Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale in Early Chinese Historiography

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294

brill.com/asme

Hanmo Zhang State University of New York, New Platz [email protected]

Abstract

In a number of well-framed speeches recorded in the Zuozhuan, women, especially beautiful women, are viewed as the femmes fatales, or women who cause calamities. Among these speeches is a rare record of a famous doctor’s diagnosis of a Spring-and- Autumn-period hegemon’s illness. How could illness be connected with the notion of the femme fatale? In examining the correlations between this Zuozhuan account and related information in some newly excavated manuscripts, I argue that as far as the medical approach is concerned, both the Zuozhuan and the excavated texts share a common cultural basis at least partly retained in the extant texts after a long course of oral and written transmission. Based on the similarities between those transmitted and newly excavated texts, the illness from which the local ruler suffered can be identi- fied as a kind of sexual disease caused in the lord’s bedchamber. This evidence, and the high ratio of sex-related illnesses reflected in the Western Han doctor Chunyu Yi’s biographical account, further suggests that the Spring-and-Autumn-period hegemon’s illness was not a single isolated case, but rather represented a broader common problem of the patriarch’s sexual excess in early Chinese polygamous families. Some of the Zuozhuan accounts of ritual and medical principles are also closely related. This leads me to further suggest that the Zuozhuan historiographers, who knew well both medical knowledge and problems taking place in their contemporaries’ bedchambers, chose to condemn the femmes fatales under an abstract principle, that of ritual propriety, as the solution to sex-related diseases in early Chinese polygamous families.

* In this paper the terms enchantment, charming, and femme fatale are used approximately interchangeably with the words gu 蠱, mei 媚, and nühuo 女祸, respectively. Both gu and mei are more extensively discussed in the main text of this paper. The term nühuo refers to calamities more often than not caused by beautiful women.

Keywords

Enchantment – gu 蠱 – art of charming – mei 媚 – femme fatale – Zuozhuan – ritual propriety

Compared to other aspects like the political and military life of the Eastern Zhou 東周 (770–221 BCE), the gender issues of the Zuozhuan 左傳 (Zuo Commentaries), though noticed for a long time, have not been sufficiently studied.1 The idea of the femme fatale, however, is frequently touched upon from different points of view since it is embedded in a number of well-crafted Zuozhuan speeches hard to ignore. It seems to be a truism in the Zuozhuan that, in most cases when mentioned, physical female beauty as the source of sensual pleasure is also a sign of danger, both familial and political. How could such a notion come into being? There are different approaches to this question. Wai-yee Li offers an explanation of female beauty as a sign in the sign-causality explanatory scheme, according to which, the idea of the femme fatale ‘is more self-consciously, sometimes even willfully and arbitrarily, established, as she [the woman] is made to explain what otherwise seems incomprehensible’.2 In other words, with the invention of the idea of the femme fatale, which does not necessarily contain any causal relationship with the downfall of men, the Zuozhuan historiographers make those discrete historical events readable and, thus, inject meaning into history. Another explanation is that the Zuozhuan narrative conveys the historiographers’ ritual-oriented judgment that views extreme beauty similar to the impropriate display of clothing, music, and other things exposing the owner’s moral weakness and that impropriate pleasure always goes with disastrous consequences. This is why female beauty, represented as impropriate visual pleasure for men, is portrayed negatively in the Zuozhuan historiography’s

1 Needless to say, this statement is not meant to deny the fact that gender issue has attracted scholarly attention and been intensively written about in recent years. For instance, among many others, Lisa Raphals’s Sharing the Light 1998 and Charlotte Furth’s A Flourishing Yin 1999 exemplify this scholarly trend. For more references related to this trend, see also Holmgren 1981, Teng 1996, Zhou Yiqun 2003 and 2013, and passim. What this statement really means to convey, as it says, is the lack of sufficient scholarship focusing on the Zuozhuan as the back- bone in reconstructing women’s history in the Eastern Zhou, especially in comparison with its social, political, and military aspects. This article is a modest attempt—one of the many possible meaningful approaches to this issue—in this regard. 2 Li Wai-yee 2007, p. 160. For Li’s reading of female beauty as signs in the sign-causality scheme, see pp. 147–60.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 251 hermeneutics ‘yoked to a philosophical program that represents pleasures as a potential means to the revival of Zhou values’.3 The long-playing denigration of women’s image, especially when women played their roles in sex, can, however, be deconstructed by the candid admis- sion of men’s moral weakness accompanying the negative portrayal of women in early Chinese texts. The appearance of descriptions on the morally persua- sive power of virtuous female figures passim in the Zuozhuan and other early Chinese texts makes Paul Goldin suspect that the writers do not really mean it when they depict women as sexually licentious and morally degraded creatures; he believes that behind the veil of such negative depictions of women is virtually the authors’ intentions to criticize the dissolute men who take delight in sexual pleasure.4 Another line of argument emphasizes the inequality of the social status between men and women. A generally held assumption is that in a patriar- chal society like early China, women were relatively powerless and usually voiceless due to the dominating position of men. The denigration of women betrays men’s attempt to hide their wrong doings by taking female beauty as the cause of their trouble.5 Under the same assumption, the negative depictions of women are also taken as evidence of women’s desire for power in an abnormal yet understandable way, that is, to manipulate their relations with those–usually men–who control power.6 Based on this understanding, the accusation of the demoralization of the Zuozhuan women becomes ground- less, since the moral standard as later perceived might have not been applied to the periods reflected in the Zuozhuan. This is what Yang Yunru 楊筠如 tries to prove through a close reading of relevant cases recorded in the Zuozhuan. He argues that the interposed Confucius’ or Gentleman’s ( junzi 君子) highly moral comments, in contradicting the Zuozhuan accounts in regard to moral taboos and rules being frequently violated, merely reflect the moral stance of the Zuozhuan historiographers who followed Confucius’ teachings. These were later raised to be pervasive, highly respected moral standards dominating such major Confucian work as the Xunzi.7 In this sense, the judgment of the historiographers differs from the values reflected in those Zuozhuan accounts. Inspired by the above suggestions in one way or another, this paper, in focusing on the discussion of a well-preserved Zuozhuan medical account,

3 Schaberg 2001, pp. 222–55. 4 Goldin 2002, pp. 64–5. 5 Liu Yongcong 1998; Guisso 1981. 6 Wang Xiaojian 2007, pp. 11–15. 7 Yang Yunru 1988.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 252 Zhang attempts to offer a different reading of the idea of the femme fatale presented in the Zuozhuan in the light of such newly discovered texts as the Mawangdui medical manuscripts and Shuihudi almanac books (rishu 日書, or literally the ‘daybooks’).8 I argue that the illness from which Lord Ping of Jin 晉平公 (r. 557–532 BCE) had suffered belonged to a sex-related disease caused in the lord’s bedchamber and that this diagnosis reflected a common problem indi- cating the typical sort of tension in early Chinese polygamous families where women tended to attract and control their men though sex-related skills then called ‘the art of charming’ (meidao 媚道). Knowing well both current medical knowledge and the stories taking place in their contemporaries’ bedchambers, the Zuozhuan historiographers chose to condemn the femmes fatales under an abstract principle, that is, the principle of ritual propriety, to address their concerns of, and solutions to, the issues regarding sex, men’s health, as well as the social order within and outside of individual families. This analysis thus begins with the discussion of Doctor He’s ( yi He 醫和) diagnosis of Lord Ping of Jin’s illness recorded in the Zuozhuan, a work that has achieved canonical status and has been characterized as mainly the reflection of early Chinese court culture. But by also examining the newly archaeo- logically discovered Mawangdui medical manuscripts and Shuihudi almanac writings, which are generally categorized as the descriptions of non-elite thinking and practice, I attempt to extend the discussion to a more popular level

8 The fourteen Mawangdui medical texts were originally written on cloth and bamboo strips excavated from Mawangdui Tomb 3 located in present-day Changsha of Hunan Province. This tomb is dated to 168 BCE. The actual completed dates of the manuscripts may be diverse, but they should all have been produced prior to the burial date. For instance, based on the writing style of the characters and the materials on which the text is written, Li Xueqin and Ma Jixing hold that the discovered ‘Wushier bingfang’ 五十二病方 (‘Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments’) should have been written down in as early as the third century BCE or by the time this texts was interred in the tome at the latest (so are the other medical texts unearthed from the same tomb). See Ma Jixing and Li Xueqin 1979, pp. 226–28; Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 8–21. The daybooks found in Tomb 11 at Shuihudi of Hubei province are of the same nature as the Mawangdui medical manuscripts. The tomb is dated to the thirtieth year of the reign of Yingzheng’s 嬴政 (later the First Emperor) (r. 247–210 BCE); the making of these strips should be earlier than 217 BCE; and the compilation date is supposed to be much earlier than the making of the bamboo strips; see Rishu yanduban 1986; it is also incorporated in Wu Xiaoqiang 2000, pp. 292–95. Donald Harper offers a very good introduction to both the manuscripts on demonography and that on the almanac writings; see Harper 1985, pp. 462–70. For a study of the Shuihudi almanac writing and early Chinese hemerology, see Kalinowski 1986.

