmology centered on the question of abodes of the dead, a subject that also deeply interested other civilizations.”47 Why should the war dead be treated differently, and instead of re- siding in a tame postmortem space, be located in the wilds of Mount Bu- zhou, the Gate to the Dark Capital in the northwest? The war dead, and others who died of unnatural causes, were probably buried differently as early as Shang times.48 But gradually, down to the sixth century bc, this different manner of burial was expanded into an idea of a different “place” after death in order to segregate malevolent ghosts from benevolent ancestors. As Figure 1. Diagram for “Divination the tales in Zuozhuan tell, a widespread on the Placement of Doors” fear was that the souls of the war dead Rendering of drawing on bamboo could become vengeful ghosts (li Ꮹ). In strips discovered in Qin Tomb no. a nobleman of 11 at Shuihudi, Yunmeng, Hubei ,ڶ܄ one story Boyou the state of Zheng ᔤ, was killed during province. Gate at the northwest and inter-lineage struggle with his own corner is named “Buzhou men” (“Gate of Buzhou”). After Shui- brothers, but came back as a baleful de- hudi Qin mu zhujian, p. 198. mon to kill his opponents.49 This event inspired the statesman Zichan’s ՗ข famous explanation of the ghostly existence of Boyou by way of hun Ꮢʳand po ᕗ dualism:

47 Joseph Needham and Colin Ronan, “Chinese Cosmology,” in Norriss S. Hetherington, ed., Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology (New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc 1993), p. 68. ଏߪᆻזײ׈࣑, “Lüelun woguo gudai fushenzang wenti” ฃᓵݺഏܦ See Wu Shichang 48 ംᠲ, in his Luoyinshi xueshu lunzhu ᢅଃ৛ᖂ๬ᓵထ (Beijing: Zhongguo wenyi lianhe chuban gongsi, 1984) 1, pp. 190–203; Zhongguo shehui kexueyuan kaogu yanjiu suo, Xin Zhong guo -࿇෼ፖઔߒ (Beijing: Wenwu, 1984), p. 94; for further refײەkaogu faxian yu yanjiu ᄅխഏ ,ऱଏߪᆻזerences and discussions, see Zheng Ruokui ᔤૉᆷ, “Shangdai de fushenzang” ೸ .ፖ֮ढʳ1988.2, pp. 17–23ײە Kaogu yu wenwu 49 CQZ Z , pp. 1291–93 (Zhao 7).

11 guolong lai

In the transformation of human life first [we see] what is called po. After this has been produced, its yang is called hun. By the use of things (that is, material substances), the quintessence is mul- tiplied, and the hun and po become strong, and thus the quintes- sential vigor grows and reaches the point of spiritual illumination. When an ordinary man or woman dies a violent death, the hun and po are still able to adhere to (that is, to possess) people in the form of a malevolent ghost; how much more so in the case of Liang xiao (Boyou), a descendant of our former ruler Mu Gong, the grandson of Ziliang, and the son of Zier, all ministers of our humble country, yet belonging to a family which had held for ,ᕗسࡨ֏ֳᕗ, ਝسthree generations the handle of government! Գ ࠡᏒ ,ڽ壄෯۟࣍壀ࣔ. ֐֛֐ഡൎڶאঞᏒᕗൎ, ਢ ,ڍढ壄ش .ၺֳᏒ ᗪֆհસ, ՗ߜհ୪, ՗ۘհܩ㻽ෞᏩ, उߜᔺ, ݺ٣א ,ᕗྫ౨႑ࠉ࣍Գ ՗, ඏ߳հହ, ൕਙԿ׈ߎ.50 Here Zichan presents a general belief that the souls of noblemen and noblewomen who had an abundance of material supplies could persist beyond death; ordinary folks who died of unnatural causes could also live postmortem, but often as evil ghosts. The potential for the soul to wander imperils both the living and the deceased and must be sepa- rated from the living by securing it a “place.” “When a ghost has a place ࢬូ, ԯլ੡Ꮹ,” asڶto return, it does not become a baneful demon ೒ Zichan declared.51 In the Boyou story, this place is provided by making his son inherit Boyou’s position, enabling sacrifices to be offered to the deceased father. Similar stories of vengeful ghosts in Zuozhuan and other pre-Qin texts also point to the belief of pacifying and segre- gating the baneful ghosts through sacrifices in order to secure them in a relatively tame place.52 Although Anna Seidel discussed the separation of the dead from the living based on what she called “celestial ordinances for the dead ᠜ችࠦ” of the Eastern Han period (25–220 ad),53 what is new about

50 CQ Z Z , p. 1292 (Zhao 7). Transl. (with modification) follows that of James Legge, The Ch’un Ts’ew, with the Tso Chuen (The Chinese Classics, vol. 5; rpt. Taipei: Southern Materials Center Inc., 1985), p. 618. See also the discussion of this paragraph in K. E. Brashier, “Han Thanatology and the Division of ‘Souls,’” EC 21 (1996), pp. 132, 148–49; Poo, Search of Per- sonal Welfare, pp. 62–63. 51 CQ Z Z , p. 1292 (Zhao 7); Legge, Ch’un Ts’ew, with the Tso Chuen, p. 618. 52 Similar stories of vengeful ghosts appear in Zuozhuan, Xiang 18, Xi 10, Ai 17, and Zhuang 8. 53 Anna Seidel, “Traces of Han Religion in Funerary Texts Found in Tombs,” in Akitsu- ,ki Kan’ei ટִ䕋䀆, ed., D±ky± to shˆky± bunka ሐඒ圲ࡲඒ֮֏ (Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppan 1987), pp. 21–57 and “Post-mortem Immortality, or the Taoist Resurrection of the Body,” in S. Shaked, D. Shulman, G.G. Stroumsa, eds., Gilgul, Essays on Transformation, Revolution

12 death and otherworldly journey the Jiudian incantation is not only that it evidences an early date for the notion of a place for the dead, but also that the place is located not in a tomb but “at the edge of Fu Mountain and in the wilds of Bu- zhou.” We find no indication here that the place of Wuyi should be a place for punishment or reward. Instead, it is a neutral place, free from any moral judgment.54 One can only speculate that the purpose of col- lecting the souls of the war dead in a place administered by Wuyi was to control these potent and fearful spirits, since during the Warring States period, as its name truly implies, wars, casualties,55 and calamities must have occurred quite often, and vengeful ghosts of war and violence abounded. It seems to have been an efficient way to control evil ghosts and demons through the gods who occupied a higher position in the religious hierarchy. Developing a bureaucratic system in order to organize and to control the spirits would fit the general trend of the political and religious transitions from the late Warring States to the early-Han empire.56 The bureaucratized segregation of the dead was conceived not only out of the fear of vengeful ghosts and death pollution, as Peter Nicker- son has rightfully pointed out,57 but also out of the social construction of the “otherness” of the afterworld. In reaction to Arthur P. Wolf’s classic study on the organization of the Chinese spirit world, in which gods correspond to bureaucrats, ancestors to living kin, and ghosts to strangers,58 P. Steven Sangren has pointed out that the conception of the otherworld should not be simply reduced to social categories.59 In- stead of treating the otherworld as the mirror image or the imitation of this world, Sangren has argued that the analysis should place collective and Permanence in the History of Religions Dedicated to R. J. Zwi Werblowsky (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987), pp. 223–37. 54 As Laurence G. Thompson’s study on the pre-history of hell in China indicates, in ancient China before the introduction of Buddhism, the afterlife was not thought to be the occasion for punishment of evil or reward of good; Thompson, “Prehistory of Hell,” pp. 27–41. 55 E.g., in 293 bc Qin armies killed an estimated 240,000 men of Han and Wei; in 273 bc 150,000 men of Wei; and in 260 bc 400,000 from Zhao; see Mark Edward Lewis, “War- ring States: Political History,” in Loewe and Shaughnessy, eds., Cambridge History of Ancient China, p. 268. 56 Jeffrey K. Riegel, “Kou-Mang and Ju-Shou,” CEA 5 (1989–1990), pp. 55–83; Donald Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” Taoist Resources 5.2 (1994), pp. 13–28. 57 Peter Nickerson, “Taoism, Death, and Bureaucracy in Early Medieval China,” Ph.D. diss. (Berkeley, U. California, 1996), pp. 83–174. 58 Arthur P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in idem, ed., Religion and Ritual in Chi- nese Society (Stanford U.P., 1974), pp. 131–82. 59 P. Steven Sangren, History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community (Stanford: Stan- ford U.P. 1987), pp. 127–65.

13 guolong lai cultural conceptions in a dialectic relationship to social structure. This approach emphasizes seeking actively the social mechanism through which the imaginary supernatural world is constructed. The socially constructed religious world is not a mere mechanical reflection of this world, but a realm that religious practitioners have actively imaged, constructed, and dwelled in. Although Sangren’s analysis is largely based on the popular religious practices in modern Taiwan, methodologically, I think, his point is relevant. Part of the dialectical relationship in the Chu religion is the construction of “otherness”– the contrast with the sociopolitical conditions of Warring States times. The active agent in this construction includes not only those everyday religious practitioners, such as the initiators of the incantation, but, more importantly, those ritual spe- cialists such as the occupant of Tomb Number 56 at Jiudian (where the incantation, quoted above, was discovered). The bureaucratic nature of the construction was also closely related to their position in the world of an emerging empire. The story in the Jiudian incantation says that Wuyi, the son of probably a prominent figure in the pantheon of the spirit world, was assigned as superintendent of the Chinese equivalent of Hades, since he was “the son of X” and “had no occupation.” As Zhou Fengwu ࡌᏕնʳpoints out, the use of the formula “so-and-so, the son of so-and-so” was an old, and probably already obsolete, way of identifi- cation used by the aristocracy, as shown in many Spring and Autumn period bronze inscriptions.60 Wuyi’s appointment as the Director of the War Dead could well stem from his being an important war spirit in early China, but the story told in the strips from Tomb Number 56 was casual and satirical, making one wonder about the meanings of the formula on another level. One’s wife could be taken, probably by force, to be “your (that is, Wuyi’s) wife.” The notion of “deities taking mortal women as wives Ղ壀Հഞࡠ,”61 often in the form of sacrifices of female servants or companions in death, is attested in both received texts and pre-Han archeological materials.62 The deities in the afterworld should be bribed with “cut strips of silk and fragrant provisions” in exchange

60 Zhou, “Jiudian Chu jian ‘Gao Wuyi’ chongtan,” p. 943, n. 7. For the formula in bronze inscriptions, Li Xueqin ޕᖂႧ, “Chunqiu nanfang qingtongqi mingwen de yige tedian “ਞટ তֱॹᎭᕴᎮ֮ऱԫଡ௽រ, in Ma Chengyuan ್ࢭᄭ, ed., Wu Yue diqu qingtongqi yanjiu .೴ॹᎭᕴઔߒᓵ֮ႃ (Hong Kong: The Woods Publishing Co., 1997), ppچ။ܦ lunwenji ᄑች, orig. pub. in Wenwuڝ٦ᓵෙ՟Հ ”Li Ling, “Zailun Xichuan Xiasi Chu mu ;80–177 ,Ⴞ (Beijing: Wenwu chubansheנpp. 47–60, collected in his Rushan yu chusai Ե՞ፖ ,1996.1 2004), pp. 225–41, esp. 228. 61 Shuihudi, p. 215; Li, “Jiu dian Chu jian Gao Wuyi yanjiu,” pp. 322–23. ऱԳ੪Գ௙זײIbid.; Huang Zhanyue ႓୶ࢂ, Zhong guo gudai de rensheng renxun խഏ 62 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990), pp. 154–225.

