The Author as a Patron: Prince of Huainan, the Owner-Author The term Huainanzi (Master of Huainan) simultaneously denotes a historical fig- ure and a text attributed to him. Although there were four individuals granted the title “Prince of Huainan” (Huainan Wang 淮南王) during the Western Han, only one has been ever connected to the text entitled Huainanzi.1 He was Liu An 劉安 (179–122 BC), grandson of the Western Han (206 BC–9 AD) founding father Liu Bang 劉邦 (r. 206–195 BC). He had inherited this title from his father, Liu Chang 劉長 (198–174 BC; Liu Bang’s seventh son), who had died young when in exile for allegedly plotting a rebellion against the imperial court during Emperor Wen’s 文 帝 reign (r. 180–157 BC).2 As a text, the Huainanzi consists of twenty-one chapters in its present-day form and has been considered one of the most voluminous of the early Western Han. Often, the life of Liu An has been key to scholarly understandings of the history of this text. And, simultaneously, for over two thousand years, the Huainanzi has served as the primary source for characterizing Liu An as its author. Unfortunately, despite this codependent relationship, we do not know for certain whether Liu An really participated in writing or editing the Huainanzi. In this chapter, we will review the various perspectives on the Huainanzi authorship and scrutinize rele- vant evidence supporting this text’s long held history. First, it will be argued that Liu An did not, in fact, write the Huainanzi, and nor did he likely present the text to the imperial court. Instead, this discussion proposes that the attribution of the Huainanzi to Liu An has been intertwined with the growth of a Liu An lore centering on his literary talents and esoteric knowledge, in which text-making is closely associated with the legend of his having achieved immortality. Secondly, the complexity of the authorship of the Huainanzi as presented in the “Yaolüe” 要略 (Summary of the Essentials), the last chapter of the current Huainanzi, is discussed for what it reveals about the editing process and editorial voice. I argue that the Huainanzi was formed after Liu An’s death, even though its incorporated chapters may have been formed in the Huainan court before his death. ?? 1 The four Princes were Ying Bu 英布 (?–196 BC), Liu Chang 劉長 (198–174 BC), Liu Xi 劉喜 (?– 144 BC), and Liu An. See Shiji 91.2598–2608; Shiji 118.3075–3094; Loewe 2000: 651–652; Major 2010: 4–5. 2 Shiji 118.3075–3081. For an almost identical account, see Hanshu 70.2135–2144. Open Access. © 2018 Zhang/JAS, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781501505133-005 1 The Author as a Patron: Prince of Huainan, the Owner-Author Finally, I examine the formation and authorship of the Huainanzi in the con- text of early Chinese text culture, from its physical creation to its burial context. Through this analysis, I shall explore the connection between the Huainanzi and early texts discovered in tombs, confirming that author and writer were often separate entities in early Chinese text-making. Liu An as the author of the Huainanzi reflects a type of authorship defined by patronage, rather than literal authorship. The Author and Its Function in Defining the Huainanzi Most discussions on the authorship of the Huainanzi follow a similar line of as- sumptions: authorship not only provides biographical and historical background for dating the text and identifying textual variants, but also serves as the founda- tion for interpreting the text. This is especially the case in pre-modern Chinese literary studies: to analyze a text requires the determination of relevant authorial information, so that specific biographical details and historical moments can be used to put a text into a historical context. It is true that certain authorial infor- mation may enhance our understanding of a text, but the author as a hermeneutical device is a double-edged sword. An interpretation of a text which relies too much upon authorial information makes the text secondary to that characterization of the author and consequently restricts the field of interpretation. Moreover, the current stage of our knowledge of the nature and functions of early Chinese authorship suggests that an interpretive framework oriented by author would be unwise. At- tributing a text to a cultural hero or head of a teaching lineage was frequently practiced in early China, and the person to whom a text is attributed may have nothing to do with the actual composition or subsequent compilation of the text.3 For this reason, we must separate the concept of “the creator” of a text from its author; the author to whom a text has been attributed was not necessarily the writer of it.4 Much scholarship, however, operates under the simplistic assumption that the supposed author serves as the key to date and interpret an attributed given text. ?? 