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including the life and thinking of the common people of that time.9 Therefore, the idea of the femme fatale, in representing the reaction to the issues faced in a polygamous environment in early China, had a broader appeal among both nobles and commoners of the time. Before we proceed to discuss the Zuozhuan account on Lord Ping’s illness, a brief mention of the dating of the Zuozhuan and the newly excavated medical and almanac writings as well as that of Doctor He’s diagnosing Lord Ping’s disease and the development of early Chinese medical culture and its related religious belief is in order. There is always the danger of being anachronistic in applying later materials to make a case for an earlier event. In this case, it seems at first glimpse that I analyze the diagnosis of Lord Ping’s illness, which occurred in the latter half of sixth century BCE according to the Zuozhuan, with the materials dated to three centuries later. But I find in reviewing the nature of textual formation and that of the transmission of medical knowledge in early China that this is an appropriate approach. First of all, the Zuozuan is a text involving longtime formation and transmission, both orally and in its written form. As David Schaberg proposes, much of the extant text of the Zuozhuan may have been developed in the course of oral transmission based on limited written materials among various learned groups in the late Spring and Autumn (770–476 BCE) and early Warring States (475–221 BCE) periods. The major transcription of the anecdotes and speeches as we see nowadays in the Zuozhuan started from around 400 BCE and continued probably to the late Warring States period.10 Although the orally transmitted anecdotes and speeches became relatively stable once they were written down, adaptations occurred along the long way of its transmission for teach- ing and other purposes. As bibliographical studies forcefully argue, we must take into consideration ‘human motives and interactions which texts involve at every stage of their production, transmission, and consumption’ in textual studies,11 and the Zuozhuan is no exception. It is almost inevitable that the

9 Poo Mu-chou observes that the newly excavated almanac writings mainly reveal the focus on the daily life of the non-elite groups; nevertheless, it is difficult to distinguish the ‘elite’ from the ‘non-elite’ religious belief because so far neither has been clearly defined or con- vincingly reconstructed. Here it is safe to infer on the basis of the contents that the worldview and religious mentality reflected in the almanac writings may not be totally alien to those of the upper class and had a large popular base. For Poo’s argument, see Poo 1998, p. 92. 10 Schaberg 2001, pp. 315–24. 11 McKenzie 1999, p. 15.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 254 Zhang historiographers’ or compilers’ views, ‘motives’, and ‘interactions’ were introduced into this text and merged with the materials. In these terms, the Mawangdui medical texts and the Shuihudi almanac writings experienced a similar process, the only difference is that, unlike the Zuozhuan, the circulation of these excavated texts was terminated upon their being interred into tombs. The contents of popular religious beliefs tied with older traditions, as reflected in the Shuihudi almanac writings, indicate a fairly long period of transmission before they took their written forms when put into the Qin and Han tombs.12 The accumulation of knowledge, medical knowledge in particular, involved long-term medical practice and strict way of cryptic, very often oral, transmission within carefully chosen circles, as we see in the biographical account of the famous early Chinese doctor Chunyu Yi 淳于意 (ca. 205–150 BCE).13 Moreover, in examining some key elements included in the contents of the Zuozhuan text and the later excavated medical and almanac writings, we also find that they shared the same cultural base and were not separated from one another in terms of the religious mentality and sociopolitical ideology they reflect. For example, in the case of Lord Ping’s illness, the immediate effort made to diagnose and cure his illness was the application of divination, which suggests a moment in Chinese medical history when medical practice remained inseparable from sorcery and divination.14 Doctor He’s diagnosis, however, resulted from a theoretical framework obviously different from that of divination and sorcery. This suggests not only the possible imbalance in the development of medicine among different states during the time of Eastern Zhou, but also the coexistence of different traditions of healing around that time. Such characteristic of early Chinese medicine we can also see in the Mawangdui medical manuscripts, such as, the ‘Wushier bingfang’ 五十二病方 (‘Recipes for Fifty-two Ailments’) and the ‘Zajin fang’ 雜禁方 (‘Recipes for Various Charms’). The usage of ‘invocation’ (zhu 祝) and other prescriptions, associated with ritual healing, appear here and there throughout these two texts.15 In some cases both medicine and spells are applied, for instance, to stop bleeding, ash of cattail mat as medicine

12 Poo 1993, pp. 623–75; Poo 1998, pp. 69–101. 13 Shiji ‘Bian Que Cang Gong liezhuan’, 105, pp. 2785–820; Li Jianmin 2000a, pp. 76–84. 14 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1217. 15 For more extensive discussions on invocation used in healing, see Li Ling 2006a, pp. 261–68; for how witchcraft is connected with the cause and healing of diseases as well as discussions on the relationship between witchcraft and medical practices based on newly discovered writings dated to the Warring States, Qin, and Han periods, see Lü Yahu

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 255 is prescribed together with the method of invocation—while ‘drawing charms on the ground’ (huadi 劃地), one spells, ‘stop it for men; stop it for women’ (nanzi jie nüzi zai男子竭女子酨).16 Furthermore, there are also connections between the Shuihudi manuscripts and the Mawangdui medical texts; in this regard, the use of the ‘Pace of Yu’ (Yu bu 禹步) serves as a good example. Named after the great sage king Yu, the ‘Pace of Yu’ belongs to a kind of exorcism aiming to ward off demons by perform- ing a specific series of steps allegedly imitating the walking of Yu. Interestingly, the application of the ‘Pace of Yu’ appears in both the Mawangdui medical manuscripts and the Shuihuidi almanac writings. While in the Shuihudi almanac writings people often perform the ‘Pace of Yu’ to protect the travelers before they start their trip, it is used to avert demons for healing purposes in the ‘Wushier bingfang’.17 To fully answer all the questions surrounding the dating issue of the texts entails a more thorough investigation, but the above discussion should suf- fice as an attempt of reading the abovementioned sixth-century Zuozhuan account in the light of the medical and almanac texts unearthed from tombs dated to late third- and early second-century BCE. These texts further expand our understanding of how illness, gender, and sexuality were perceived in early Chinese writings. With this in mind, this paper takes gu 蠱 (enchantment) and mei 媚 (art of charming) as the keywords to the understanding of the notion of the femme fatale, the well phrased idea in the Zuozhuan that beautiful women cause disaster to men. It first brings up the concerns of men’s health in early Chinese families by examining Lord Ping’s disease and the connotation of the term gu in this context; then, centering on the art of charming often related to women seducing men, an investigation on what caused the tension in early Chinese polygamous families and how it was handled ensues; the last part discusses how the Zuozhuan historiographers, well aware of the medical theories in circulation, offer the solution to the problems caused in people’s bedchambers by making ritual propriety the predominant principle, which not only defines the notion of the femme fatale, but also encodes their moral concerns and judgments in early Chinese historical writings.

2010, especially pp. 161–90 and pp. 373–386; for a general discussion on witches, wizards, as well as the practice of witchcraft in early China, see Li Ling 2006b, pp. 30–60. 16 Ma Jixing 1992, p. 337. 17 For example, see Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 1985, p. 38, and Wu Xiaoqiang 2000.

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Illness Caused by Intimacy with Women

As a typical Zuozhuan entry, the account about the illness of Lord Ping of Jin is among a cluster of anecdotes recorded under the first year of Lord Zhao of Lu 魯昭公 (542–510 BCE). Centering on Lord Ping’s disease, virtually two anecdotes are introduced in this entry: the first being the Zheng 鄭 minister Zichan’s 子產 (?–522 BCE) interpretation of an earlier divinatory result regarding the cause of Lord Ping’s illness executed by a Diviner,18 and the second, the diagnosis of Lord Ping’s disease by a Doctor He sent to the Jin by the Earl of Qin 秦伯. A few points are worth noting about the first anecdote. First, it clearly indicates the role of divination played in the process of healing at that time, a process involving sacrifice to various types of gods considered as the cause of different kinds of diseases. Second, Zichan’s exclusion of the divinatory result and introduction of the failure of observing the self-regulation principle in Lord Ping’s bedchamber as the cause of his illness suggest the coexistence of these idiosyncratically different concepts of healing at the time. At last, in mentioning Lord Ping’s marriage to multiple women who shared with him the same surname, a marital taboo passed down from ancient times, Zichan not only criticizes Lord Ping’s greed for sex and his related moral decay, which was associated with the decline of the State of Jin, but also brings up the tension between a husband and his wives and among the wives themselves in early Chinese polygamous families. The main argument made by Zichan, which is, regulating excess in his bedchamber with ritual propriety, corresponds with Doctor He’s theory that guides his diagnosis on Lord Ping’s disease.19 Doctor He’s initial diagnosis is recorded as the following statement said to Lord Ping of Jin:

18 Using divination to determine the cause of illness and to ease the pain caused by the illness evidently appeared as early as in the Shang dynasty, as seen in the Shang oracle inscriptions, and most probably continued to be in use from then on. This is confirmed by the recent archaeological discovery of the divinatory writings related to illness and healing from Tomb 2 in Baoshan 包山 of Jingmen 荊門, Hubei province, dated to late fourth century BCE, and other sites. For a rather extensive discussion on divination in Early China based on recently discovered materials, which is very useful for our understanding of divination used in the Zuozhuan context to diagnose Lord Ping’s disease, see Li Ling 2006a, pp. 184–236; for discussions on divination in a broad witchcraft context in Early China, see Li Ling 2006a, Li Ling 2006b, especially Li Ling 2006a, pp. 238–68; Li Ling 2006b, pp. 2–60; for discussions on how divination had been implied in healing based on both transmitted and newly excavated writings, see Yang Hua 2007, pp. 101–116. 19 In fact, Miranda Brown considers the narratives regarding Zichan’s and Doctor He’s diag- noses of Lord Ping’s illness textual doubles; see Brown 2012, pp. 374–80. Besides Brown’s

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Your illness cannot be treated. This is said to be caused by intimacy with women. This bedchamber-related illnes20 resembles that of being enchanted. It is caused neither by ghosts nor diet but by being deceived to the extent of losing one’s will. [As a result,] your good minister is going to die and the mandate of Heaven will cease to help.21

疾不可為也，是謂近女，室疾如蠱。非鬼非食，惑以喪志。良臣將死，天命不祐。22

This passage is short, but it tells the cause, describes the symptom, and pre- dicts the outcome of Lord Ping’s disease. Its main focus, as shows in Zichan’s words in the first anecdote, remains on the excess of Lord Ping’s sexual life, or, as Doctor He points out, Lord Ping’s ‘intimacy with women’. Based on both Zichan’s and Doctor He’s comments on Lord Ping’s disease, it is also clear