14 death and otherworldly journey for “letting so-and-so come back home to eat.” Here it seems that the principles by which the supernatural world operates are cast directly opposite of Warring States political ideals propagated by philosophers. The otherworld is where the ideals of this world are suspended and where the social evils of this world — nepotism, human sacrifice, and corruption — become natural and normal. Nevertheless, whether or not the otherworld reflects the reality of Warring States life, or poses as an alternative, the relationship between actual sociopolitical conditions and those afterlife constructions is anything but mere mechanics. Furthermore, the creation of a collective place for the war dead was probably one of the early instances in imagining religious communities.63 The bureaucratized segregation of the dead provided a predecessor, a model, for the later development of the transcendental paradise by organizing individuals into a community not bound by blood or any other type of family relationship.64 In the age of mass conscript armies composed of peasants that, unlike the Spring and Au- tumn period, were not drawn from kin-based units,65 such an imagined community might have created solidarity among its members. Away from the predominant mode of social organization in early China, the war dead were administered by deities such as Wuyi. As the Jiudian incantation has implied, the geographic separation between the tomb and the abode of the dead suggests that the departed souls must make a journey from the former to the latter. In addition, art historical evidence corroborates the notion of travel in the afterlife. The famous example is a silk painting of a male figure riding on a dragon, excavated in a late-Warring States tomb at Zidanku ՗ᐘ஄, Chang sha, in Hunan province (see figure 2, overleaf).66 Wearing an elaborate robe, standing in the center in profile, this nobleman, most likely the tomb

63 Other instances are the ideal communities in Daodejing and Zhuangzi; see Wolfgang Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness: Recurring Themes in Four Thousand Years of Chinese Cultural His- tory (New York: The Seabury Press, 1976), pp. 32–43. The Daoist modes of rejecting the structure of the mundane world – abstinence from grains, the most vital food sources for the Chinese over the centuries; the escape from society, by going into mountains, beyond the usual inhabitable realm; and the inwardly meditation – are all actively imagined and deliberately constructed against the life of this world. See Kristofer Schipper, The Taoist Body (Berkeley: U. California P., 1993). 64 Wolfgang Bauer writes, “For love forms an inextricable part of the network of famil- ial and social ties which usually are its direct result. …the Taoist tendency toward a detach- ment of the self from all ties of love in order to attain to the great freedom of the hermit, who can completely shake off such worldly burdens and ascend to heaven”; Bauer, China and the Search for Happiness, p. 185. 65 Lewis, “Warring States,” pp. 620–28. 66 Hunan sheng bowuguan, “Xin faxian de Changsha Zhanguo Chu mu bohua” ᄅ࿇෼ऱ९ ᖏഏᄑችࢇ྽, WW 1973.7, pp. 3–4, pl. 1; see Sofukawa Hiroshi 䰇ؒ՟㿡, Konronzan e noޥ ৵圸׈ڽխ㧺Գ圖༴圎圩זײטsh±sen, kodai Chˆgokujin ga egaita shigo no sekai ഼ി՞坂圸ࣙ ੺ (Tokyo: Chˆ± K±ronsha, 1981).

15 guolong lai

occupant, is in the midst of a high-speed journey, probably in the transition from this world to the world beyond. The tassels of the can- opy above him and his chin strap are depicted in such as a way — blown to the right by a strong breeze — to suggest motion. Moreover, the renowned Mawang dui silk banners of Lady Dai and her son have been interpreted by most scholars as illustrat- ing a staged journey undertaken in the afterlife, with the three distinct registers of the painting represent- Figure 2. Silk Painting of Man Riding on Dragon ing stages of transformation Discovered in Warring States tomb at Zidanku, as the deceased transforms Changsha, Hunan province. After Richard M. from buried corpse into an Barnhart et al., Three Thousand Years of immortal being of sorts.67 Chinese Painting (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1997), p. 23.

GUIDANCE ON TRAVEL IN THE DAYBOOKS

To understand what the otherworldly journey may have meant in early China, one must first approximate the notions of everyday journeys. The conception of an imaginary journey was likely based on real travels that people experienced during their lifetimes. This is because death was not only conceptually regarded as “a great journey Օ۩,”68

67 Loewe, Ways to Paradise, pp. 17–59; Anne Birrell, “Return to a Cosmic Eternal: The Rep- resentation of a Soul’s Journey to Paradise in a Chinese Funerary Painting c. 168 BC,” Cosmos 13.1 (1997), pp. 3–30; for a different interpretation, see Wu, “Art in Its Ritual Context.” Tosaki Tetsuhiko ֪സୃ৯ʳhas pointed that at least by the Qin dynasty daxing Օ۩ʳhad 68 already meant “a great journey,” referring to the imperial otherworldly journey to Heaven during the liminal stage immediately after death; Tosaki, “Chˆgoku kodai no dais± ni okeru .圸Օໜ圵圔圛坕Օ۩ጠ圵圮圎地, S Z 100.9 (1991), pp. 40–62, espזײdaik± shu ni tsuite” խഏ 44–50. Daxing is also attested in hemerological texts such as the two versions of daybooks excavated from Shuihudi; see Shuihudi, pp. 200, 242. Most scholars read daxing vaguely as a kind of grand journey, but do not interpreted it as otherworldly journey (except Liu Zeng- ៖ঋፖॾٛ, ZYYY۩נgui Ꮵᏺ၆, “Qin jian rishu zhong chuxing lisu yu xinyang” ఻១ֲ஼խ 72.3 [2001], p. 510). But I think it is probable that before its imperial designation it had been

16 death and otherworldly journey but also because practically, as I show, below, funerary rituals were directly related to travel rituals. Diverse grave goods connected to the practice and experience of travel found in recently excavated tombs make it possible for us to understand the principles of travel in early China. These artifacts include calendars, almanacs, cosmographic models, and technical manuals. Our knowledge of the conception of travel in everyday life during the Warring States and early Han has been greatly enhanced by recent archeological finds, especially by one type of manuscript that appears often in tombs, namely rishu, or “daybooks.”69 Timing is certainly an important aspect of the early Chinese journey; and divination, which in one sense can be understood as the science of timing, plays an important role in determining when one could travel. These hemerological manuals cover many aspects of everyday life, such as coping with illness, offering sacrifices to the ancestors, taking a wife, giving birth to a child, catching thieves, explaining dreams, and so on. Among the subjects covered in daybooks, the timing and rituals associated with travel are the most prominent.70 This is significant because such finds represent the dissemination and popularization of ritual practice through the use of texts. Indeed, the tomb occupants with whom daybooks were buried were not necessarily of the highest social rank, so that one might use the daybooks to generalize about travel in everyday life. In this section, I discuss the guiding rules for setting off and returning home, and their cosmological significance. In general, the hemerological manuals detail auspicious and inauspicious dates for travel and return, the directions one should avoid in travel, the magic rites one can perform to ensure a safe journey, and the sacrifices one should deliver to related local deities. The earliest daybook discovered so far is the one from Jiudian Tomb 56, the same used commonly to mean otherworldly journey. Mortuary religion was a very important part of hemerology in ancient China. From classical texts such as Zuozhuan and Yili, we know that almost all the mortuary ritual actions began with the selection of auspicious dates; See Liu Xu Ꮵፃ, “Chunqiu shiqi sangzang zhidu zhong de zangyue yu zangri” ਞટழཚໜᆻࠫ৫խऱᆻ ᖂઔߒ 2 (1994), pp. 189–200; Liu Ying Ꮵᅛ, “Du Zuozhuanײە ፖᆻֲ, Kaoguxue yanjiuִ de zeri liji” ᦰؐႚऱᖗֲᖟݲ, Wenshi ֮׾ 54 (2001), pp. 53–64; Liu Daochao Ꮵሐ၌, Zeji .ፖխഏ֮֏ (Beijing: Remin, 2004), pp. 407–17ٳyu Zhong guo wenhua ᖗ 69 Liu, Shuihudi Qin jian rishu yanjiu; Mu-Chou Poo, “Popular Religion in Early Imperial China: Observations on the Almanac of Shui-hu-ti,” T P 79 (1993), pp. 225–48; idem, Search of Personal Welfare, pp. 69–102; Wang Zijin ׆՗վ, Shuihudi Qin jian rishu jiazhong shuzheng .(ጟงᢞ (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu, 2003ظ఻១ֲ஼چጕॡ 70 Among the 425 bamboo strips of the daybook discovered at Shuihudi, 151 (over 35%) have contents directly related to travel. See Wang Zijin, “Shuihudi Qin jian rishu suojian xing .p. 45 ,1994.2 ,ײەዧۂ ఻១ֲ஼ࢬߠ۩ូࡵݲ, Jiang Han kaoguچgui yiji” ጕॡ

17 guolong lai tomb from which the incantation was found. The scroll of bamboo slips, discovered in the side-niche of the tomb, consists of 205 pieces of either complete or fragmentary strips.71 Here I use three strips, numbers 31–33, to explain how the hemerological manuals work. The three belong to one of the hemerological arts called “Congchen ហ߭” (“Collected chen” — chen referring to the Twelve Branches). Compared with a similar “Congchen” text (the Chu version) found in Shuihudi Tomb Number 11,72 it is clear that the order of the Twelve Branches shi’er chen ԼԲ߭, or shi’er zhi ֭) listed in each strip is in the order of) the twelve months (from the first to the twelfth). As a general rule, dates are enumerated by the combination of the denary stems (gan ե) and the duodenary branches (zhi). Thus the three strips can be translated as follows: (Strip 31) The dates whose branches are [“shen” in the first month], “you” [in the second month], “xu” [in the third month], “hai” [in the fourth month], “zi” [in the fifth month], “chou” [in the sixth month], “ying” [in the seventh month], “mao” [in the eight month], “chen” [in the ninth month], “si” [in the tenth month], “wu” [in the eleventh month], and “wei” [in the twelfth month] are called the “outside sunny days.” They are favorable for going out to do business,73 going out to the four quarters and into the wilds. If going out to hunt, you will get game. If there are people running away, you will not get them, and you will never hear from them again. If you set

71 Strips 1–12 are a text concerning probably a formula calculating the size of the field and the yield of the grains (see Zhao Fulin ஻壂ࣥ, “Jiu dian Chu jian bushi” ԰ࢋᄑ១ᇖᤩ, Zhong- yuan wenwu խ଺֮ढ 2002.5, pp. 51–54); strips 43–44 are the incantation text discussed above and strips 45–59 on geomancy; strips 13–24, 25–36 (two texts written separately in the upper and lower parts of the slips), 37–40 (the upper part) and 41–42, 37–40 (the lower part), 60–76, 77, 78–80, 81–87, 88–93, 94–95, 96–99, are hemerological texts, some having counterparts in the daybook excavated at Qin Tomb no. 11 at Shuihudi in Yunmeng, Hubei province. The rest of the strips after no. 100 are all fragments that cannot be read coherent- ly. For studies on the Jiu dian strips, besides those mentioned above, see Liu Lexian, “Jiu dian ,Chu jian rishu yanjiu” ԰ࢋᄑ១ֲ஼ઔߒ, Huaxue ဎᖂʳ2 (1996), pp. 61–70; Chen Wei ຫ೛ -Jiudian Chu rishu jiaodu jiqi xiangguan wenti” ԰ࢋᄑֲ஼ீᦰ֗ࠡઌᣂംᠲ, Renwen lun“ cong Գ֮ᓵហ, ed. Feng Tianyu (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue chubanshe, 1998), pp. 151–64; Li ສ԰ࢋᄑችᄣᒧ㱦១ۂ ”৊, “Jiangling Jiudian Chu mu sui pian canjian kaoshiښޕ Shoukui pp. 41–44; Yan Changgui ஶ࣑ ,2001.3 ,עᤄᖞ෻ઔߒᖂײ Guji zhengli yanjiu xuekan ,ᤩە ᒧڛ၆ʳand Zhong Wei ᝻❒, “Jiudian Chu jian rishu xiangzhai pian yanjiu” ԰ࢋᄑ១ֲ஼ઌ ઔߒ, Wuhan daxue xuebao ࣳዧՕᖂᖂ໴, 2002.4, pp. 417–22; Takamura Takeyuki ೏ޘࣳ ࢉ, “Kyˆten Sokan hisho no seikaku ni tsuite” ԰ࢋᄑ១ֲ஼圸ࢤ௑圵圮圎地, Meidai Ajia shi ronshˆ ࣔՕ坣坹坣׾ᓵႃ (1998) 3, pp. 1–23; and Kud± Motoo ՠᢏցߊ, “Kenjyo yori mida መ࿓ᇢᓵ, Chˆgoku,shakai to bunka խمګhisho no seiritsu katei shirun” ৬ೈ坒坔坉圩ֲ஼圸 .ഏषᄎ圲֮֏ 16 (2001), pp. 224–40 72 Shuihudi, pp. 231–32; see also Jiudian , pp. 187–88. 73 For the interpretation of “xingzuo” as “a trip to do labor or business,” or “a brief working trip,” see Liu, “Qin jian rishu,” p. 506; Li Jiahao’s note, in Jiu dian (n. 105, pp. 88–89).