3 Consult with the three models of composition and their according three types of authors in her introduction to The Huainanzi and Textual Production in Early China; see Queen, Sarah and Mi- chael Puett 2014: 4–5. 4 See Falkenhausen 2003: 439–526; Giele 2003: 409–438; Boltz 2005: 50–78; Yu Jiaxi 2010; Qiu Xigui 2004: 79–91; Li Ling 1998: 105–136; Li Ling 2004; Xie Weiyang 2007a: 3–13. The Author and Its Function in Defining the Huainanzi 1 Before analyzing the Huainanzi freed from labouring under such a misapprehen- sion, we shall be well-served in reviewing the previous scholarship that has fallen to this assumption. One general theory of the Huainanzi’s authorship relies on relevant infor- mation in Liu An’s Hanshu biography. The theory proposes that Liu An and his en- tourage of scholars are the writers of the Huainanzi. According to the Hanshu, Liu An “invited several thousand retainers and masters of prescriptions and techniques to create an ‘interior text,’ which includes twenty-one pian units.”5 The late Eastern Han commentator Gao You 高誘 (fl. 205–210 AD) offers more details in his postface (xumu 敘目) attached to the Huainanzi. Of the thousands of retainers proposed as writers of the Huainanzi in the Hanshu, Gao You specifies the “eight elders” (ba- gong 八公) and a few Confucian scholars, such as Dashan 大山 and Xiaoshan 小 山.6 Gao’s identification, though occurring centuries after Liu Xiang’s Bielu 別錄 (Separate Records) as preserved in the “Yiwen zhi,” has been widely accepted down to the present day.7 Many scholars agree that Liu An was not only the pa- tron of this text, but he also participated in planning, discussing, writing, editing, and formatting it together with his entourage (especially those mentioned in Gao You’s postface). Once finished, Liu An presented it to the imperial court during a visit in 139 BC, apparently in hopes of providing governing advice and winning the favor of the newly enthroned Emperor Wu.8 Current information is, however, insufficient for determining the precise roles Liu An and other members of the writing team played in compiling each chapter.9 Dissatisfied with the vagueness of this synthesis, Charles Le Blanc proposes that the precise role Liu An played as the author of the Huainanzi must be scruti- nized in order to define its compositional mode and to make the text more under- standable. He examines three types of data in his attempt to settle the question ?? 5 招致賓客方術之士數千人作為內書二十一篇. Hanshu 44.2145. 6 He Ning 1998: 5. Gao’s postface is incorporated in the Huainanzi jishi by He Ning and will be discussed more intensively later. 7 If Gao You finished his commentaries in 212 AD, seventeenth year of the Jian’an era, as he says in his postface, there is a gap of around 200 years between Gao’s postface and the arrangement of the Han imperial library directed by Liu Xiang and, later, his son Liu Xin. If we trace the ter- minus ante quem of the Huainanzi to the year of 139 BC when Liu An visited the imperial court, then the gap expands to 350 years. The reason that I hesitate to take 139 BC as the terminus ante quem of the Huainanzi will be explained below. 8 It says in the Shiji that “in the second year of the Jianyuan era (140–135 BC), the king of Huai- nan paid his visit to the imperial court” 建元二年，淮南王入朝. Many scholars believe that it was in this year that Liu An presented the Huainanzi to the Han imperial court. See Shiji 118.3082. 9 Roth 1992: 18–23; Major et al 2010: 7–13; Xu Fuguan 2001: 108–113; Mou Zhongjian 牟鍾鑒 1987: 154–162; Chen Jing 2004: 19–27. ! 1 The Author as a Patron: Prince of Huainan, the Owner-Author of the Huainanzi’s authorship, which he terms “external and internal evidence”: (1) the direct testimony of Han bibliographers, historians, and writers; (2) the psychological plausibility that Liu An wrote such a book; and (3) the intrinsic nature of the work, its unity and diversity in design, thought, and style.10 After examining scholarship from the Han, Song, and modern periods, Le Blanc pro- poses that it is Liu An who “appears directly responsible for the conception of both form and content, for the composition of some parts thereof and for the overall editorship.”11 This argument emphasizes Liu An’s role in the making of the Huainanzi; it was Liu An rather than his scholarly entourage who played the largest role in both writing and editing this text.