article, which aims to debunk the conventional view that Doctor He’s diagnosis of Lord Ping’s illness marks a revolutionary change in Chinese medical history, Chin Shih-ch’i also extensively discusses this case from the political perspective; see Chin Shih-ch’i 2009; Chin Shih-ch’i 2010, pp. 353–90. 20 Wang Niansun suspects that the character 室 is a wrong rendering of the character 生, a scribal error first mistaking 至 for 生 and further mistaking 室 for 至. Yang Bojun cites Wang Kaiyun, interpreting shiji 室疾 as fanglao 房勞, or sexual exhaustion. My translation attempts to keep its broader meaning and leaves room for other interpretations. For Wang Niansun’s and Yang Bojun’s suggestions, see Wang Niansun 1975, p. 449; Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1221. 21 Ibid. Unless specifically mentioned, the translations included in this paper are by the author. 22 The Chunqiu Zuozhuan zhengyi 春秋左傳正義 of the Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏 edition with Kong Yingda’s 孔穎達 (574–648 CE) commentaries provides a different punctuation of the sentence ‘是謂近女室疾如蠱’, suggesting reading nu 女 and shi 室 together as a term referring to the place where Lord Ping caught the disease. Although this reading does not alter the main idea conveyed though this sentence from the version I adopt here, putting a punctuation mark between shi 室 and ji 疾 does miss the rhyming pattern. In fact, as Huang Sheng 黄生 (1622–? CE) and Wang Niansun 王念孙 (1744–1832 CE) correctly pointed out, this passage observes tidy rhyming schemes and the sentence in discussion reads as shi wei jin nu 是謂近女*nraʔ, shi ji ru gu 室疾如蠱*kaʔ in old Chinese. The rhyming scheme of the remaining sentences shows as what follows: fei gui fei shi 非鬼非食*m-lək, huo yi sang zhi 惑以喪志*tə (=*tiə?). Liang chen jiang si 良臣將死*siʔ, Tianming bu you 天命不祐*wəh. The phonological reconstructions of the rhymed characters follow Schuessler 2007. For the discussions on this different way of punctuating this passage, see Huang Sheng 1936, p. 34; Wang Niansun 1975, pp. 449–50; Qian Zhongshu 1979, p. 228.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 258 Zhang that the Zuozhuan readily takes sex as a moral issue almost unexceptionally generating consequences on those who violated the moral code set up by the Zuozhuan gentleman’s judgment. In this regard, the excess of Lord Ping’s sexual life is equated with his moral decay, which is further linked with the decline of the Jin state as a hegemonic power among the various other states. In fact, the Zuozhuan deliberately exposes Lord Ping’s moral weakness related to women in a number of other passages. On one occasion, for example, when acting as the overlord to help alleviate the political crisis of the state of Wei 衛, he did not carry out what he earlier agreed to do until taking a Wei princess as a bribe.23 This event rather blatantly shows that, in order to satisfy his insatiable sexual desire, Lord Ping would act at the cost of the state of Jin’s hegemonic status. Furthermore, in another episode he even ignored the marital taboo that a man should not marry a woman sharing his surname, as Zichan criticized him for doing so when explaining the cause of Lord Ping’s disease. This illustrates Lord Ping’s morbid interest in women to the extent of ‘losing his will’ (sang zhi 丧志), as mentioned in the above passage. Doctor He’s prediction of the Jin’s loss of the Heavenly Mandate also corresponds to Zichan blaming Lord Ping for failing to observe his daily schedule as an overlord because he was spending all his time with his women.24 That is to say, since Lord Ping had lost the Heavenly Mandate, the burden of managing the Jin state fell on the shoulders of the ‘good minister’ (liangchen 良臣); the death of the ‘good minister’ of Jin would inevitably lead to the decline of the state. Interestingly, Doctor He does not directly define Lord Ping’s illness in the above passage or elsewhere in the Zuozhuan, but merely describes it as a disease ‘resembling that of being enchanted’. Although in a different context, another early Chinese text—the Han Feizi 韓非子—does provide the name of Lord Ping’s illness. In the ‘Ten Faults’ (shi guo 十過) chapter of the Han Feizi, the author refers to Lord Ping’s unstoppable desire for extreme musical pleasure to illustrate how ‘the fondness for the five notes’ (hao wuyin 好五音) would bring disastrous consequences to a virtueless ruler and his state. It says that in a diplomatic meeting with the ruler and the ruler’s accompanying musician from the state of Wei 衛, Lord Ping continuously asked the blind musician Shi Kuang 師曠 to perform the musical pieces that only ancient sagacious rulers were qualified to enjoy without heeding Shi Kuang’s repeated warnings. In the end, Lord Ping’s insatiable desire incurred the anger of Heaven, which punished the State of Jin with a severe three-year drought, and, ‘as a result,

23 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Xiang’ 26.12, p. 1124. 24 Ibid., ‘Zhao’ 1.12, pp. 1220–21.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 259 the body of Lord Ping suffered from exhaustion’ (Pinggong shen sui longbing 平公身遂癃病).25 The term long 癃 has multiple meanings, which may be mutually related if examined carefully. In the above context, the commentators usually gloss it as an equation of ‘exhaustion’, ‘disablement’,26 ‘aging-related poor health’,27 or an adjective modifying severe illness.28 All these interpretations make sense in the above anecdote. But if comparing this anecdote with the Zuozhuan account on Lord Ping’s illness, it becomes clear that the illness he suffered from both cases resulted from his indulgence in excessive pleasure, musical or sexual. If put in the Zuozhuan hermeneutical framework as illustrated by David Schaberg, both musical and sexual pleasure are subjugated by the Gentleman’s moral judgment that holds ritual propriety as the highest standard and, as we see in both anecdotes, Lord Ping had to take the consequences of his excesses, namely suffering from a certain incurable illness. Whether the illness that Lord Ping suffered from in the Han Feizi anecdote is sexually related or not is unclear, but this account does provide one key clue, that is, the name of the illness from which Lord Ping suffered, inspiring further exploration of the nature of the disease Doctor He described. Although the term long is glossed variously, both transmitted and newly discovered materials unambiguously identify those sexually related long diseases, which, like Lord Ping’s illness, are caused by ‘intimacy with women’ ( jinnu 近女), an illness ‘resembling that of being enchanted’ (rugu 如蠱). For example, similar to what Doctor He described about Lord Ping’s illness in the Zuozhuan, in the Lingshu jing 靈樞經 (Canon of the Divine Pivot), the second part of the Huangdi neijing 黃帝內經 (Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor), it says that if a man suffers from long, ‘he would feel exhausted without desire for food or drink’ (ru xie bu yu yinshi 如解不欲飲食).29 Elsewhere in the Lingshu jing the character long, often meaning difficulty in urination, and the character tui 㿉, meaning the symptom of suffering from infected testes and scrotum, form the

25 Wang Xianshen 1998, pp. 62–66. 26 In the Shuowen jiezi, Xu Shen 許慎 (c. 58–147 CE) glosses it as ba ji 罷疾, which Yan Shigu 顏師古 (581–645 CE) interprets as pi 疲 (read same as ba 罷 in Old Chinese *bai) ji 疾, or ‘illness of exhaustion’, while Duan Yucai 段玉裁 (1735–1815 CE) contending that it denotes disablement. See Duan Yucai 1981, p. 352; Schuessler 2007, p. 412. 27 Chen Qiyou 2000, p. 212. 28 In the Huainanzi, it also mentions that ‘Lord Ping was ill and suffered from long’ (Ping gong longbing 平公癃病), which Gao You 高誘 (c. 205–12 CE) glosses as du ji 篤疾, or ‘severe illness’. See He Ning 1998, p. 443. 29 Hebei yixueyuan 2009, p. 346.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 260 Zhang term of a disease (longtui) resulting from the deterioration of one’s spleen and kidney as well as venereal infection.30 In the Suwen 素問 (Basic Questions), the first part of the Huangdi neijing, the illness gu is equated with shanjia 疝瘕;31 those who have shanjia suffer from ‘fever and pain in their lower belly and their urine looks [unhealthily] white’ (shaofu yuanre er tong chu bai 少腹冤熱而痛出白).32 The Republican scholar-physician Yun Tieqiao 惲鐵樵 (1878–1935 CE) believed that this was the disease Lord Ping suffered from.33 The ‘Wushier bingfang’ lists different kinds of long disease as well as corresponding prescriptions to cure them; the symptoms include severe pain in their bladder and lower belly especially when the patients urinate.34 Elsewhere in this text it mentions long-symptoms such as the patient having difficulty in urinating and feeling that the bladder is pain- fully puffy, a symptom very close to what is described about long and shanjia in the Huangdi neijing.35 Several kinds of long disease also appear in a Han medical text discovered in Wuwei of Gansu 甘肅武威 and fall into the category called ‘five long’ (wu long 五癃) diseases, which are also referred to as the ‘five lin’ (wu lin 五淋) diseases in some later medical works.36 The historian of Chinese medicine Ma Jixing observes that in early Chinese medical texts the characters long and lin both denote the symptom of having problem in urination and that, phonologically, lin could be a loan word for long since their pronunciations are close both in Old Chinese (*rǝm and *ruŋ, respectively) and Middle Chinese (ljǝm and ljum, respectively).37 In modern medical terminology, lin is characterised by the inflammation of urinary organs and closely associated with some sexually transmitted diseases caused by gonococcal bacteria that affects the mucous membrane chiefly of the genital and urinary tracts and results in acute purulent discharge and painful or difficult urination. We should bear in mind, however, that defining

30 Hebie yixueyuan 2009, pp. 36–9, 77–81; Cheng Shide 1982, pp. 362, 531–39, 708; Li Jingwei et al. 1996, p. 1159. 31 It says in the Suwen that ‘another name [of shanjia] is gu’ ( yi ming yue gu 一名曰蠱); see Chen Shide 1982, p. 295. 32 Chen Shide 1982, p. 295. 33 Yu Yunxiu and Yun Tieqiao 2007, pp. 81–82. 34 Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 451–52; for the English translation, see Harper 1998, pp. 253–54. 35 Ibid., p. 458; Harper 1998, p. 255. 36 Gansu sheng bowuguan and Wuwei xian wenhuaguan 1975, p. 2; Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 445–71. 37 Ma Jixing 1992, p. 445; for a gloss on lin as long for their identical symptoms, see Zhang Xiancheng 2002, p. 120.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 261 long disease as a sexually-transmitted disease (STD) by connecting long and lin does not amount to the claim that all long diseases are STDs; for example, ‘stone long’ (shilong 石癃) is not sex-related. Also, not all the patients suffering from long disease experience difficulty and pain in urination; for instance, ‘women’s long’ (nüzilong 女子癃) disease usually does not have the same symptoms as does long in men. To be sure, there is always the danger in making a connection between early medical terms and modern terminology when using scarce tangible evidence to make a one-to-one correspondence. And also there is the problem of retro- spective diagnosis of ancient disease concepts, which disregards their range of meanings in historical and cultural context. Nevertheless, the evidence from both the historically transmitted and newly excavated medical texts examined above links the disease that Lord Ping suffered from to a kind of sexually-related long illness. The discussion of gu that follows further supports this conclusion.38 As pointed out above, gu is referred to as the equivalent of shanjia, characterized by the symptoms of high fever, abnormal urine color, and pain with urination. But for a long period of time, gu has also been considered as a magical technique associated with using parasitic infestation to control others for monetary or other nefarious purposes. Now, the question is, when Doctor He stated that Lord Ping’s illness ‘resembles that of being enchanted’, how did he define gu? Did he consider it to be a medical term identical with shanjia or a demonological concept related to dark magic? To answer this question, I review how this word has been historically used. The graphic origin of the Chinese character gu can be traced to the use of oracle bone inscriptions during the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE). The briefness of the divinations, however, does not allow a full explanation of its meanings then. Based on the Shang divinatory records, all that we can tell is that this character symbolizes some imaginary worm(s) that could be the cause of a number of illnesses, toothache, and bone problems.39 Compared with later understandings that it belongs to some venom collected from different poisonous worms, the gu in the oracle bone inscriptions is rather an abstract concept denoting evil spirits, venom, or other harmful influences without distinguishing one from another.40 This vaguely defined term from the