18 death and otherworldly journey

ΕَΕ՗ΕکΕ߸Ε[ع] .up a net, you will obtain. Greatly auspicious ㋆؄ֱ⅒ ,܂۩אܓ ,ֲ(ਢષʳ(ᘯ) ؆ᷢ(ၺ ,آժΕഫΕ׮Ε߭ΕգΕ֑Ε .ٳೋʳ(ᛧ). ಲԳլ൓, ྤፊ. ๻ीʳ(ጻ) ൓, Օ ,៊ضא .ٳ ,ມ) ؆) (Strip 32) The dates whose branches are “you” [in the first month], “xu” [in the second month], “hai” [in the third month], “zi” [in the fourth month], “chou” [in the fifth month], “ying” [in the sixth month], “mao” [in the seventh month], “chen” [in the eighth month], “si” [in the ninth month], “wu” [in the tenth month], “wei” [in the eleventh month], and “shen” [in the twelfth month] are called the “outside harmful days.” They are not favorable for going out to do business, going out to the four quarters or into the wilds. [If you do], for sure you will encounter rebels and thieves, and you will encounter wars. Thus it is not favorable for making trips and doing ΕَΕ՗ΕժΕഫΕ׮Ε߭Εکwork in the wilds. Inauspicious. [߸]Ε ㋆؄ֱ⅒ʳ(ມ) ؆, ؘྤʳ74 ,܂۩אܓਢષʳ(ᘯ) ؆୭ֲ, լ ,عΕآգΕ֑Ε .ٳ⅒ʳ(ມ)ࠃ, լ܂۩࣍ܓਚ)ષ(ᘯ)լ)ײሖപಲʳ(࿋), ؘ܎. ਢ (Strip 33) The dates whose branches are “xu” [in the first month], “hai” [in the second month], “zi” [in the third month], “chou” [in the fourth month], “ying” [in the fifth month], “mao” [in the sixth month], “chen” [in the seventh month], “si” [in the eighth month], “wu” [in the ninth month], “wei” [in the tenth month], “shen” [in the eleventh month], and “you” [in the twelfth month] are called the “outside cloudy days.” They are favorable for offering sacrifices. It is auspicious to receive goods, but inauspicious to trade. If you go on a long-distance trip, it will be a prolonged journey. Thus it ΕَΕ՗ΕժΕഫΕ׮Εک .is not favorable to go out to do business ܂א .ٳ ,ผ, փʳ(Ե)ຄאܓ ,Ε߸, ਢષʳ(ᘯ) [؆] ອֲعΕآ߭ΕգΕ֑Ε .[܂]࣍۩ʳܓਚ)ષʳ(ᘯ)լ)ײ᎛۩, ៱ʳ(Ն). ਢא .ٳ׮ʳ(၉) ࠃ, լ All the dates of a year are classified into twelve categories: jie ࿨, yang ၺ, jiao ٌ, hai [୭], yin ອ, da ሒ, waiyang ؆ၺ, waihai ؆୭, waiyin and xiu ߐ (the exact meanings of these ,[٠ެ] ؆]ອ, jue ࿪, jueguang] terms are still not clear). The dates pertaining to the same categories share the same luck. For example, in Strip 31, those dates with “shen,”75 having their earthly branch in the first month, are called the date of waiyang,” ؆ၺ, or the “outside sunny day.” Those dates with “you” as“ their earthly branch in the second month are called the “outside day,” and so on.

74 The character should not be here; it is probably a scribe’s mistake. 75 Usually two or three days in a month share the same branches, since a permutated cycle of denary stems and duodenary branches is 60.

19 guolong lai

The method of divination, as seen here in the Jiudian rishu, is significantly different from methods employed in the Shang and Zhou periods. Divination concerning the auspicious and inauspicious dates for hunting, sacrifices, military expeditions, and other activities appear often in late-Shang oracle bones. But what the diviners consulted in that case was the “will” of the High God or the ancestors. Through the cracks on bones of sacrificed animals or on shells of divine turtles, the High God or the ancestors revealed directly their intention. In the hemerological texts, however, the elements that determined what was auspicious and what was not belonged to the allocation of cosmic time (shi’er chen). Certainly timing was also important in the Shang religion. As David Keightly observes, “to the Shang diviner, time was as portentous as place and direction; observed, shaped, and regulated, time was, like space, an indispensable dimension of religious cosmology, an integral part of all religious observance and divinatory prog- nostication.”76 However, Warring States divination was more structured and more mechanically regulated than that of the Shang and Zhou periods. The auspiciousness of a date did not depend on the whimsical “will” of the gods or the ancestors, or on the diviner’s interpretations, but on the mechanical allocation of the Twelve Branches, which, they thought, were an essential part of the cosmic system by which the universe operates. The cosmic system was in turn associated with the cultural memory of archaic and mythological events. Although divine deities were still part of the cultural construction of taboos in everyday life, their role was limited to that of a cultural model for people to emulate. The lower parts of Strips 37–40 from Jiudian Tomb Number 56 explain why some dates are inauspicious for certain activities: (Strip no. 37) In the five dates that contain “zi” [as their branch in a sixty-day cycle], one should not carry out a great affair. It will not be successful. It will destroy the courtyard, and one will incur great disasters (strip no. 38:) to oneself, and the disaster will ex- tend to one’s eldest son. In the five dates that contain “mao,” one should not carry out great affairs; God ordered (strip no. 39:) Yi to deliver fire to the Great Yu. [In the five dates that contain] “wu” one should not plant trees. In the five dates that contain “hai,” one should not nurture the six kinds of animals, (strip no. 40) because

76 David Keightley, The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space, and Community in Late Shang (ca. 1200–1045 B.C.) (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley; Center for Chinese Studies, 2000), p. 17.

20 death and otherworldly journey

this is the day when God ordered the slaughter of the six kinds Օࡏ (ڶ)ؘᄤࠡஅ, Ծʳ ,(ګ) Օࠃ, լৄ܂אױof animals. Յն՗, լ Յ] ;־ࡎ墿ේછհאՕࠃ; ০܂אױࠡߪ, ଜʳ(९) ՗࠹ࠡࡏ. Յն׮, լ□ .ᐯքឫհֲאఌք੪ឫ; ০հࢬאױᖫֵ. Յնَ, լאױն] ֑, լ The first taboo on the “zi ՗” dates plays with the multiple meanings of the character zi — both the first of the Twelve Branches and “son.” The most interesting ones are the second taboos on the “mao ׮” and hai َ” dates, which are based on two legends hinted at in received“ classics. In the “Teng Wengong, xia” ᑱ֮ֆʿʳՀʳchapter of Mengzi,77 the mythological sage-emperor Shun စ ordered his official Yi 墿 to help the Great Yu છʳto pacify the flooded realm by burning the forest and killing the animals. No duodenary branches were mentioned in the Mengzi text. But in the Jiudian strips, the branches of the dates of these “historical” events became the rationale for taboos in daily life. Similar historical memory plays out in the “Diagram of Genshan” (“Genshan tu” ۤ՞ቹ), a hemerological diagram excavated in the Shuihudi Qin tomb: certain dates are not auspicious for travel, because “this was the day when the Great Yu departed.” “If you go on travel, you will never be able to return.”78 Many other methods were used in selecting an auspicious date for travel.79 Special dates determined by the calendrical combinations of the Ten Stems and Twelve Branches determined potential success. In the wuxing cosmology, for example, water, wood, earth, fire, metal have ”,֑ their own designated dates or periods of potency.80 The branch “wu in strip 39 quoted above, belongs to the category of “fire” element. That is why one should not plant trees, because trees belong to the “wood” element, which is overcome by “fire.” On days that are “earth” dates, the same logic follows. It would be bad to travel because dust (“earth”) will then be in its most violent condition, and death likely. Another date that is designated as bad for travel (including the “grand journey”) is the date called “the day on which the Red God is -in charge ߧ০ᜯֲ,” when the Red God will punish people with catas trophe and misfortune (it should be noted that on this day almost all activities are warned against).81 Auspices for travel could also change according to the time of day, which was divided into four periods (dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight), and each season and each direction, in con-

77 Mengzi zhushu ࡯՗ࣹง (SSJZS edn., rpt. Taipei: Yiwen, 1997), “Tengwengong, xia,” pp. 97–98. 78 Shuihudi, pp. 189–90; Liu, “Qin jian rishu,” pp. 507–8. 79 Ibid., pp. 503–21. 80 Ibid., pp. 531–33. 81 Ibid., pp. 509–11.

21 guolong lai junction with the movement of the calendar, affected fortune as well. This ٩ way of determining the dates for travel is elaborated in later Xingde ऄʳtexts from Mawangdui, which includeڤ ᐚʳand the so-called Shifa a cycle of spirits who form part of the cosmo-calendrical plan of the otherworld, and with whom a traveler must deal.82 In addition to divining the time for setting off, another subject of divination was the equally important timing of the homecoming ូݲ. As Wang ,Zijin ׆՗վʳhas calculated, if we follow the Qin rishu from Shuihudi there are altogether fourteen types of taboos, and 165 days in a year are bad for travel in one way or another.83 Contradictions and incon- sistencies abound in divination. People of the Warring States period certainly understood the contradictory interplay among the different arts of calculation, and may have employed magical performances and rituals in part to resolve these contradictions. (For such performances, see the section on road rituals, below.)