38 Xiao Bing believes that what Lord Ping caught is a typical kind of venereal disease occurring in early Chinese bed; see Xiao Bing 1992, p. 562. 39 Wang Jianxin 2004, p. 15. 40 Ibid.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 262 Zhang medical perspective does not change much over time, as we see in such later texts as the Zuozhuan and the Huangdi neijing. The use of gu in the Huangdi neijing according to later commentaries, for instance, is not much different from that in the Shang oracle bone inscriptions. For instance, the image of worms being contained in one’s body sucking human blood, which is one way to interpret the graphic form of the oracle inscription gu and has for a long time been understood as such, is used to illustrate how the lasting fever that characterises the shanxian disease draining the qi life force of the patient.41 Doctor He also mentions this character’s graphical connection with worms in his description of gu in the Zuozhuan, which I will examine later in more detail. Other sources show that gu, as a certain evil spirit that spread epidemic diseases, was the target in Han and pre-Han exorcist per- formances. Because of this range of senses in the historical materials, it is not helpful to identify gu as a specific disease. By comparison, the idea that gu belonged to some human-made poison dealing with dark magic seems to have been more compelling at least since the Han period, although the medical term gu was also developed in the meantime to signify various diseases not necessarily caused by gu poison but manifesting the symptoms of inflammation, fever, a full feeling in the lower belly, as well as certain types of brain damage that could be linked to gu poison.42 Scholars usually cite the account on how to make gu venom in the Zhubing yuan hou lun 諸病源候論 (On the Origins and Symptoms of Various Diseases, 610) by Chao Yuanfang 巢元方 (activ. 605–18 CE) as evidence to prove the existence of dark magic.43 It might be true that some kind of gu sorcery existed in China’s southwestern border area after the Han, but although this was an aspect of the

41 Zhang Xixiang and Wang Renzong 1996, p. 504. 42 Poo 1987, pp. 515–17. 43 Nanjing Zhongyi xueyuan 1982, p. 714. I translate this passage in the following: ‘Generally speaking the gu poison includes several kinds, which all belong to the chang- ing, deceitful qi force. There are those who deliberately make it. Often they take worms, snakes, and the like, contain them with a vessel, and allow them to eat each other. The one, and the only one, that finally survives is called gu and has the ability to change itself to deceive people. Following and chasing wine and food, it causes illness and calamity to those who drink the wine or eat the food. Others receive the illness and calamity, then the host of gu benefit from it. Therefore those who cannot be bridled [by law] keep and use gu. There is also the ‘flying gu’, which comes and goes from nowhere and gradually forms itself like ghost-qi force, those who are caught by it would suddenly become seri- ously ill. Generally speaking, those who are caught by the gu illness would mostly die in due course’. 凡蠱毒有數種，皆是變惑之氣。人有故造作之，多取蟲蛇之類，以器皿盛貯，任其自相啖食，唯有一物獨在者，即謂之為蠱。便能變惑，隨逐

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 263 geographic imagination, there is no empirical evidence of such sorcery at that time. This sort of gu is generally considered as a reflection of the geographi- cal, cultural, and political tension between central China and its less civilized borders.44 Although in more recent accounts sex, love, and betrayal are involved in the scene,45 another motivation presented for making and using gu was the desire for wealth. The only way for those who want relief from gu poisoning is to abandon their possessions; the price for those unwilling to give up their wealth is death.46 So far as available evidence is concerned, we cannot find any trace in any text from the pre-Han period suggesting the making and using of gu poison in such a way. This magical poison meaning of gu is not seen either in the Zuozhuan account. In the Zuozhuan anecdote on Lord Ping’s illness, after Doctor He diagnosed and explained the cause of the illness, Zhao Wu 趙武 (?–541 BCE), Lord Ping’s ‘good minister’, asked him ‘what was gu’? Doctor He replied:

It is what arises from excess, indulgence, deception, or disorder. As indicated by the graph, min (‘a vessel’) and chong (‘pests’) make up gu. Flying grains are also gu. In the Zhouyi [Book of Changes], when a woman deceives a man or the wind falls below the mountain, these are called gu—all [the above] are the same thing.47

淫溺惑亂之所生也。於文：皿蟲為蠱。穀之飛亦為蠱。在《周易》：女惑男、風落山謂之蠱。皆同物也。

One of the specific points made in the above passage is the link made between women and the gu-illness. In his conversation with Lord Ping, Doctor He made it clear that the Lord’s illness resulted from his sexual life and ‘resembles that of being enchanted’. Although he did not directly point out that Lord Ping was suffering from a long-type condition, judging from his stated cause of Lord Ping’s disease, whether Doctor He thought of it as a long or gu does not matter so much as the fact that both are also depicted as the illnesses arising from excess and deception. The main difference between the two lies in the different

酒食，為人患禍。患禍受於佗，則蠱主吉利，所以不羈之徒而蓄事之。又有飛蠱，去來無由，漸狀如鬼氣者，得之卒重。凡中蠱病，多趨受於死。 44 Unschuld 1985, pp. 46–50; Feng and Shryock 1935, pp. 1–30; Lin Fushi 1988, p. 75. 45 Deng Qiyao 1999. 46 Unschuld 1985, p. 50. 47 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1223.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 264 Zhang foci of the two concepts: while the graph long mainly denotes the symptoms, gu seems to focus on their cause. In the above passage, Doctor He explains what gu is from three perspectives by using three symbols. First, he analyzes the structure of its written form: the combination of min 皿 (lower part of the gu character) and chong 蟲 (upper part of the gu character) signifies a container holding pests. The written form of gu seems to give some credit to the later understanding of viewing gu as dark magic—to raise pests in a vessel and collect their venoms in order to make poison to hurt others. But in the Zuozhuan episode, Doctor He suggests that the metaphoric ‘container’ is none other than Lord Ping’s body. The second symbol strengthens this argument by making gu visible. The eggs of moths in grain are completely invisible to the naked eyes before they hatch. When the eggs have hatched, however, the larvae would destroy the grain and finally turn themselves into flying moths. Seeing moths flying out of the granary and leaving behind themselves empty hulls makes one wonder, if the grain has not transformed itself into moths, from where else could they have come? This is one possible interpretation for the use of the term ‘flying seeds’ ( feishi 飛實) and that of the character gu (the graph of a vessel containing worms) to name the flying grain (gu zhi fei 穀之飛).48 Just as in the first symbol, the hull of grain could be read as another metaphor for Lord Ping’s body. The last symbol used by Doctor He—the image of the hexagram gu—illustrates that gu virtually symbolizes the deceitful nature of women. The phrase that ‘the wind falls below the mountain’ describes the image of hexagram gu, which consists of the trigram gen 艮 ☶ (the symbol of a mountain) above and trigram xun 巽 ☴ (the symbol of wind) below. Trigram gen is also the symbol of male and xun, female. Therefore, the ‘judgment’ in the Zhouyi for this hexagram says that ‘the firm (characterising the male) is above and the soft (characterising the female) is below’, an obvious image of sexual intercourse, Doctor He suggests that the word gu here means nothing but that ‘a woman deceives a man’. A similar passage in the Guoyu makes this point even more obvious. In the same scenario as we see in the Zuozhuan passage, Doctor He replies as follows when Zhao Wu asks him how gu grows:

The calamity of gu arises from the flying seeds of grain. Among things, nothing is more latent than gu yet nothing is better than grain. When the grain flourishes, gu is hidden, thus what is bright is noticeable. Therefore those who eat grain choose ‘men’s virtue’ to represent the brightness of

48 For ‘feishi’, see Shanghai shifan daxue guji zhenglizu 1978, pp. 473–4.

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grain in the daytime and calm ‘women’s virtue’ to hide the calamity of gu at night. Now the Lord reduces them into one, this means that he does not enjoy the grain but eats gu, or that he does not display brightness but contains gu. As indicated by the graph, chong (‘pests’) and min (‘a vessel’) make up gu. Based on this I say so.49

蠱之慝，穀之飛實生之。物莫伏於蠱，莫嘉於穀，穀興蠱伏而章明者也。故食穀者，晝選男德以象穀明，宵靜女德以伏蠱慝，今君一之，是不饗穀而食蠱也，是不昭穀明而皿蠱也。夫文，“蟲”、“皿”為“蠱”，吾是以云。

In this passage, gu 蠱 *kôk and gu 穀 *kâ become two opposite features— calamitous versus beneficial, latent versus noticeable, and hidden versus flourishing—symbolizing ‘woman’s virtue’ versus ‘man’s virtue’, respectively. The character de 德 (virtue) in this context does not necessarily carry positive moral judgment but is a semantically neutral word denoting the quality, power, and capability that a man or a woman has. Assigned with differing de, men and the women are unmistakably divided into two opposite categories—daytime and night, gu 穀 and gu 蠱, bright and hidden, good and calamity. ‘Woman’s virtue’ cannot be uprooted, but can be ‘calmed’ or ‘tamed’. Similarly, the calamity of bewitchment cannot be overcome, but can be ‘hidden’ or ‘reduced’. Therefore, to avoid the calamity caused by women one should calm ‘women’s virtue’ and carry out men’s duty. If one reduces the two into one, that is, merely calming ‘women’s virtue’ at night while failing to act according to ‘men’s virtue’ at daytime, it is the same as consuming venom. On this point, Doctor He’s explanation resonates with Zichan’s words that the Jin ruler contracted this disease because he failed to observe a ruler’s balanced schedule. Though sometimes the term gu also appears in the Zuozhuan on the occasion that a man deceived or attempted to deceive a woman,50 men are more often than women the victims in such a wrestle symbolized by the gu hexagram.

49 Ibid., pp. 473–74. 50 In the twenty-eighth year of Lord Zhuang of Lu 魯莊公 (r. 693–662 BCE), in order to seduce the widow of the Chu former king—King Wen of Chu 楚文王 (r. 689–675 BCE), the Chu Minister Ziwen 子文 built a mansion next to the widow’s palace and arranged the dancers to perform the ‘wan dance’ (wanwu 萬舞) there. The narrator uses the character gu to denote the meaning ‘to seduce’. In this sense, gu can also be used to describe a licentious man attempting to seduce a woman. Wen Yiduo suggests that this kind of dance was used in the scene of presenting sacrifice to the goddess Nüwa 女媧 in pre-Qin time and contained the rites imitating sex intercourse. Because the ‘wan dance’ is strongly related to sex in this context, so is gu connected with sexual seduction. See Yang Bojun

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 266 Zhang

Turning to another source of evidence, the ‘Wushier bingfang’ text from the 168 BCE Mawangdui site includes five identifiable recipes aiming at curing gu disease, two of which mention ‘woman’s [menstrual] cloth’ (nüzibu 女子布) as medicine.51 As Lee Jen-der observes, according to the extant pre-Tang medical texts, woman’s menstrual cloth is used in numerous prescriptions aiming to cure various diseases.52 But as long as sex-related diseases are concerned, a woman’s menstrual cloth is used only to cure a man’s problems; this is in accordance with this iatric principle that men’s things (hair, fingernail, etc.) cure women’s diseases and women’s cure men’s.53 In another recipe, a bat is prescribed, which could also be associated with the symbolism of the female sex organs.54 Bats had been thought to be a kind of ‘flying mouse’ in early times;55 according to two excavated manuscripts—the ‘Yangsheng fang’ 養生方 (‘Recipes for nurturing Life’) and the ‘Tianxia zhidao tan’ 天下至道談 (‘Discussion of the Culminant Way in Under-Heaven’)—from Mawangdui Tomb 3, some parts of the female sexual organs are named after the ‘mouse’ (shu 鼠). Although the origin of this usage of the character shu awaits further exploration, it is clear that at least three out of the five recipes for those inflicted with gu recorded in the ‘Wushier bingfang’ are male-oriented.56 This suggests that more often than not men were the victims of the gu diseases. The way of healing a man suffering from gu illness, according to Ma Jixing’s study, is mostly witchcraft-related, for instance, applying invocations or spells to avert the gu diseases.57 Using the ash of a burned talisman to exorcise illness

1990, ‘Zhuang’, 28.3, p. 241; Liu Dalin 1993, p. 102; Wen Yiduo 1994, pp. 3–34. Nevertheless, the ‘wan dance’ is also considered as a kind of ‘military dance’ (wu wu 武舞) in which the dancers held weapons or a kind of ‘civil dance’ (wen wu 文舞) in which the dancers held feathers. Moreover, the numbers of lines seemed to symbolize the social status of those who were eligible to order the performance of the ‘wan dance.’ Du Yu simply notes that wan is the name of a certain dance without discussing whether it was military or civil in nature. See Chuqiu Zuozhuan zhu ‘Yin’, 5.7, pp. 46–7. For Du Yu’s interpretation, see Du Yu 1988, p. 34, pp. 199–200. 51 Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 631–35; for its English translation, see Harper 1998, pp. 300–302. 52 Lee Jen-der 2002, pp. 15–18. 53 Lee Jen-der 2002, 23–24. Women’s menstruation is regarded both as the source of pollution and medicine to cure diseases. See Ahern 1975, pp. 193–214. 54 Li Ling discusses the terminology of sex organs both in Chinese and English, but why some parts of vagina are thus named remains unclear. See Li Ling 2006a, pp. 323–24 and pp. 333–34; Li Ling and Keith Mcmahon 1992, pp. 163–67. 55 For example, see Hua Xuecheng et al. 2006, p. 559. 56 Whether or not the other two recipes are also for men is not clear. 57 Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 631–35.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 267 like gu became very well-known as a Daoist practice for healing purposes at least from the second century onward.58 To drink the water with ashes of burned bats, burned woman’s menstrual cloth, char of dark-skinned rooster and snake,59 or the waste on the menstrual cloth of a virgin as medicine hints at the efforts of expelling women’s evil influence during the healing process. In addition, a dark-skinned rooster and cinnamon used in the recipes can be related to men’s potency and women’s sexual pleasure based on the ‘Yangsheng fang’ and other Mawangdui medical texts.60 But the way of preparing medicine with these two things seems to call for our attention that here they are symbols of sex that should be expelled in the process of curing gu.61 Comparing the methods of healing gu and long, we can see the noticeable difference between the two. For example, among the 27 recipes dealing with long diseases listed in the ‘Wushier bingfang’, only two are related to invocation, while all five recipes aiming to cure gu belong to ‘invocation recipes’ (zhuyou fang 祝由方).62 Such difference is not accidental, but tells that treat- ing long is to deal with concrete clinical symptoms while handling gu means to exorcise evil influence originating mainly from women. In Lord Ping’s case, Doctor He stated very clearly that if the lord wanted his illness to be cured, he must keep a distance from his bedchamber, that is, from women’s evil influence transmitted through sex. The Lord obviously was unable to observe this and this is why Doctor He made the pessimistic prediction on Lord Ping’s

58 According to the commentaries on the Hou Han shu, Zhang Jue 張角 (?–184 CE) was famous for his converting people to his believers by using water mixing with talisman ashes to cure ailments in the latter half of the second century CE. See Hou Han shu ‘Liu Yan Yuan Shu Lü Bu liezhuan’, 75, p. 2436. 59 Harper suggests that this way of preparing medicine is ‘an antidote whose production imitates the production of the gu potion.’ He seems to believe that the use of gu as black magic occurred in both the Han and pre-Han periods. For Harper’s suggestion, see Haper 1998, p. 301. 60 For the examples of the usage of rooster and cinnamon, consult Ma Jixing 1992, p. 667, p. 676. Also consult Li Ling’s summary on the usage of medicine in the Mawangdui texts; see Li Ling 2006a, pp. 362–66. 61 In the ‘Yangsheng fang’ or elsewhere when roosters are used as medicine, they are edible like food. Likewise Cinnamon is used as a kind of herbal invigorator. But in the recipes used to deal with gu, both the rooster and cinnamon need to be decocted until they get charred, then the char would be mixed with liquor or gruel and the one who suffers from gu drink it as medicine to drive the disease out. That dirt functions in exorcising activity can also be found in the Han Feizi and Shuihudi almanac writings; for details, see Poo Mu-chou 1993, p. 660. 62 The two invocation recipes to cure the long diseases include Recipes 99 and 113; see Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 449, 464.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 268 Zhang illness: it is incurable because of his addiction to women. But how did Doctor He know that the Lord of Jin would not sacrifice his sexual pleasure for better health? Here the Zuozhuan historiographers speak for Doctor He by deliberately putting Lord Ping into an immoral position where he could not stop from being ruined by women and, as a result of the ruler’s moral flaw, the decline of the Jin’s hegemonic power became inescapable. In discussing long, gu, and the corresponding recipes of healing, we sense the sort of tension that was not only faced by Lord Ping, but might have also been confronted by other early noble families. On the one hand, there is little doubt that in a polygamous society a woman’s position to a large extent depended on whether her husband favored her or not. Therefore, it is not sur- prising that she would try to win her husband’s favor against other women in his bedchamber by all means, especially by taking advantage of her sexual attraction to ‘deceive’ him, sometimes even to the extent of causing him to ‘lose his will’. On the other hand, if a husband could not regulate himself and keep a proper distance from his bedchamber, he would easily get ‘enchanted’ by his women and, as the situation deteriorated, he would possibly suffer from sexual exhaustion or sexually transmitted diseases such as what happened to Lord Ping of Jin. That is to say, the man had to make a choice between his health and sexual pleasure, a balance closely associated with the idea of self-regulation and ritual propriety strongly promoted by the Zuozhuan historiographers. Another point I would like to make here pertains not only to Lord Ping’s women’s chamber, but also to other powerful families, as we see in the Zuozhuan: the cases of adultery, which occurred between the masters’ wives and their subjects, between stepmothers and stepsons, between brothers-in-law and sisters-in- law, and so on, appear passim in the Zuozhuan. Among these cases, quite a few very possibly involved wives whose husbands could not sexually satisfy them. This at least partly explains the tradition of employing the art of charming, a useful prism through which we now can see the tensions and problems in early Chinese powerful families.

The Practice of the Art of Charming in Early Chinese Families

What is the ‘art of charming’ (meidao 媚道)? Yan Ji’s 燕姞 story recorded in the third year of the Lord Xuan of Lu 魯宣公 (r. 608–591 BCE) in the Zuozhuan sheds great light on this question. As one of the Zheng Lord Wen’s 鄭文公 (r. 673–628 BCE) lowly concubines, Yan Ji might not have had many chances to

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 269 serve him in his bedchamber. But one day, she dreamed that one of her ances- tors gave her an orchid, saying to her,

‘Take this as your son. Since the orchid possesses the fragrance of the state, the one who uses it will be loved like an orchid’.63 Not long after that Lord Wen met with her; he gave her an orchid and had sex with her. She addressed to the lord: ‘I the humble wife have no talents. If I happen to bear a child, others would not believe [that he is yours]. Dare I use the orchid to prove it’? The lord said, ‘Agreed’. She then gave birth to Lord Mu and named him Lan (‘Orchid’).64

‘以是為而子。以蘭有國香，人服媚之如是’。既而文公見之，與之蘭而御之。辭曰：‘妾不才，幸而有子，將不信，敢徵蘭乎’？公曰:‘諾’。生穆公，名之曰蘭。

There are a couple questions this passage raises: For what reason did Lord Wen give his lowly concubine an orchid when having sex with her? Had he heard about Yan Ji’s dream about the orchid or was it just a coincidence? The Zuozhuan narrative does not provide answers to these questions and impresses upon its readers an air of mystery. By comparison, in the Shiji version of this anecdote, it seems that in order to make it a more plausible story, the author presents it in a more explanatory way: it says that the ancestor of Yan Ji deliv- ered an orchid to her in her dream and told her:

‘Take this as your son; the orchid possesses the fragrance of the state’. She told Lord Wen about her dream. Lord Wen had sex with her and gave her a grass orchid as a sign. She then gave birth to a son named Lan (‘Orchid’).65

63 Yang Bojun cites Gao You’s commentary on a Huainanzi passage to interpret fu 服 as ‘to wear’, but the Huainanzi reference does not fully apply to the above Zuozhuan context. By comparison, the meaning of the character fu in a Shanhaijing 山海經 (Classic of Mountains and Seas) passage describing the yao 瑤 (remove the radical ‘王’ on the left and add ‘艹’ above the right part) cao 草 plant is closer to that used in the above Zuozhuan passage. The fu in the Shanhaijing passage is better understood as ‘to take’ or ‘to eat’. Nevertheless, the difference between these two interpretations does not change their being used as a love potion, as the following analysis shows. This is why I translate fu here rather broadly as ‘to use’. For Yang Bojun’s gloss, see Yang Bojun 1990, p. 673; for the Shanhaijing passage, see Yuan Ke 1992, p. 124. 64 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Xuan’, 3.7, p. 673. 65 Shiji ‘Zheng shijia’, 42.1, p. 765.