CONCEPTIONS OF TAME AND WILD SPACE IN EARLY CHINA The expansion of geographical knowledge during the Warring States period enhanced the contrast between the tame, domestic world and the wild, outside world. This sharp awareness of the distinction between the two realms, which could be termed “cosmic consciousness,”84 reinforced the ethnocentric cosmology of the universe,85 and produced

and Chen Songchang ຫ࣪९, Mawangdui Han ڶFor the Xingde texts, see Fu Juyou ແᜰ 82 .mu wenwu ್׆ഔዧች֮ढ (Changsha: Hunan, 1992), pp. 132–43, including only Xingde B For a detailed study of these texts, see Marc Kalinowski, “The Xingde Texts from Mawangdui,” EC 23–24 (1998–1999), pp. 125–202; Chen Songchang reproduced all three (A, B, C) Xingde texts in his Mawangdui boshu Xingde yanjiu lungao ್׆ഔࢇ஼٩ᐚઔߒᓵᒚ (Taipei: Taiwan guji, 2001). Another two diagrams (not yet fully published) from Mawangdui, the so-called Yinyang wuxing” ອၺն۩, contain texts related to travel. Two fragments were published in“ ,Chen Songchang, ed., Mawangdui boshu yishu ್׆ഔࢇ஼ᢌ๬ (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian ऄ; see Mawangdui Hanڤ ”pp. 130–37. One of the diagrams has been renamed “Shifa ,(1996 -mu boshu zhengli xiaozu ್׆ഔዧችࢇ஼ᖞ෻՛ิ, “Mawangdui boshu Shifa shiwen zhai ऄᤩ֮ኴ૞, WW (2000.7), pp. 85–94. See a group of articles on “Shifa,” inڤyao” ್׆ഔࢇ஼ ,១ࢇઔߒ (Beijing: Wenwuנᥞ and Xing Wen ߴ֮, eds., Xinchu jianbo yanjiu ᄅۦ Ai Lan 2004), pp. 168–96. Some fragments were identified as a separate diagram, named “Chuxing ׭ (“Divination on Travel”); see Liu Lexian, Jianbo shushu wenxian tanlun ១ࢇᑇ۩נ ”zhan .๬֮᣸൶ᓵ (Wuhan: Hubei jiaoyu, 2003), pp. 115–30 ,(Wang Zijin, Qin Han jiaotongshi gao ఻ዧٌຏ׾ᒚ (Beijing: Zhongyang dangxiao, 1994 83 p. 556. 84 Here I emulate literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt’s notion of “planetary consciousness.” Through reading the travel writing of the eighteenth century, Pratt explores the close relationship between the expansion of geographical knowledge and the production of a Eurocentric “planetary consciousness”; Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), esp. chap. 2; also David Schaberg, “Travel, Geography, and the Imperial Imagination in Fifth-Century Athens and Han China,” Comparative Litera- ture 51.2 (1999), pp. 152–91. 85 Aihe Wang in a recent study posits that from the Shang to the Han dynasty, there was

22 death and otherworldly journey the otherness of the realms beyond the cultural core of early China, including the world of the afterlife in remote, cosmological margins.86 In the hemerological texts, this distinction between tame and wild spaces manifests itself in several ways. First of all, travel in general was divided into two types. The first type was short-distance trips, such as ;within the domestic realm of a city or a town ܂۩ brief working trips and the other covered ventures into the wilds, such as long-distance travel ᎛۩, long-term travels Ն۩ (or ९۩), and going out into the wilds .of the four quarters ㋆؄ֱມ؆ A second sort of distinction concerned the road rituals. For each type of travel, the associated rituals were different. For everyday move- ments, the rituals were much simpler than those for extended journeys. Often a quick reference, such as “Instant Guide for the Great Yu” (“Yuxuyu” છႊॏ) was consulted when making a short business trip. But for long distances, elaborate rituals and sacrifices to the deities in .charge of travel (ൄ۩, or Օൄ۩) were often carried out Third, the location of the road rituals often marked the borders of two realms. For example, the hemerological texts from both Shuihudi and Fangmatan identify the location for performing the “Pace of Yu” at the area immediately outside of the state’s gates ߶॰ (that is, passes or walls) or the city or town gate ߳॰. These distinctions and the location for the “Pace of Yu” suggest that the city and town gates were the threshold (in fact the Shuihudi text mentioned the word kun ܺʳ[ⶌ], the sill of the gate), the liminal point of departure, demarcating the two realms: the tame world where daily and familiar activities took place and the wild world — strange, dangerous, and uncertain. The classical description of these two worlds is found in the “Zhao- hun” ࢵᏒ (“Summons of the Soul”) portion of Chuci.87 The departed soul is warned not to go to the east, the south, the west, the north, and not to go up to heaven, or down to earth, the Dark Capital ৩ຟ, but to come back and “enter the gate of the city,” come back to the sweet home of the former dwelling. The contrast drawn between the tame, sweet, peaceful home and the wild, grotesque, and perilous outside a shift from sifang cosmology to wuxing cosmology. In both models centrality is manifested in various forms of superiority over the peripheral; Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge U.P., 2000). 86 Tong Shuye ࿙஼ᄐand Gu Jiegang ᥽ᕂଶ, “Handai yiqian Zhong guo ren de shijie ছխഏԳऱ׈੺ᨠ࢚ፖ഑؆ٌຏऱਚࠃ, in Tongאזguannian yu yuwai jiaotong de gushi” ዧ -ᢞᓵ֮ႃ (Shanghai: Zhongە෻چזײShuye, Zhongguo gudai dili kaozheng lunwenji խഏ hua shuju, 1962), pp. 1–42. 87 Hawkes, Songs of the South, pp. 219–31.

23 guolong lai world is dramatic. These distinctions have prompted some scholars to conclude that the “happy home” was the only destination that the departed soul could go to and that the tombs were constructed as replicas of the real home starting from the Warring States period.88 How- ever, as I have argued elsewhere, the Warring States practice of tomb construction imitating the structure of a house is a continuation of a funerary practice of coffin decoration since the late Western Zhou period. The house-invoking features of tomb construction are part of the construction of a tame space — a place with familiar objects, an old haunt, where the departed soul might prefer to linger, as the bereaved also strongly wished they would.89 In addition, in the Warring States pantheon, as the Baoshan sacrificial records indicate, there exist pairs of deities that were situated, respectively, in tame and wild spaces. In the offering lists there are ׌ (strip no. 207) and Gongچsets of deities, for example, Ye dizhu ມ ,Ւ (strip nos. 213, 215ٿ ׌ (strip nos. 202, 207); Houtuچdizhu ୰ Ւ (strip nos. 214, 233); Xing ۩ (stripٿand Gong houtu ୰ (243 ,237 no. 208) and Gong xing ୰۩ (strip no. 210). Most scholars think that these are just different names for the same deity.90 However, both Ye dizhu and Gong dizhu appear on Baoshan strip no. 207 as two separate spirit entities. The gong and ye distinction also appears in the sacrificial records excavated from such contemporaneous tombs as Wang- shan Tomb Number 1 (strip nos. 28, 109, 115),91 Tianxingguan Tomb Number 1, and Qinjiazui Tomb Number 99.92 It is worth noting that the gong (“palace,” “house,” or “home”) and ye (“wild”) distinction is exclusively applied to the terrestrial realm. ʳalready noticed this tame؟The Qing-era scholar Sun Xidan ୪ݦ and wild distinction in the organization of the early Chinese pantheon

壆זYu Weichao ঒೛၌, “Handai zhuhouwang yu liehou muzang de xingzhi fenxi” ዧ 88 ٣఻ࠟዧ ঀ׆ፖ٨ঀችᆻऱݮࠫ։࣫, collected in idem, Xian Qin liang Han kaoguxue lunji ᖂᓵႃ (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), pp. 117–18; Guo Dewei ພᐚፂ, Chu xi muzang yanjiuײە ᄑߓችᆻઔߒ (Wuhan: Hubei Jiaoyu, 1995), p. 59; Wu Hung, “From Temple to Tomb: An- cient Chinese Art and Religion in Transition,” EC 13 (1998), pp. 78–115; idem, “Art in Its Ritual Context.” 89 Guolong Lai, “The Baoshan Tomb: Religious Transitions in Art, Ritual, and Text during the Warring States Period (480–221 BCE),” Ph.D. diss. (Los Angeles: University of Cali- fornia, 2002). 90 Chen Wei, Baoshan Chu jian chutan (Wuhan daxue, 1996), pp. 162–67. ,ࠇՕᖂխ֮ߓק ,ઊ໑ढ塢קHubei sheng bowuguan and Beijing daxue Zhongwenxi ྋ 91 Wangshan Chu jian ඨ՞ᄑ១ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1995), pp. 25, 38, 39. ,ᒳ (Wuhan: HubeijiaoyuڗChu xi jianbo wenzi bian ᄑߓ១ࢇ֮ ,سTeng Rensheng ᑱ֙ 92 1995), pp. 618–20.

24 death and otherworldly journey in classical texts. In his commentaries on the “Yueling” chapter, he pointed out the different deities in the tame and wild spaces: of] חִ ”The deities of travel have different functions. In “Yueling स۩,” and inמ Liji], “In the winter, sacrifice to the deity of travel “Pinli” ᆤ៖ [of Yili], “Deposit the strings of silk before the deity of travel ᤩኞՊ۩”: all these cases refer to the deity of travel in the home ୰խհ۩壀, whereas in “Pinli ji” ᆤ៖ಖ [of Yili], which states that “when setting out for a journey, sacrifice to the deity of ”,◩లᤩנ travel, deposit [offerings] and perform the ba-sacrifice this ba-sacrifice is for the deity of travel, who is responsible for travel in foreign states. The deities of travel all are in charge of the roads, but their functions are different.93 Although the travel to which Sun Xidan refers is not the wild space that I am discussing here, it implies a more or less foreign environment, that is, the dangerous wilds. The distinction is also significant in understanding the logic of the early Chinese pantheon. In recent years, with discoveries of the types of sacrificial record mentioned above, scholars have attempted to reconstruct the early Chinese pantheon. The framework for their re- ֚ constructions has always been the three categories of celestial gods ચ, and ancestors and ghosts Գ೒, derived fromچ 壀, terrestrial spirits later received texts.94 However, in the middle-period Warring States tomb discovered at Xincai, Henan, a strip refers to the spirit world collectively as “the ghosts and spirits of the above and the below, the -inner and the outer [Ղ] Հ㡕؆೒壀.”95 Thus, the terms ghosts and spir its of “the inner and the outer” specifically refer to the deities in the tame and wild worlds. This tripartite framework obviously does not work well with the wild and tame (that is, inner and outer) spirits that I have just outlined above. The spheres of the tame and wild and the boundaries between them are relative, fluid, and socially constructed. It is certainly not

-Liji jijie ៖ಖႃᇞ (Taipei: Wenshizhe, 1990), p. 486. The Tang com ,؟Sun Xidan ୪ݦ 93 mentator Jia Gongyan ᇸֆ৯ also pointed out the difference between these two types of sacrifice; see Yili zhushu, “Pinli,” p. 283. ࿇෼ፖ壀ᇩႚ䇣, collected in Liײە ”Li Ling, “Kaogu faxian yu shenhua chuanshuo 94 ,ሿ۞ᙇႃ (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue chubanshe, 1998), pp. 61–64; Chenޕ Ling zi xuan ji Baoshan Chu jian chutan, pp. 159–74; Chen Wei, “Geling Chu jian suojian de bushi yu daoci” .Ւ១ࢇઔߒ 6 (2004), pp. 39–40נ ᆼສᄑ១ࢬߠऱԽᆑፖᡷర, Chutu wenxian yanjiu ઔߒࢬ, Xincai Geling Chu mu ᄅᓐײەHenan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo ࣾতઊ֮ढ 95 ᆼສᄑች (Beijing: Wenwu, 2003), pl. 76, strip A2: 40. In the original transcript (p. 188), the ,ഏڇgraphs guisheng were misidentified; and the graph shang is reconstructed, see Xu Zaiguo ஊ .ಖ, www.bamboosilk.org, December 7, 2003ؤXincai Geling Chu jian zhaji” ᄅᓐᆼສᄑ១“

25 guolong lai fixed only on a specific place such as a house, and it certainly includes many other tokens of familiarity and comfort. The relationship between these two realms might be conceived as a concentric structure with the person or home in the center and moving outward to the town, the city, the state, and ultimately the universe: any layer is relatively safer and securer than the one outside of it. In this connection, it is relevant to discuss the early development of cosmic diagrams,96 cartographic maps, and mapping in early China. A sense of spatial relationship and control is apparent at the core of the distinction between tame and wild. Previous studies of early Chinese cartography have focused on scientific achievements and especially their mathematical significance,97 but the social and religious aspects of early maps and mapping have been largely overlooked. The fact that the earliest extant so-called “map” is the plan of a royal mausoleum should alert us the possible significance of the role of maps in the afterlife. It is engraved on a 48 x 94 cm bronze plate, and shows a construction plan of the tombs and sacrificial halls for the Warring States-period king Cuo (d. ca. 310 bc) of Zhongshan and his consorts; it was located at present-day Pingshan, Hebei province (see figure 3).98 It is believed to represent an area of about 191 x 414 meters. Planned are five sacrificial halls (three in the middle and two on each side), four smaller buildings in the front, an inner and outer wall, and a baseline marking the foot of the burial mount. Archeologists discovered architectural remains above M2) that correspond) ٿthe tombs of king Cuo (M1) and queen Ai ঩ to the two leftmost ones of the three middle halls. 99 In addition to the measurement for the architectural components of the mausoleum, in the middle of the bronze plate is a transcription of a royal decree, which states: The king commanded [the prime minister] Zhou to make the mausoleum plan. The size and scale of the [mausoleum] were officially

96 For discussion of the cosmic cord-hook diagram on tomb texts and used as a decorative motif on objects excavated from Qin and Han tombs, see Kalinowski, “Xingde Texts,” pp. 138–45; and Liu, “Chudi chutu shushu wenxian,” pp. 241–48. 97 See, e.g., J. B. Harley and David Woodward, eds., Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Society, vol. 2, book 2 of The History of Cartography (Chicago: U. Chi- cago P., 1987). ઊ֮ढઔߒࢬ, Cuo mu, Zhanguo Zhongshan guoקHebei sheng wenwu yanjiusuo ࣾ 98 guowang zhi mu ችᖏഏխ՞ഏഏ׆հች (Beijing: Wenwu, 1995) 1, pp. 104–10; 2, color pl. 2. Yang Hongxun ᄘअ໐, “Zhanguo Zhongshan wang ling ji zhaoyu tu yanjiu” ᖏഏխ՞׆ 99 Zhanguo Zhongshan“ ,ڣສ֗٢഑ቹઔߒ, Kaogu xuebao 1980.1, pp. 119–38; Fu Xinian ແᗋ Ւऱ٢഑נwang Cuo mu chutu de ‘zhaoyu tu’ jiqi lingyuan guizhi de yanjiu” ᖏഏխ՞׆ ች .ቹ֗ࠡສႼ๵ࠫऱઔߒ, Kaogu xuebao (1980.1), pp. 97–118

26 death and otherworldly journey

mapped by those in charge of the matter. Anyone who infringes the mausoleum plan will be put to death without the possibility of pardon, and those who do not carry out the king’s decree will bring disaster to themselves and their offspring. One copy [of the plan] accompanies [the burial]; one is stored in the treasury. ׆ ࠃृࡴ ( ቹ)հ. ၞಯಲ(ڶ)׎(ऄ). ខ ( ௿)֟(՛)Օհ□Ծ(٢)ⴲ੡ಲח Ջ(ྤ)ૉ(ຈ).լ۩׆ࡎृ, ( ੂ)ຑ՗୪. ࠡԫൕ, ࠡԫʳڽ ,ृ(׎(ऄ(٢) (៲)ࢌ.100 Although several tombs had never been built (evidently several years after king Cuo’s death, the Zhongshan kingdom was conquered by its neighbor, the state of Zhao), the construction plan does represent a vision of the dwelling for king Cuo in the afterlife. A number of real maps that have also been found among grave goods — a set of seven maps (figure 4) drawn on four wooden boards

Figure 3. Engraved Construction Plan of King Cuo’s Mausoleum Rendering of engraved bronze plate from Warring States Zhongshan kingdom; discovered at Pingshan, Hebei province. The inscription that I translate, above, is located in the area above the three big squares in the center. After Cao et al., eds., Zhongguo gudai ditu ji: Zhanguo [to] Yuan, pl. 2, cited n. 101.

֚ from Tomb Number 1 (ca. 239 bc) at Fangmatan ್࣋ᦡ, Tianshui Gansu province,101 and silk maps (figure 5) from Tomb Number ,ֽ 3 (ca. 168 bc) at Mawangdui102 — do give an idea of how space was conceived, while again testifying to the importance of maps as burial

Pingshan Zhongshan wang mu tongqi ming wen“ ,ڈᐚዺʳand Qiu Xigui ᇗᙔڹ Zhu Dexi 100 ઔߒ, first published in WW 1979.1 and collectedޡde chubu yanjiu” ؓ՞խ՞׆ችᎭᕴᎮ֮ऱॣ .ᓵႃ (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1995), pp. 91–108ڗ֮ײᐚዺڹ in Zhu Dexi guwenzi lunji Tianshui Fangmatan Qin mu chutu ditu chutan” ್ֽ֚࣋ᦡ఻“ ,He Shuangquan ۶ᠨ٤ 101 Youguan Tianshui Fangmatan“ ,ڕቹॣ൶, WW 1989.2, pp. 12–22; Cao Wanru ඦഠچՒנች .ቹऱ༓ଡംᠲ, WW 1989.12, ppچՒנᣂ್ֽ֚࣋ᦡ఻ችڶ ”Qin mu chutu ditu de jige wenti 78–85; Zhu Zhongxi ఴխᗋ, “Dui Tianshui Fangmatan muban ditu de jidian xin renshi” ኙ

27 guolong lai

Figure 4. Map Drawn on Wooden Board Ink-line rendering of one of seven such maps drawn on four boards, discovered in Qin Tomb no. 1 at Fangmatan, Tianshui, Gansu. After Cao et al., eds., Zhongguo gudai ditu ji: Zhan- guo [to] Yuan, pl. 4 (for photo), pl. 5 (for ink-line sketch).

Figure 5. Silk Map from Mawangdui Discovered in Han Tomb no. 3 at Mawangdui, Changsha, Hunan province. After Cao et al., eds., Zhongguo gudai ditu ji: Zhanguo [to] Yuan, pl. 21.

Figure 6. Wooden Board, Depicting TLV and Tiger Tiger tied to a tree (top) and TLV motif (bottom); Qin Tomb no. 14, Fangmatan. After Wenwu, 1989.2, pl. 2: 1, 2.

28 death and otherworldly journey objects. They display quite sophisticated mapping skills, organized around important geographical features such as mountain ranges, river flows, populous settlements and economic centers, and even roads. The maps also cover fairly extensive territory.103 Interestingly enough, two copies of daybooks were found in the same tomb along with a written story of a man named Dan կʳreturning to life after being released by underworld officials in 297 bc.104 The underworld bureaucracy implied in this account clearly is compatible with that in the Jiudian incantation (discussed earlier), testifying to the wide circulation of popular religious ideas during the Warring States period. Similarly, in Mawangdui Tomb Number 3, maps were discovered along with hemerological texts concerning travel.105 The Mawangdui silk map covers a large area including parts of present-day Hunan, Guangdong, and Guangxi provinces. The maps are defined by their depictions of river flows: the maps emphasize riverine transport and military mobilization. The occupant of Tomb Number 3, a young male, was said to be a military official, who had probably frequented the places on the map. Given the relatively high degree of detail, they suggest a population traversing a tame-world landscape. At the same time, the seven maps from Fangmatan can be understood on a more abstract scale as projecting a landscape based on three different per- spectives: geographical terrain; administrative zones; and economic or military affairs. Thus, in another way they represent a conceptual ordering of space, a utilitarian cosmology that is reinforced, in the case of Fangmatan, by the inclusion of a wooden board painted with the cosmological TLV motif (figure 6), representing another, more remote layer of spatial ordering.106 Cosmological constructions during the Warring States period went along with a concern for the abodes

໑ʳʻ2001.2), pp. 15–23. For better֮׳ቹऱ༓រᄅᎁᢝ, Longyou wenbo ᣃچ್࣋ᦡֵֽ֚ࣨ color plates of these maps, see Cao Wanru et al., eds., Zhong guo gudai ditu ji, Zhanguo [to] .ቹႃ, ᖏഏց (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990), pll. 4–16چזײYuan խഏ 102 Fu and Chen, Mawangdui Han mu wenwu, p. 151. Mei-Ling Hsu, “The Han Maps and Early Chinese Cartography,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68.1 (1978), pp. 45–60. 103 Mei-Ling Hsu, “The Qin Maps: A Clue to Later Chinese Cartographic Development,” Imago Mundi 45 (1993), pp. 90–100. ,(Li Xueqin, “Fangmatan jian zhong de zhiguai gushi” ್࣋ᦡ១խऱݳࢡਚࠃ, WW (1990.4 104 pp. 43–47; Harper, “Resurrection in Warring States Popular Religion,” pp. 13–28. 105 Liu, Jianbo shushu wenxian tanlun, pp. 115–30; Yan Changgui, “Jianbo rishu sui pian .Օᖂᖂ໴ (2003.1), pp. 73–78קᢞ, Hubei daxue xuebao ྋٽhezheng” ១ࢇֲ஼ᄣᒧ 106 For ways of ordering space in early China, see Mark E. Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (Albany: State University of New York P., 2006).

29 guolong lai of the dead,107 and the emblematic placement of cosmographic motifs on coffins, mortuary furniture, and grave goods can all be viewed as dealing with the perceived anxiety in an unknown space.108 Another example of maps as postmortem guides is a fragmentary yellow “paper” (2.6 x 5.6 cm) discovered in Tomb Number 5 (dated to between 179–141 bc), also at Fangmatan, which was found inside a coffin on the chest of the dead body.109 In all these cases, what the cosmographic motifs and cartographic maps suggest is a way of dealing with the unknown, of creating a vision that ex- tends beyond the local, so that temporal progress can be mapped in terms of orbits and cycles, and physical surroundings can be arranged around registers of social organization that impact the way the terrain takes shape. Maps may be understood as subjective representations of some reality: “[A]ll advantages and limitations of maps derive from the degree to which maps reduce and generalize reality, compress or expand shapes and distances, and portray selected phenomena with signs that communicate, without necessarily resembling, visible or invisible characteristics of the landscape.”110 Based on this, then perhaps it follows logically that conceptual orderings of space provide “an insulated vision” of reality. The map user is able to deal with space that is already tamed, even only mentally.111 Travel, however, upsets this insulation: it tests and challenges the validity of the mapped vision. For a Warring States traveler, then, an important aspect of travel was road rituals, which, in a sense, provided an additional level of mapping and map projection. Before discussing road rituals in the afterlife, we must first consider the ritual instruments, that is, travel paraphernalia in the Warring States tombs.