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以是為而子，蘭有國香。以夢告文公，文公幸之，而予之草蘭為符。遂生子，名曰蘭。

In the Zuozhuan version, although it does not state whether Yan Ji wore the orchid or ate it as a sort of charming potion to attract Lord Wen’s attention, the result of Yan Ji using the orchid is clearly given: Yan Ji was able to success- fully attract Lord Wen to have sex with her and, as a result, she later gave birth to a boy. If we connect this usage of orchid with the Shanhaijing description of the yaocao, it becomes understandable that in this Zuozhuan anecdote, the orchid serves as a sort of love potion aiding Yan Ji to achieve her goal. Considered as the transformation of the daughter of an ancient thearch (Thearch Yan 炎帝), yaocao is described in the Shanhaijing as a plant with a yellow flower and round seeds. It is said that whoever ‘uses it (yaocao) will be loved by others’ ( fu zhi mei yu ren 服之媚於人).66 Since this plant is closely associated with the mythical love affair between a Chu king and a seductive goddess,67 scholars tend to consider yaocao, as the symbolic transformation of this goddess, as an ingredient of love portion. For example, in comparing the abovementioned Zuozhuan and the Shanhaijing sources, Li Ling believes that the Yan Ji narrative indeed reveals the early usage of love potions in the Chinese bedchambers of antiquity.68 The Shiji version of this anecdote, however, misses this point and only focuses on the keywords ‘giving birth to a son’. The orchid becomes merely a ‘sign’ as the proof to the identity of the boy Yan Ji would later bear. The newly excavated Mawangdui manuscript, the ‘Taichan shu’ 胎產書 (‘Book of the Generation of the Fetus’), adds more references to the above understanding of the early usage of love potion. The ‘Taichan shu’ refers to a number of recipes on how to bear a son, among which, a few are about eating certain fragrant grasses or drinking wine with certain grasses as ingredients to increase the opportunity of giving birth to boys.69 Lü Yahu 呂亞虎 suggests that those kinds of grasses being used to increase the opportunity to give birth to a boy in the ‘Taichan shu’ are closely associated with the notion that they have something to do with men’s potency, masculinity, or the metaphor of a man’s sexual organs.70 Although no orchid is mentioned in those ‘Taichan shu’ recipes, the orchid falls in this category since in both contexts the ultimate

66 Yuan Ke 1992, p. 171. 67 Ibid., p. 172. 68 Li Ling 2006a, p. 320. 69 Ma Jixing 1992, p. 808, p. 811. 70 Lü Yahu 2008, pp. 16–18; Lü Yahu 2010, pp. 66–72.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 271 purpose of taking those plants is to produce male descendants via sexual intercourse. It is noticeable that a number of plants mentioned in early Chinese texts, such as the Chuci 楚辭 (Songs of the State of Chu) and the Shanhaijing, have long been considered helpful for women to bear male children at least partly because of the fragrance they emit. For example, Luo Yuan 羅願 (1136–84 CE) points out that orchids, like another fragrant plant called the miwu 蘼蕪, the roots of which were used as medicine to cure sterility, is among the herbs that help women to be loved and to produce male offspring.71 Based on this understanding we may thus view Yan Ji’s dream of an orchid followed by Lord Wen’s favoring her in his bedchamber not just as a coincidence, but rather as a strat- egy used by a palace lady who desired to change her lowly status by having sex with her master and giving birth to a son. Although the anecdote of Yan Ji’s using an orchid as a love potion to enhance her sexual attractiveness contains certain mysterious elements—for example, why her ancestor talks to her in her dream—but the narrative itself does not portray Yan Ji’s action as a form of dark magic; instead, her behavior is legitimised by the actual result that her son succeeded Lord Wen’s position to become a lord despite her lowly status. What is more noticeable regarding the art of charming, however, is the aspect of portraying the art of charming as an extremely evil maneuver in the bedchamber. The Zuozhuan anecdotes we’ve discussed depict ‘charming’ as an art mainly relying on invocation and sorcery to monopolize a man’s favor by destroying whoever is or has the potential to be in a woman’s way. This became especially so in late Eastern Zhou and early imperial eras involving palace ladies. Examples of this kind are abundant in the Shiji, Hanshu and Hou Hanshu.72 The techniques and potions used in those cases vary, but the basic elements in those narratives, such as the struggles among the palace ladies and the purpose of their art of charming, largely remain the same.73 These narratives also follow a similar pattern, that is, for the sake of her own benefit, the palace woman must get rid of her opponents in the bedchamber by all means, among which, the political power of the palace ladies’ pater- nal or/and maternal families certainly mattered, but love potions also played a significant role in a number of cases. Such conflict among palace ladies was certainly not merely limited in the Han imperial palaces; the Han feizi rather

71 Lü Yahu 2008, p. 17; Luo Yuan 1939, pp. 17–18, pp. 22–23. 72 For examples, consult Shiji ‘Waiqi liezhuan’, Hanshu ‘Wudi ji’, ‘Waiqi Zhuan’, Hou Hanshu ‘Huanghou benji’, ‘Zhangdi Bawang liezhuan’, and passim. 73 For a summary of these cases, see Lin Fushi 1988, pp. 78–82; Li Jianmin 1996, pp. 4–16.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 272 Zhang clearly points out that it was something commonly seen in pre-Qin palaces and houses as well:

Moreover, for rulers of myriad chariots or lords of a thousand chariots, among their concubines and wives whose sons happen to be the heirs apparent, there are those who want their lords to die early. How do we know that it is so? For a wife, she does not have the bond of bone and flesh (blood relationship) [with her husband]. When her husband loves her, he draws himself close to her; when he no longer loves her, he keeps himself away from her. A saying goes, ‘if a mother is favored, her son is embraced’. If this is so, then an opposite argument can also be made: ‘if a mother is disliked, her son is alienated’. When a man reaches his fifties, his being fond of beauty is not dismissed; when a woman lives up to her thirties, her beauty falls off. To serve a husband who is fond of beauty with lost beauty, then she will be distanced from her husband, looked down upon, and her son will doubtfully become the successor. This is why the concubines and wives wish for the death of their lords. Only when the mother becomes a queen and the son, the ruler, could no com- mand not be carried out, no prohibition not be observed, her sexual joy be no less than that with her former lord, and she would be able without doubt to manipulate the state of myriad chariots. This is why poisonous wine and sneaky suffocation are employed [i.e., to assassinate the lords and rulers].74

且萬乘之主，千乘之君，后妃、夫人適子為太子者，或有欲其君之蚤死者。何以知其然？夫妻者，非有骨肉之恩也，愛則親，不愛則礴。語曰：其母好者其子抱。然則其為之反也，其母惡者其子釋。丈夫年五十而好色未解也，婦人年三十而美色衰矣。以衰美之婦人事好色之丈夫，則身（死）見礴賤，而子疑不為後，此后妃、夫人之所以冀其君之死者也。唯母為后而子為主，則令無不行，禁無不止，男女之樂不減於先君，而擅萬乘不疑，此鴆毒扼昧之所以用也。

From the palace ladies’ perspective, this passage eloquently explains the reasoning of what is portrayed as the palace ladies’ vicious intent and evildoing. According to this argument, the use of ‘poisonous wine and sneaky suffocation’ becomes understandable when we approach this issue in terms of the relationship between the husband and the wife. The key of this relationship,

74 Wang Xianshen 1998, p. 115.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 273 based on the above description, is se 色 (‘female beauty’), or in another word, sex. What a palace lady was able to achieve with the beauty that she possessed when she was young could easily crumble to dust when the favor that she pre- viously received from the ruler dwindled following the decrease of her beauty with age. It is the fear of losing the ruler’s favor, and the aim of solidifying her gains in and out of the bedchamber, that helps explain the extreme path she could take. This reasoning also explains the motivation of using love potion and other methods of the art of charming in bedchamber. Let us return to the question on the definition of the art of charming. Based on the above discussion, the art of charming can be defined, generally speaking, as an art of winning the favor of the head of a family and/or solidifying the gains as the result of the favor usually related to one’s actual status in or out of the family, without considering the cost of others’ prestige, benefit, or even life.75 The art of charming thus generally belongs to the arts of the bedchamber, but if the head of the family is a lord or an emperor, it immediately becomes political. Theoretically, both men and women can be the practitioners of the art of charming, but there is not much evidence in major early Chinese texts showing how men used it. Although this does not mean that only women practiced the art of charming (there are traces of men using the art of charming in later times), in a polygamous society in which men often played the predominant role, women were portrayed in the extant literature as more inclined to employ the art of charming to reach their goals. That is why we see that the desire for sex and for sons are generally the two foci of the art of charming. So far as its methods are concerned, love potions and invocations are the most commonly seen and both may be related to sorcery. For example, in some of the cases occurring in the Han imperial court, sorceresses used wood puppets in invocation rituals, new-born boy’s arms and legs related to the desire for male offspring, and certain plants, such as tu 菟 (dodder), in the practice of the art of charming.76

75 This is based on, and an extension of, the definition offered by Qian Zhongshu. Qian’s definition emphasises winning the favor of the master, but many of the cases involving the art of charming also deal with the fear of losing the ruler’s favor, which corresponds to the Han Feizi argument given above. For Qian’s definition, see Qian Zhongshu 1979, pp. 296–300. Lin Fushi and Li Jianmin also discuss the use of the art of charming on the basis of Qian’s definition; see Lin Fushi 1988, pp. 78–80; Li Jianmin 1996, pp. 4–16. 76 Hanshu ‘Waiqi zhuan’, 67, p. 3948; Shiji ‘Jianyuan yilai zhuhou nianbiao’, 20, p. 1065; Hou Hanshu ‘Zhangdi bawang liezhuan’, 55, p. 1799; Yuan Ke 1992, p. 124. Dodder is possibly the same plant referred to in the Shanhaijing with the power of enchanting people and, in this new context, may have also been used to make love potions.