107 Needham and Ronan, “Chinese Cosmology,” pp. 63–70. 108 Kalinowski, “Xingde Texts,” pp. 138–45; Liu, “Chudi chutu shushu wenxian,” pp. 241–48. ײە࿸ઊ֮ढز Gansu sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo, Tianshui beidaoqu wenhuaguan 109 ز ”ሐ೴֮֏塢, “Gansu Tianshui Fangmatan Zhanguo Qin Han muqun de fajueקֽ֚ ,ઔߒࢬ ࿸್ֽ֚࣋ᦡᖏഏ఻ዧችᆢऱ࿇ൺ, WW 1989.2, pp. 1–11, especially p. 9. The interpretation of this artifact as a paper map has caused a debate among scholars about the earliest paper discovered so far; see Chen Qi-xin and Li Xing Guo, “The Unearthed Paperlike Objects Are Not Paper Produced before Tsai-Lun’s Invention,” Yearbook of Paper History 8 (1990), pp. 7–22. 110 Mark S. Monmonier, Maps, Distortion, and Meaning (Washington, D.C.: Association of American Geographers, 1977), p. 1. 111 For psychological and anthropological studies of maps, see Alfred Gell, “How to Read a Map: Remarks on the Practical Logic of Navigation,” Man, ns 20.2 (1985), pp. 271–86; and further discussions and references in C. R. Hallpike, Mark Blades, Christopher Spencer, and Alfred Gell, “Maps and Wayfinding,” Man ns 21.2 (1986), pp. 342–46.

30 death and otherworldly journey

TRAVEL PARAPHERNALIA The great challenge put forth by recent discoveries lies in understanding the motivation for burying artifacts and texts in late-Warring States and early-Han tombs. Some artifacts and texts were probably placed in tombs because of personal preferences (either of the deceased or the bereaved); some as markers of social prestige;112 and others as tokens of immortality in the afterlife shared by the community at large. Because of the diversity of the materials and messages from tombs, as yet no uniform theory has been put forward. In an essay titled “Texts in Tombs,” published four decades ago, A. F. P. Hulsewé speculated that the inclusion of “Mu tianzi zhuan” ᗪ֚՗ႚ (“The Travel of the Son of Heaven Mu”) in a Warring States tomb was for “the purpose of provid- ing the deceased ruler of Wei with a guide to the Nether world, or to paradise, like the dead in ancient Egypt were provided with a copy of the Book of the Dead.”113 In the same general direction, I argue here that materials related to travel — daybooks, cosmographic diagrams and motifs, cartographic maps, and travel paraphernalia — were put in tombs to direct departed souls on their postmortem journeys. In what follows I use the inventory list discovered in Baoshan Tomb Number 2 as an example to explain the possible motivation behind the entombment of certain artifacts. The Baoshan tomb contains a set of twenty-seven pieces of bamboo strips (strips 251–277) that lists and classifies the objects deposited in the tomb in fact or only in name.114 Among them, seventeen strips are complete, ranging from 68–72.6 cm in length; the others are fragments, some of which can be pieced together according to contents and writing styles. They list elaborately decorated chariots, ritual vessels and utensils, prepared food, and other funerary offerings. Those record- ing chariots and sacrificial instruments (strips 265–277) constituted one group, because they all have three notches to fix the strings — the function of which is to weave the strips together to form a book — and they were written in a similar style. The remaining strips, except for no. 255 with two notches, are either fragmentary or have no clear sign of carving. However, they have a similar writing style.115 Therefore, it

112 Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Social Ranking in Chu Tombs: The Mortuary Background of the Warring States Manuscript Finds,” MS 51 (2003), pp. 439–526. 113 A. F. P. Hulsewé, “Texts in Tombs,” Études Asiatiques 18–19 (1965), pp. 78–89, esp. pp. 87, 89. ՞ᄑץ ၷ, Baoshan Chu jianײەᥳሁޥઊ౸קHubei sheng Jingsha tielu kaogu dui ྋ 114 ១ (Beijing: Wenwu, 1991), pp. 37–39, pll. 110–20. (՞ᄑች (Beijing, Wenwu, 1991ץ Hubei sheng Jingsha tielu kaogu dui, Baoshan Chu mu 115 1, p. 267, and table 43, pp. 271–72.

31 guolong lai is possible that two books of inventories were interred in the Baoshan tomb. These strips are buried with corresponding artifacts in the eastern, western, and southern compartments. In the inventories the grave goods are divided into at least four categories: 1. chariots used in the funeral; bronze and wooden objects used in grand ancestral sacrifices Օ٢հ .2 ८ᕴ, ֵᕴ;116 3. bronze objects for use in the sacrificial hall ଇ৛հ८ᕴ,117 food in the sacrificial hall ଇ৛հଇ, including the bamboo food containers there; 4. and finally, paraphernalia brought together for use in travel ઌʳ [ ൔ]հ 118.۩אᕴࢬ The grave furnishings in the Baoshan tomb are typical for a late- Warring States elite tomb. On the one hand, the tomb contains ritual vessels that are used in ancestral sacrifices and other symbols of so-

,⦸ is still uncertain. It is here read as zhao, interpreted as tiao ₓ or ٢ The reading of 116 “to sacrifice.” See Hayashi, “May Sons and Grandsons,” p. 55. Liu Guosheng has suggested that it is probably mao ׮, which was a homophone of liu ఎ and lao ߂ in Old Chinese, thus dalao refers to the grand sacrifice in which an buffalo, a pig, and a goat were offered; see Liu Guosheng, “Chu sangzang jiandu jishi” ᄑໜᆻ១ᡪႃᤩ, Ph.D. diss. (Wuhan University, 2003). In the bronze tripods unearthed from Baoshan buffalo bones were discovered. Bones of pig, fish, and chicken were found in bamboo cases and ceramic jars in the eastern compartment; see Baoshan Chu mu, pp. 98, 445–47. 117 “Shishi” is often translated as “dining room,” “dining chamber” or “food chamber” (e.g. Wu Hung, “Art and Architecture,” p. 726) is the place where the deceased offer sacrifices to their ancestors. See the discussion in Hayashi, “May Sons and Grandsons,” pp. 51–52. Here I translate it as “sacrificial hall.” For shi meaning sacrifice, see Qiu Xigui, “Shuo ‘shi’” ᎅଇʿʳ ,(׾ઔߒᄅ൶ (Nanjing: Jiangsu guji, 1992֮זײ collected in his Gudai wenshi yanjiu xintan pp. 143–45. Most scholars interpret the eastern compartment as the “dining room” or “food chamber,” based on the unexamined assumption that the tomb structure imitates the house of the living. The size of the eastern compartment is 4.14m x 0.92m x 3.1m, which is too cramped to be considered as a room. I think here shishi refers to an imaginative, unspecific sacrificial space in the afterlife. 118 Baoshan Chu mu 2, pll. 200–10. Most scholars interpret the first two graphs here as xiang- .(wei ᒣݠ or xiangshao ᒣණ, referring to the rear compartment (i.e., western compartment The objects listed in this category, however, were found in both the western and northern compartments. To reconcile this, Chen Wei divides the word into two “xiang” ༖ (side rooms in a house) and “shao” ණ (“the end, the rear”), referring to the two compartments, see Chen, Baoshan Chu jian chutan, p. 193. Although all these readings are phonologically possible, here I follow Lin Yun ࣥⰥ, who has convincingly argued that the expression “xiangxi zhi qi” literally means “the objects that are brought together,” referring to the “movable” (i.e., por- ಖԮঞ, firstؤ՞ᄑ១ץtable) paraphernalia; Lin Yun, “Du Baoshan Chu jian zhaji qi ze” ᦰ published in Jiang Han kaogu 1992.4, and collected in idem, Lin Yun xueshu wenji ࣥⰥᖂ๬ ႃ (Beijing: Zhongguo dabaike quanshu chubanshe, 1998), pp. 19–21. The interpretation of֮ the graph “xi ൔ” as the verb “to move” is firmly established; see discussion in Yu Weichao, .ֆषิ៣ऱ᭶ኘ (Beijing: Wenwu, 1988), ppזײZhongguo gudai gongshe zuzhi de kaocha խഏ 11–15, who quotes Li Jiahao’s theory. The same graph appears on Baoshan strip 250, where -it also functions as “to move.” See also the discussion in He Linyi ۶ྱᏚ, Zhanguo guwen zi .ࠢ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1998), p. 883ڗ֮ײdian ᖏഏ

32 death and otherworldly journey cial status, such as chariots, continuing the earlier Shang and Western Zhou aristocratic traditions. On the other hand, it has new categories of grave goods and artistic innovations. Alain Thote has carried out a meticulous examination of the medium-sized tombs excavated at Zhao- jiahu ᎓୮ྋ, in Dangyang ᅝၺ, and at Jiudian and Yutaishan ॸፕ՞, in Jiangling (all of which are in Hubei). He demonstrates that the new categories, in particular personal belongings, household articles, and food provisions, gradually came to be associated with the traditional sets of ritual vessels.119 The new artifacts comprised weapons, utensils for dress (combs, mirrors and belt-hooks), musical instruments for personal entertainment (se-zithers), utensils for eating and drinking (including ear-cups and boxes), bamboo cases, mats, pillows, and fans. It is not coincidental that almost all of these new categories are, based on available evidence, listed in the section of paraphernalia for travel in the Baoshan inventories. The religious meanings of the four categories of objects are obvious. The chariots symbolize the tomb occupant’s social status; and, as Hayashi Minao points out persuasively, ritual vessels and food buried in tombs may have been intended for the dead to use in sacrificial offerings to their own ancestors in the otherworld. The last section of the Baoshan inventory, “paraphernalia used for travel,” suggests that this group, including caps, shoes, combs, mirrors, pillows, mats, hairpins, lamps, a folding bed, a se-zither, and fans, which are often labeled as mundane “personal belongings” or “everyday utensils” in archaeologi- cal reports and scholarly literature, may actually have religious meaning and can be identified as the paraphernalia used in a journey in the afterlife.120 Since the bamboo strips are fragmentary, and many philological issues, especially the detailed descriptions of the grave goods, have not yet been completely resolved, our understanding of this group is still limited. However, with the help of comparative evidence from contemporaneous tomb inventories in the Chu region, we can say that, first of all, these objects were to provide the basic travel gear and ac-

119 Alain Thote, “Continuities and Discontinuities: Chu Burials during the Eastern Zhou Period,” in Roderick Whitfield and Wang Tao, eds., Exploring China’s Past: New Discoveries and Studies in Archaeology and Art (London: Saffron Books, 1999), pp. 189–204. 120 Hayashi, “May Sons and Grandsons,” p. 52, stated that “[t]hese items, however, do not seem to be for travel as suggested by the category heading. Rather they were for the burial rites: the items buried with the coffin are called xingqi, ‘items for travel.’ Apparently the procession to the cemetery was regarded as ‘travel.’” Thus Hayashi did not see the potential functions of these everyday items, and only considered the funeral procession to the tomb as travel. Here I am arguing that the funeral procession is only the beginning part of the postmortem journey – the tomb is only a waystation. The destination of this journey is a cosmic location such as “the edge of Mt. Fu and the wilds of Buzhou.”

33 guolong lai cessories for the dead. By giving the deceased a proper interment, the living descendants played an important role in determining the postmortem fate of the deceased. Furthermore, tomb furnishings provided the possibility of intercession on behalf of the deceased, which includes the provision of objects that can ward off evil influence in case his or her fate hung in the balance. Although objects classified in the inventory as “paraphernalia used for travel” were originally everyday household utensils, in the religious context of the otherworldly journey they acquired the apotropaic function of aiding and protecting the departed soul in the afterlife journey. Ritual and magic were a part of everyday life. All over the world, in both ancient and contemporary rituals there is a class of sacrifices called rites of aversion. In studying ancient Greek religion, Jane E. Harrison found apotropaic rituals to be an especially old and basic stratum.121 “I give in order that you go away,” or do ut abeas, being the Latin formula Harrison coined to describe the basic dynamics of apotropaic sacrifice. In ancient China, as the Baoshan divination records indicate, apotropaic rituals played an important part in religious development during the Warring States period. The item among the paraphernalia for travel that most obviously has an apotropaic function is the lamp.122 Bronze and ceramic lamps became an indispensable part of tomb furnishings in the Warring States period. Examples such as the one discovered in Tomb Number 2 at Wangshan, Jiangling, in Hubei Province, in which a human lamp-bearer rides upon a camel (figure 7),123 betrays the popular concern that the dead would travel to the northwest in darkness in a postmortem journey. From early literary sources such as “Zhaohun” (“Summons of the Soul”), it is well known that Chu people had imagined the west (and northwest) to be a barren, dark, and harsh place. In calling back the wandering soul, the land of the west is imaged as follows: O soul come back! For the west holds many perils. The Moving Sands stretch on for a hundred leagues. You will be swept into the Thunder’s Chasm, and dashed in pieces, unable to help yourself; And even should you chance to escape from that, beyond is the empty desert,

121 Jane E. Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 3d edn. (Cambridge: Cam- bridge U.P., 1922), pp. 8–10. 122 Guolong Lai, “Lighting the Way in the Afterlife: Bronze Lamps in Warring States Pe- riod Tombs,” Orientations 33.4 (April 2002), pp. 20–28. ສඨ՞ۂ Hubei sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo, Jiangling Wangshan Shazhong Chu mu 123 ޥჂᄑች (Beijing: Wenwu, 1996), color pl. 5.

34 death and otherworldly journey

Figure 7. Bronze Lamp Held by Man Riding Camel Discovered at Tomb no. 2 at Wangshan, Jiangling, Hubei province. After Lai, “Lighting the Way in the Afterlife,” p. 28, fig. 11.

Figure 8. Horn Carved with Intertwining Dragons Two views of one of two identical horns excavated from Tomb no. 2, Baoshan, Jingmen, Hubei province (item 431). Discovered in northern compartment in red-black lacquered bamboo case. After Yang Xiaoneng, ed., The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrat- ing Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China (New Haven: Yale U.P., 1999), p. 338.

35 guolong lai

And red ants as huge as elephants and wasps as big as gourds. The five grains do not grow there; dry stalks are the only food; And the earth there scorches men up; there is nowhere to look for water; And you will drift there for ever, with nowhere to go in that vastness. O Soul, come back! You cannot long stay there.124 The Chu people must have heard stories, real or fanciful, about the hardship in the desert and the surviving skills of the camel. Those animals such as the winged beast and the bird-snake that came from the west, were often the motifs of lamps and other grave objects. These animals were imagined to have an apotropaic function that could help the deceased to avoid evil influence on its journey to the northwest. Another example of the apotropaic function of travel paraphernalia is the xie-cap (xieguan ⡜গ). The inventory from Wangshan Tomb Number 2 records two xie-caps as grave goods (strip no. 62: Բ⡜গ). The term “xieguan” also appears in received literature. A xieguan (written as ⺟গ) is mentioned in Huainanzi in the context of a story about a Chu king who liked caps of this design. Hence all the people in Chu wore them. Both Hayashi Minao ࣥգ࡜֛ and Sun Ji ୪ᖲ discuss this cap and its connection with other later Han caps.125 Following the Han scholars’ interpretation, they conclude that it was a cap with a horn on the top. Unfortunately, due to the poor state of preservation of the tombs, the excavators were not able to retrieve such caps from the Wangshan and Baoshan tombs. However, it is quite possible that the horn (figure 8), one of two at Baoshan that were carved with intertwined dragons,126 was worn on such a xie-cap. The xie (also known as “zhi” ᯀ) was a mythical animal with one horn, which is represented in the decorations on bronze vessels of the Warring States period,127 and in the form of freestanding sculptures or painted on the walls of Han tombs.128

124 Hawkes, Songs of the South, p. 225. ,(ߊ՗圸圕址坔坌圸, SR 46.5 (1963זHayashi Minao, “Kandai danshi no kaburimono” ዧ 125 :ढᔆ֮֏ᇷறቹᎅ (Beijingזpp. 80–126; Sun Ji ୪ᖲ, Handai wuzhi wenhua ziliao tushuo ዧ Wenwu, 1991), p. 236. 126 For a better representation of the antler sculpture, see Yang Xiaoneng, ed., The Golden Age of Chinese Archaeology: Celebrated Discoveries from the People’s Republic of China (Wash- ington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art; and Kansas City: Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, 1999), p. 338. 127 Anniliese Bulling, “Notes on Two Unicorns,” Oriental Art 3 (1966), pp. 109–13. 128 See the images in Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., with The Asia So- ciety, 2001), pp. 44–46.

36 death and otherworldly journey

The Baoshan horn was discovered with other items for personal adornment, including a wig, four jade and bone ornaments, and a min- iature sculpture of mythical animals. Personal belongings such as clothing, headdresses, jewelry, and so forth, assume an intimate relationship with the human body, and thus can become part of one’s identity. In the ritual of aversion, these personal belongings were often used to substitute for the human body, and they were offered to deities to whom the individual was devoted. According to the Baoshan divination records, four types of objects were used as offerings: 1. jade ornaments such as huan ᛩ (rings), xiaohuan ՛ᛩ (small rings), jue ᳡ (slit rings), bi ់ (discs), and hu ླ (pendants); 2. clothing, including caps, cap-strings, and other clothing and decorations; 3. wine and food; and 4. animals. More than half a century ago, inspired by James Frazer’s The ฯ଺ published Zhongguo gudai lüxingۂ Golden Bough, Jiang Shaoyuan ள۩հઔߒ (A Study of Traveling in Ancient China).129זײzhi yanjiu խഏ The main thesis of his book, and of his larger research project, was to recover the deeper apotropaic meaning of some seemingly quotidian objects through the philological study of classical texts. Clothing, caps, rings, jade pendants, and so forth were used as material tokens that could substitute for, or at least relate to, the deceased. The personal belongings in the Baoshan tomb may play an analogous role in preparing the deceased for potential emergency situations on the road to the afterlife. In the early literature on the sprit journey, several scenes related to the use of travel paraphernalia are worth noting. In the poem “Xiangjun” ྉܩ (“The Goddess of Xiang”) the poet is seeking the goddess Xiangjun, but he cannot reach her. There are lines such as the following: I throw my thumb-ring ᳡ into the river. I leave my girdle-gem ࠕ in the bay of the Li. Sweet pollia I’ve plucked in the little islet. To send to my far-away Beloved.130 The thumb-ring and girdle-gem are here cast into the river as offerings to the goddess below. In Zuozhuan, we read a related story: the Chu d. 632), when ,دcognomen Zi Yu ՗) ۝൓ګ nobleman Cheng Dechen

;ள۩հઔߒ (1937זײฯ଺, Zhongguo gudai lüxing zhi yanjiu խഏۂ Jiang Shaoyuan 129 rpt. Shanghai: Wenyi, 1989); French trans. titled Kiang Chao-yuan, Le voyage dans la Chine ancienne, considéré principalement sous aspect magique et religieux, trans. Fan Jen (Shanghai: Kelly & Walsh, 1937). 130 Hawkes, Songs of the South, pp. 109.

37 guolong lai traveling outside the Chu territory, dreamed that the local god, the spirit of the Yellow River, demanded additional sacrifice. The objects of this illicit request were his cap and cap-strings.131 Moreover, in the Yili ritual of calling back the soul a set of clothing is used.132 Other objects frequently excavated from Warring States tombs that have long been regarded as personal, quotidian items (shoes, gar- ment hooks, lamps, mats, daggers, boxes, and so forth) are all listed in the travel paraphernalia section of the Baoshan inventory. These everyday objects, after the casting of spells or through particular ritual ceremony, may all have had a religious function in the construction of a tame space in the wilderness. Their function might have been that of amulets or talismans that could ward off evil influences and protect the deceased person’s soul. In sum, starting from the mid-Warring States period, travel paraphernalia became part of burial furnishings. We don’t know whether the residents of all tombs that contain such travel gear had died in wars. More detailed analyses are needed to clarify the connection, if any, between the tomb furnishings and the treatments of the dead based on different causes. But from Baoshan, Wangshan, and a few other cases, it seems that travel paraphernalia appeared in tombs to facilitate the postmortem journey of the deceased to the new abode.

THE OTHERWORLDLY JOURNEY: ROAD RITUALS

If ritual can be thought of as a transformative process,133 then one must take into account its function as a prescriptive model proceeding along preordained paths of action, such that ritual can serve as a sort of map for social behavior. Indeed, it is praised as such in numerous early Chinese texts. The fairly common fourth through second century bc practice of including maps and almanacs among the burial goods can, in this light, be understood as further contributions for a postmortem ritual journey. The Shuihudi rishu advocates that when setting out on a journey, the traveler, after leaving the city gates, should stop and perform a rite known as the “Pace of Yu”:

131 Dechen refused to sacrifice, because the Yellow River’s being outside of the ritual realm of Chu made it ritually inappropriate: he was nevertheless punished by the god; Zuozhuan, Xi 28 (CQZ Z , pp. 467–68). As Yang Bojun discusses in his commentary, Han scholars all interpreted the cap and strings as the decorations on a horse. But the Jin-era commentator Du Yu interpreted them as cap and cap-strings worn by Zi Yu. 132 Yili zhushu, “Shisangli,” p. 1128. 133 Arnold van Gennep, The Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee (1909; Chicago: U. Chicago P., 1960).

38 death and otherworldly journey

(strip 111, back) When traveling, on reaching the threshold-bar of the capital gate, perform the Pace of Yu thrice. Advance on pace. Call out, “*Kəw! I dare make a declaration. Let so-and-so [to be filled in with the name of the traveler] travel and not suffer odium; he first acts as Yu to clear the road.” Immediately draw five lines on the ground. Pick up the soil from the center of the lines (strip Կ, ঠ໸ޡback) and put it in your bosom. ۩ࠩ߶॰ܺʳ(ⶌ), છ ,112 ཭ࠡ྽ ,چն྽ܛ ”.٣੡છೈሐ ,ਬ۩ֹ(ྤ)ࡏ :ֳܫ㊯(ࡅ): “ఙ, ཊ ,ޡ խ؇Ւ ۖᡖհˁʳ134 The Pace of Yu was also a magical strategy for exorcising demons and for curing warts, as indicated in the Mawangdui medical texts. The ritual in- volves invoking the name of Yu, a mythical hero with supernatural powers, to remove from the road ahead all demons and calamities, while also vari- ously marking the earth with five-stroke diagrams or throwing a “talisman of Yu છฤ” onto the ground while performing the three steps of Yu and calling out an invocation.135 This process has connotations of both divining the road and leveling or exorcising the road; certainly, the idea is that the coming road will be without disaster, will be as conceived. This road ritual ceremony at the beginning of a journey is referred to as “zu ల” or “zudao లሐ” in received pre-Qin literature, such as Shijing and Zuozhuan. One example from Zuozhuan takes place in the seventh year of lord Zhao ਟֆ (535 bc), before he went on a diplomatic trip in response to the invitation from the rising power, king Ling of Chu ᄑᨋ׆ (r. 540–529). Lord Zhao anticipated a difficult and dangerous journey. After he dreamed of his deceased father lord Xiang ᝊֆ performing the zu-sacrifice, he hesitated, uncertain as to whether or not he should go. One of his officials persuaded him, saying, “Go! Our former lord (that is, lord Xiang) never went to Chu. That is why he had once dreamed of the duke of Zhou’s performing the zu- sacrifice and leading him. Then lord Xiang went to Chu, and he performed the zu-sacrifice to lead you.”136 In both cases the duke of Zhou and lord Xiang, as the divine protectors of the state of Lu, intervened for the sake of the reigning lord on the eve of his dangerous journey.137

134 Shuihudi, pp. 112, 223–24; trans. Donald Harper, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilizations to 221 B.C. (Cambridge: Cam- bridge U.P., 1999), p. 873. 135 Liu, “Qin jian rishu,” pp. 521–26. 136 CQZ Z, pp. 1286–87. 137 Shen Yue ާપ (441–513 ad) recorded two accounts of the origin of the zu-sacrifice: one posits that the sacrifice is offered to an ancestor who died on the road, while the other theory states that the sacrifice is made to the spirits of ancestors who have been eliminated from the normal sacrificial list, hoping that they will do no harm to the traveler; Shen, comp., Songshu ݚ஼ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1972) 12, p. 260; also Mark Lewis’s discussion in Sanctioned Violence in Early China (Albany: State University of New York P., 1990), pp. 187–90.