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To be loved by her husband and to have a son must also have been the two major concerns in the mind of a housewife in an ordinary early Chinese family. Passages directly or indirectly related to marriage and the birth of a son com- prise about one third of the contents of the newly excavated Shuihudi almanac writings.77 In many passages the wife’s personality, the possibility of her being loved, the chance of her giving birth to a son as well as the future of her son are concerns juxtaposed in the prediction or taboo lists that are also included in these same almanac writings. For example, one almanac passage says,

To sacrifice or travel on a Kui day is auspicious; if a man marries a wife [on that day], the wife will be loved and her breath is fragrant; if a boy is born [on that day], he will become an official.78

奎，祠及行，吉。以取妻，女子愛而口臭。生子，為吏。

In addition, sexual attractiveness is also mentioned in the newly excavated almanac writings. The phrases with the connotation of art of charming appear in different places of the excavated daybooks. On one occasion it says that ‘to tailor new clothes on Dingchou days makes one charm others’ (cai yi Dingchou mei ren 裁衣丁丑媚人).79 Although it does not specify the gender of the subject in this sentence, in another context a building taboo is unambiguously associated with women, saying, ‘if the bedchamber is located to the southwest, the married woman will not be loved by her husband’ (nei ju xi’nan fu bu mei yu jun 內居西南婦不媚于君).80 The rationale of considering the above passages being related to the art of charming lies in the assumption that the art of charming is a technique employed to enhance a woman’s sexual attractiveness to assure her favorable position in her family. The almanac taboos may seem prescriptive, but in the above cases, those taboos reflect what I think are ancient peoples’ actual concerns regarding the relationship between men and women. Since the art of

77 Wu Xiaoqiang 2000, pp. 314–15, 322–23, 334–36; Zhao Yupei 2005, p. 115. 78 Wu Xiaoqiang 2000, p. 62. Wang Zijin disagrees with Wu on the interpretation of the word compound ‘kouchou’ 口臭 as fragrant breath; he suggests that this word compound should instead mean ‘foul breath’. This sentence does not provide a definite answer, but the context seems to suggest a positive interpretation of this word compound. For Wang’s idea, see Wang Zijin 2003, pp. 169–71. 79 Wu Xiaoqiang 2000, p. 42, 162–63. It also appears in the Shuihudi daybook version B, saying, ‘a child born on a Dingsi day will grow up to be a nice and charming person’. Ibid., p. 249. 80 Ibid., p. 123.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 275 charming is defined as winning or sustaining the favor of the head of a family, especially in the bedchamber, the aforementioned tabooed date and direction are thus understandably connected with the art of charming and associated with common people’s belief.81 To be sure, the terseness and the prescriptive nature of the almanac passages do not allow further interpretation, but even so they give us a glimpse on how the art of charming was practiced in Qin and Han Chinese people’s daily life. Compared with the Shuihudi almanac writings, the Mawangdui medical text ‘Zajin fang’ provides more details to understand the art of charming. This brief collection includes around a dozen ‘secret recipes’ dealing with barking dogs, lawsuits, nightmares, and scenarios pertaining to the relations between men and women related to the art of charming. The relevant passages are translated below:

[2] [To stop] a husband and a wife from resenting each other,82 daub somewhere five chi ‘Xward’ to the door leaf.83 夫妻相惡塗戶X方五尺。

81 Also see Wang Zijin 2003, pp. 122–23. 82 Or ‘[To make] the husband and wife resent each other’, depending on how we interpret this recipe. Without an imperative expression, such as ling 令 (‘to make’), or a verb, such as zhi 止 (‘to stop’), it seems that either interpretation is plausible. 83 The numbers inside this and the following square brackets before the passages follow the rearranged version of the newly excavated Mawangdui manuscripts. My interpretation of ‘X fang wu chi’ X方五尺 is based on an assumption that these recipes are supposed to be ‘secret recipes’. To daub a place as large as either five chi by five (as Ma Jixing holds) or five chi by one (as Harper contends) seems to contradict this assumption. As shows in the ‘Recipes of Making Others Fall in Love with You’ (Xian gai fang 相愛方) in the Ishinpō 醫心方 (Recipes at the Heart of Medicine), which look similar to the ‘Zajin fang’, secretly carrying out what prescribed in the recipes is the key to the applicability of the art of charming; for example, it clearly mentions in one of the many recipes that one should ‘take the dirt under his/her shoes to make three pills and sneakily put them under the matt of the targeted person’ (qu lü xia tu zuo san wan mi zhuo xixia 取履下土作三丸密著席下) in order to make the person love him/her; or in another recipe, it simply says that the applicability of that recipe is ‘not to let others know’ (wu lingren zhi 勿令人知). If this stands, we have a reason not to understand the character ‘fang’ 方 in this sentence as ‘square’ or ‘rectangle’, but as part of a directional compound consisting of a noun of locality, such as ‘up’, ‘down’, ‘left’, or ‘right’, followed by this character. For Ma Jixing’s and Harper’s interpretations, see Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 1006–7; Harper 1998, p. 423.

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[3] If a woman wants to charm a nobleman, daub somewhere five chi leftward and another place five chi rightward to the door. 欲媚貴人塗門左右方五尺。

[8] Take the tails of two female turtledoves, burn and decoct them, and drink it yourself, you will become charming.84 取兩雌隹尾燔冶自飲之微矣。

[9] Take some dog-head plants creeping to the east and some others creeping to the west, burn them, scorch them, and have the husband and wife drink it with water, then they will leave each other.85 取東西向犬頭燔冶飲夫妻相去。

[10] Take four left claws of a male turtledove and four fingernails of a young girl’s left hand, decoct them together in a wok; apply the char to the targeted person and you will get him/her. 取雄隹左爪四小女子左爪四以鍪并冶傅人得矣。

[11] Take the hair of his/her left eyebrow, put it in wine, drink it, and you will surely get him/her. 取其左眉置酒中飲之必得之。

The above passages are in one way or another related to the art of charming. It is within this context that Qiu Xigui makes a number of important observa- tions to correct the punctuations of the initial arrangement of some of the

84 The pronunciation of the character ‘wei 微 mǝi’, according to Qiu Xigui, was very close to ‘mei 眉 mǝiʔ’, which defines the pronunciation of the character ‘mei 媚 muih’. In fact, in the Han- and Warring-States-period texts, ‘微’, ‘媚’, and ‘美’ are interchangeable and all fit the meidao 媚道 context. For Qiu’s argument, see Qiu Xigui 1992, p. 528. 85 Passages 9 and 10 are my rearrangement on the basis of arrangement of the excavated text by Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu. According to this arrangement, Passage 9 ends the sentence at ‘yin’ 飲 and the phrase ‘fu qin xiang qu’ 夫妻相去 is put in the beginning of Passage 10, resulting in an incomplete Recipe 9 without addressing what it is used for; in the meantime, it creates difficulties in reading Passage 10. By moving the same phrase ‘夫妻相去’ to the end of Passage 9, we not only have a complete recipe in which the prescribed method and the result correspond with each other, but we also have a Passage 10 much more easily understood. For related discussion on this passage, see Ma Jixing 1992, p. 1010; Qiu Xigui 1992, pp. 527–29; Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 1985, p. 159.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 277 passages.86 Relevant information preserved in the Shiji, Hanshu, and Hou Hanshu also indicates that women were portrayed, at least, as serious practitioners of the art of charming. For example, these recipes also disclose that the art of charming includes not only the methods making a couple like (or dislike) each other (Recipe 2, for instance), but also those that make them separate from each other (Recipe 9), an indication of family tension involving multiple players and dealing with jealousy. Such inference is more than plausible especially when examined on the basis of the preserved literature on the Han social structure and familial relationship. Take, for example, the magical ingredients used to make the ‘Zajin fang’ recipes: they are astonishingly comparable with the ingredients recorded in transmitted historical narratives; those ingredients include, for instance, certain parts of human body (most commonly hair and fingernails), certain animals and birds (with gender preferences), as well as certain plants (that symbolically link to the targeted party), and are ubiqui- tously associated with domestic tension between the husband and his wives or among the wives themselves.87 Recipes of the same nature incorporated in the texts dated to later periods also shed some light on how the ‘Zajin fang’ recipes were used. For example, in the ‘Recipes of Making Others Fall in Love with You’, a collection of recipes from a number of medical texts, three dozen recipes on the art of charming are preserved.88 One of these recipes in this collection is almost identical with Recipe 10 in the ‘Zajin fang’. The similarities between these two and among other recipes indicate the early origin, long transmission, and possibly the actual applicability of this sort of secret philter recipes.89 Like the ‘Zajin fang’, the collection of the ‘Recipes of Making Others Fall in Love with You’ also reveals that the practice of art of charming may have not been limited to women, but those recipes show that in general men’s targets differed from women’s. They suggest that while women tended to target their husbands either for love or manipulation, men also used those secret recipes to seduce women other than their wives. Such aspect of the secret recipes can also be observed in a Dunhuang manuscript called the ‘Rang nüzi hunren shu mifa’ 攘女子婚人述秘法 (‘Secret Methods of Handling Women and Married Men’), in which, the art of charming used by married men to seduce other women is similar to that presented

86 Qiu Xigui 1992, p. 528. 87 Li Jianmin 1992; Hanshu, ‘Waiqi zhuan’, 67, p. 3948; Shiji, ‘Jianyuan yilai zhuhou nianbiao’, 20, p. 1065; Hou Hanshu, ‘Zhangdi bawang liezhuan’, 55, p. 1799. 88 Tanba Yasuyori 2000, pp. 601–3. 89 Tanba Yasuyori 2000, p. 602; also consult Li Ling 1993, pp. 140–43; Ma Jixing 1992, p. 1011.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 278 Zhang in the ‘Recipes of Making Others Fall in Love with You’ as well as in the ‘Zajin fang’.90 Moreover, in order to prevent his wife from becoming jealous of and angry at his having relations with other women, the husband may also apply recipes to stop his wife from becoming jealous or angry.91 As suggested in the Shuihudi almanac writings, jealousy is indeed one of the most unwelcome female qualities that no husband would like his wife to have.92 Not only women could feel jealous; men did not want their women to have sexual relations with other men, either. There are also guidelines in the ‘Recipes of Making Others Fall in Love with You’ to test women’s chastity or even to stop their excessive sexual desires.93 Since such tests are also applied to the household retainers, the potential adulterous relations between the mistresses and household retainers must have been a concern of the husbands. One secret recipe used to test a wife’s chastity is to observe whether or not the powder made of gecko and cinnabar could stay on her arm. If it could, she is clear of such charge; if it could not, then she would be considered having had committed adultery. Two similar recipes also appear in the Mawangdui ‘Yangsheng fang’ 養生方 (‘Recipes for Nurturing Life’); one of them is almost identical with one in the Ishinpō.94 Only when men suspect that their women have extra-marital relations with other men, could they question their women’s chastity. Housewives played a role in dealing with domestic work with their male retainers or servants on a daily basis; this inevitably increased the chances of developing illicit relations between housewives and their male servants, especially when a husband was unable to sexually satisfy his women, may have been often absent from home, and moral regulations failed to restrain his women’s sexual desires. In the Zuozhuan we have ample examples of illicit relations between mistresses and their household retainers or servants.95 In all these cases, adultery is considered the main reason that causes the downfall of the powerful families and, thus, the potential threat to the future of a family, noble or humble. For example, in the almanac writings, if certain taboos on certain days were violated,