39 guolong lai

Significantly, in the “Shisangli” Փໜ៖ chapter of Yili, from the prepara- tion of the grave goods to the last meal served to the deceased Օ᎞໺, death is conceived as the beginning of a long imaginary journey, which is the central image employed in mortuary rituals. The fifth century ad scholar Shen Yue ާપ noted that the zu-sacrifice was performed not only for the real journey, but also prior to the beginning of the funeral procession from the ancestral temple to the grave. In Yili, too, before the funeral procession sets out to the burial site, an assistant “asks the ׹ᓮలཚ,” and then “for the zu-sacrifice, theڶ time of the zu-sacrifice hearse is turned [and oriented facing outward] ల, ᝫ߫,” preparing to set off for travel.138 The zu-sacrifice in funerary rites, a ceremony performed in the courtyard of the ancestral temple when the deceased is about to be buried, resembles the zu-sacrifice during life when one sets out for a journey.139 Although the “Shisangli” chapter does not spell out other details of the ceremony, in the “Pinli” chapter, before an official mission, the zu-sacrifice was carried out: “When performing the departing zu and making offering to the ba, the envoy sacrifices wine and dried meat, లᤩ◩, ผ಺โ, ԯ堬಺Պࠡೡ.140 Theנ ”then drinks wine off to the side ʳexplained that when setting offخEastern Han scholar Zheng Xuan ᔤ on an official mission, the horses and chariot will stop at the capital gate, and the traveler will then offer wine and dried meat to ba ◩. This marks the beginning of a journey. Soil is heaped up to make an image of a mountain, and the sacrificial animal (usually a dog or a goat) is laid on top of it; after drinking the wine, then the traveler will mount the chariot and run over it. The underlying principle is that of wu xing cosmology: Earth, which as discussed above is adverse to travel, is overcome. Another magic performance related to the “Pace of Yu,” which also alludes to a road ritual, is recorded in the Mawangdui medical texts. The text reads: 141 When traveling and stopping overnight, call out to yourself: “The Yang side of Mount Tai, … Heaven … . First … . Walls and ramparts that are not intact, [seal] with the metal bar.” Then perform the Pace of Yu thrice, and say “With a stick of fresh jing (vitex) two-cun long I draw a circle around the inside. ۩മ, ۞㊯(ࡅ): “Օ

138 Yili zhushu, “Jixi,” pp. 452–55. 139 Hayashi, “May Sons and Grandsons,” pp. 52, 55. 140 Yili zhushu, “Pinli,” pp. 283–84. 141 Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, p. 354.

40 death and otherworldly journey

אֳ ,Կޡછܛ ”.८ᣂא□ ,ພլݙৄ ,□٣□□ ,□□□֚ ,௠)՞հၺ) ข౸९Բ՚ࡌච (྽)խ.” Although the text has been severely damaged, both Harper and Liu Zenggui Ꮵᏺ၆ have argued that this road ritual can be reconstructed by supplementing it with a passage from Baopuzi.142 In the chapter that details the travel paraphernalia employed when entering mountains, the traveler in the wilds is advised to use a sword to mark out a square in the earth, and then to call out: “The Yin side of Mount Heng, the Yang side of Mount Tai, thieves and bandits, do not arise; tigers and wolves do not approach; walls and ramparts that are not intact seal with a metal bar.” This ritual can be explained as symbolically recreating the protective walls of a city, trans- forming the marked earth through invocation into a tame space. In the Yili texts, the road ritual for the departed is presented as if it is a normal procedure of funerary rites. This suggests that the dead would take a journey to reach their abode. As the Jiudian incantation implies, only the war dead would reside “at the edge of Fu Mountain and in the wilds of Buzhou.” We do not know whether or not this indicates changes in belief, or if, when Yili was written down, the abode of the war dead had already become the land of the dead in general. However, from these road rituals, one can see how people manipulated magical power to create a tamed space. Reviewing the various road rituals then, what emerges is that each one adds to a larger concept of travel oc- curring within specific physical and temporal boundaries. In a sense, both ritual and map, or ritualized map, are intended to effect a deliminalization of travel; that is, they ensure that while traveling one can always be oriented within the proper spatial associations. Through such ritual, as described in the Mawangdui text quoted above, one can always be within the tamed city walls; leaving — departure — is always mitigated by arrival and by additional levels of insulation.

CONCLUSION

In this paper I have used recently excavated tomb texts, paintings, and objects to discuss the changing geography of death in early China. The notion of spirit journey after death probably goes back to the for- mative stage of Chinese civilization. We certainly find its reflections in the oracle bone and bronze inscriptions. During those early times, the dead, usually the royal ancestors who traveled to “the place of the High God,” were assumed to return frequently to visit. The transformation of

142 Ibid.; Liu, “Qin jian rishu,” p. 526.

41 guolong lai religious ideas during the Warring States brought about decisive change in several dimensions. The Jiudian incantation shows that the abode of the war dead was relocated to the northwest part of the universe. This relocation seems to have been part of a notion of a specifically otherworldly journey. And thanks to newly discovered hemerological texts such as the rishu from Jiudian, Shuihudi, and Fangmatan, we have a better understanding of travel and temporal and spatial conceptions on up to the early-Han period. It seems that travel was conceived, de- spite the presence of sophisticated maps and cosmographic diagrams, as moving out into the unknown. Given the potential dangers on the road, one of the overriding concerns expressed in the calendrical auspices is the fear of “wang Ջ,” which means both to be lost and to die. Another concern is for travel without return. Clearly, travel and death then have metaphorical and actual overlap. This could shed new light լՋृۖڽ“ ,on the much debated enigmatic phrase in Daode jing ሐᐚᆖ ኂ,” which probably should be translated as “Those who die but are not lost have longevity (that is, immortality).”143 In the case of the Jiudian incantation quoted in the beginning of this article, the hope was that Director Wuyi would let the deceased come back to receive sacrifices. It was expected that feeding the ghosts, even though they had already come under the jurisdiction of Wuyi, would make them less likely to do harm to the living. The late-Warring States and early-Han conceptions of the afterlife generally agree upon the notion that a soul that retains consciousness after death; they also accommodate ideas of some type of land of the dead, postmortem paradise, and the travel of the soul beyond its state of entombment. Our data force us, however, to reconsider the conventional wisdom about the tomb as the “happy home” of the dead. Instead, the tomb in part defines the nature of the otherworldly journey: whether conceived of as waystation or starting point, its accumulated chariots and other travel paraphernalia will orient the soul in time and space as it undertakes its journey; and the tomb texts are provided as travel documents so as to orient the deceased within a social, political, and cosmic order. The elaborately furnished tombs as a temporary resting place or median point conform to the staged journeys, suggesting the tomb was a ritually created or transformed holding zone for a traveler in the midst of a vague and uncertain wilderness.

լՋ, AM ns 3 (1953), pp. 156–61; for a differentۖڽ ”Eduard Erkes, “Si er bu wang 143 interpretation, see Kenneth E. Brashier, “Longevity Like Metal and Stone: The Role of the Mirror in Han Burials,” TP 81 (1995), p. 215.

42 death and otherworldly journey

The various practices and objects associated with road rituals and travel paraphernalia suggest a process by which the unfamiliar or the unknown is conceptualized and then integrated into or oriented within an existing framework of familiarity. Geographical maps can provide a sense of insulation. Most importantly, perhaps, there is the belief that ritual has the power to transform the journey itself, to create a road in the image of its conception, or to create a patch of earth in the image of a walled city. The “Pace of Yu” ritual transforms the performer (momentarily at least) into an embodiment of Yu himself. At the same time, ritual transformation is undertaken with the expectation that a definite outcome will be achieved: the traveler will reach the intended destination; the soul will reach its underworld position. Ritual, in this sense, assumes movement between two definite points, two states of being. One might understand stepping outside a gate or moving beyond a boundary as itself a transformation. Ritual, thus, serves as a map for transformation. The examples studied here must be used cautiously in view of the wide range of practices and beliefs that existed at the time — sometimes even within the same burial. Tombs are multidimensional entities, and no one line of reasoning is likely to do full justice to every one of their features. However, the data from the Warring States Chu tombs do suggest that the concept of the tomb as the deceased person’s everlasting home is perhaps not quite right, or that there may have been a crucial shift in belief systems that moved the location of the afterlife away from the tomb and towards a new site: the cosmic northwest. Thus the question as to what constitutes travel objects must now be expanded to include not only the most obvious items, such as chariots, and not only geographical maps, but divining boards and calendrical texts such as the rishu as well, which are crucial for determining not only when travel may occur but also how it will go, and also for the administrative communication between this world and the next. In 1982 when reviewing Michael Loewe’s Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality, Anna Seidel asked whether there exists any connection between the netherworldly cult of the dead and the vi- sions of immortals’ paradises that developed since the middle of the Western Han dynasty.144 In other words, is there any link between the transcendental paradises where immortals reside and the fate of the dead in the afterlife, or between the departed soul’s haunting and the

144 Anna Seidel, “Tokens of Immortality in Han Graves: A Review of Ways to Paradise,” Numen 29 (1982), pp. 110–11. See also Poo, Search of Personal Welfare, pp. 210–11.

43 guolong lai celestial wandering of the immortals? This paper has not focused on Seidel’s question; instead I have discussed the conception of the afterlife in a period earlier than the middle of the Western Han dynasty, before the rise of these transcendental paradises, or the ideas about local destinations for the dead, such as Mount Tai and Liangfu. How- ever, in the process I have suggested some connections between these two phenomena. I have argued that during the late Warring States period there arose a new conception of the afterlife that shares features with the that of transcendental paradises: both journeys have a cosmic destination in the northwest, either in Mount Buzhou or Mount Kun- lun; both have similar road rituals and travel processions; both use tokens of immortality as travel paraphernalia. In this new conception of the world beyond, the soul of the deceased who died from unnatural causes, whether slain in battle or mishap, would take an imaginary journey through a dangerous underworld, which started from the tomb — a liminal point of departure — and eventually arrive at a final cosmic destination in the northwest of the universe. This provided a model or template for the later notions of otherworldly journeys and transcendental paradises.145

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ୺, annot., Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhu ਞટؐႚࣹ܄CQ Z Z Yang Bojun ᄘ Jiudian Jiudian Chu jian ԰ࢋᄑ១ ១ێ఻ችچShuihudi Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian ጕॡ

145 Peter Nickerson, “‘Opening the Way’: Exorcism, Travel, and Soteriology in Early Dao- ist Mortuary Practice and Its Antecedents,” in Livia Kohn and Harold D. Roth, eds., Daoist Identity: History, Lineage, and Ritual (Honolulu: U. Hawaii P., 2002), pp. 58–77.