90 For instance, recipes 10 and 11 mentioned above. Also see Liu Ruiming 1997; Gao Guofan 1987. 91 Tanba Yasuyori 2000, pp. 602–3. 92 Wu Xiaoqiang 2000, pp. 319–21. 93 Tanba Yasuyori 2000, pp. 602–3. 94 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 1985, pp. 104–5; Ma Jixing 1992, pp. 684–85; for the English translation, see Harper 1998, pp. 337–38. 95 For example, the adulteries committed between Luan Qi 欒祁 and Zhou Bin 州賓 (Xiang 21.5), between Ji Si 季姒 and Tan 檀 (Zhao 25.6), between Kong Kui’s 孔悝 mother and Hun Liangfu 渾良夫 (Ai 15.5).

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 279 the housemaster may have to face the threat of being replaced by the lodgers, retainers, or concubines of that household.96 Although it is not yet clear how exactly the fortune of a household was tied to the tabooed days given in the almanac writings, such connections do indicate the tension surrounding the sexual relations among the master, his wife and concubines, and servants in an early Chinese household. The above examination of the occurrence and function of the art of charming reveals some ways that early Chinese people dealt with such tension within their families, both in the upper classes and among common people. It reflects the belief and practice embedded in a wide social and religious base involving people’s marital life. The impact of the practice of the art of charming, however, is not limited to early Chinese households, but have reached far to people’s thinking on illness, gender, and sexuality, especially on women in their relationship with men, as we see in such an early text as the Zuozhuan.

Femme Fatale and Ritual Propriety

In the discussion on Doctor He’s diagnosis of Lord Ping’s disease, a man’s ‘intimacy with women’, or in other words, his excessive sexual life, became a serious threat to his health. In the eyes of the Zuozhuan historiographers, however, sex is not only a key factor affecting a man’s health, but also, often in a negative sense, it is tied with the fate of a household and even a state. Female beauty is thus singled out to be responsible for the ill-fated future of the man, his family, and possibly the state. This line of thinking is not only presented in the Zuozhuan and other transmitted literature, but it is also found in some of the newly excavated medical and almanac writings. If we look beyond the moral veil of the Zuozhuan historiography to inquire what could have really happened in early Chinese bedchambers, however, there is very little transmitted information on early medicine and medical care. In this sense, the preserved record of Doctor He’s diagnosis of Lord Ping’s illness in the Zuozhuan and the Guoyu is a rare exception. For a more complete picture of early Chinese sex life from a medical perspective, an investigation on more medical cases becomes necessary.

Chunyu Yi’s Medical Cases Related to Sexual Excess The development of early Chinese medicine as well as the continuity of its transmission makes it possible to infer what could have occurred in early

96 Poo Mu-chou 1993, pp. 639–40; He Runkun 1991.

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Chinese bedchambers by analyzing slightly later materials. Scholars tend to agree that the Eastern Zhou period witnessed a key moment in Chinese medical history when medical knowledge had been accumulated to a degree evidently distinguishing itself from divinatory or invocatory practice. Although medical practice and a divinatory approach to healing may have coexisted for a long time, the connection between the two remained observable through transmitted literature.97 When we look at the collection of prescriptions in early medical manuscripts discovered at Mawangdui and other places on sexually transmitted diseases, there is little doubt that, without longtime medical practice, it would be unimaginable that different symptoms could have been categorized and according medicine could have been prescribed. Once formed, the terminology and recipes were able to be passed down steadily through generations, orally or in their written form, without much alteration. The striking similarity between some of the recipes found in the ‘Zajin fang’ from Mawangdui Tomb 2 dated to early second century BCE and that included in the transmitted medical text dated to the Song dynasty (960–1279 CE), as showed in the previous section, serves as a noticeable example in this regard. It is based on such understanding that the medical cases included in the unique Shiji chapter on a famous early Chinese doctor Canggong 倉公, or Chunyu Yi 淳于意 (ca. 205–? BCE), will be examined to shed some light on the issues faced by Lord Ping and others in early Chinese bedchambers. As recorded in the Shiji, the early Western Han doctor Chunyu Yi’s biography is unique. It follows a general pattern of standard official biographical accounts in introducing Chunyu Yi’s official title and family origin, his unusual inclination of being fond of exploring medical prescriptions and healing techniques when young, as well as his experience of obtaining cryptic medical knowledge and his eccentric way in actual medical practice. But the main text is a memorandum of juristic nature regarding Chunyu Yi’s medical learning, theory, and practice, among which the medical cases dealt with and narrated by Chunyu Yi constitute the major part. It is the details of these medical cases that provide necessary information to explore what role sex may have played, among other factors, in affecting early Western Han people’s health.98 A preliminary study on Chunyu Yi’s cases recorded in Shiji shows that diseases related to sex could have been one of the major factors affecting early Chinese people’s, especially men’s, health. The Qing scholar Tang Xie 湯諧 summarizes the cases that Chunyu Yi treated as the following:

97 Li Jianmin 2000b, pp. 45–105; Jin Shiqi 1995, pp. 5–16; for a different argument, see Brown 2012. 98 Shiji, ‘Bian Que Canggong liezhuan’, 105, pp. 2794–817.

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In the biographical writing on Canggong, there are twenty-four medical cases recorded, among which, ten were caused by wine and sex and five among these ten [patients] died of incurable diseases caused by wine and sex.99

倉公傳醫案二十四條，而其成于酒色者凡十焉，死于酒色不治者十之五焉.

Tang summarizes the medical cases listed in the Shiji chapter according to the order in table 1.100 Among the ten cases listed in the table, it becomes clear that the majority of the patients (seven out of ten) were male and they either held offices or had access to power. Of the three female patients (cases five, six, and nine), two were court ladies. Although the illness of the female servant from Han 韓 (case six) was not sexually transmitted, it was partly caused by her morbid imagination on sex, a case betraying some members’ lack of sexual satisfaction in a polygamous familial environment. The symptoms that the court lady of the Jibei Prince’s Minister of Works (case five) suggest that she suffered from a kind of ‘female long illness’ (nüzi long 女子癃) similar to what is referred to in the ‘Wushier bingfang’.101 Although this account contains by no means a complete list of what he had treated, it provides evidence, at least, of one elite doctor’s awareness of sex-related diseases affecting early Chinese people’s health. In fact, the Qing scholar Huang Sheng compares the cause of lord Ping’s illness with that of some of the cases treated by Chunyu Yi.102 In the Zuo Commentary, for instance, Doctor He of Qin clearly states that Lord Ping caught his disease by ‘being intimate with women’ ( jinnü 近女).103 This term is considered identical with ‘having intercourse within the inner chamber’ (jienei 接內),104 which Chunyu Yi frequently mentions. Although both men and women could be the victims of excessive sex in both the Zuozhuan and the Shiji accounts, however, only women are held accountable for men’s sexually

99 Yang Yanqi et al. 1986, p. 663. 100 Eight of the ten cases are pointed out clearly by Doctor Chunyu Yi to be caused by sex. Cases nine and ten are included as being caused by sex according to the described symptoms, although the doctor does not clearly define it that way. 101 Mawangdui Hanmu boshu zhengli xiaozu 1985, p. 48; Ma Jixing 1992, p. 467. 102 Huang Sheng 1936, p. 34. 103 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao,’ 1.12, p. 1221. 104 Shiji, ‘Bian Que Canggong liezhuan’, 105, p. 2801, and passim. Elsewhere in this Shiji chapter it also mentions nei 內, an abbreviation of the phrase jienei, see Shiji, ‘Bian Que Canggong liezhuan’, 105, p. 2812.

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Patients diagnosed Illnesses suffered Causes listed Results

1 Cheng, Attendant ju 疽 caused by drinking died Censor 伺御史成 and sex 2 Xun, Chamberlain for Yong shan 湧疝 caused by sex cured Attendant郎中令循 3 Cao Shanfu 曹山跗 fei xiao dan caused by anger died 肺消癉 and sex 4 Pan Man, Chamberlain yi ji jia 遺積瘕 could not stop died for the Imperial Insignia having sex after 中尉潘滿 the diagnosis 5 Court Lady of Minister shan 疝 caused by sex cured of Works who served Prince of Jibei 齊北宮司空命婦 6 Female servant (from yueshi buxia caused by desire cured Han) of Prince of Jibei 月事不下 for sex 濟北王侍者韓女 7 Prince of Qi (when he bi 痺 caused by sex cured was Marquis of Yangxu) 齊王故為陽虛侯時 8 Xiang Chu, Grandee of Mu shan 牡疝 caused by sex died the Eighth Order of Banli, Anling 安陵阪里公乘項處 9 The other of Prince of Qi Feng dan ke fu probably caused cured 齊王太后風癉客脬 by sex 10 Sui, Court doctor of Zhong re 中熱 probably caused died Prince of Qi 齊王侍醫遂 by sex

related diseases, and not vice versa. Such a view is evidentially connected with the gender prejudice preserved in early Chinese literature. But in this case the gender prejudice is embedded into traditional Chinese medical theory. For example, when explaining why ritual propriety is critical in regulating a ruler’s sexual life, Doctor He mentions the theory of the six types of qi 氣, or energy, all of which have to remain balanced to ensure a healthy life for a man:

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Heaven has six types of qi, which descends to produce the five flavors, rises to make the five colors, and is revealed as the five notes. Excess of these six types of qi produces six kinds of illnesses. The six types of qi are called yin, yang, wind, rain, darkness, and light, which are divided into four periods of time and arranged as five regulations. The overrun of the six types of qi generates disasters: the excess of yin causes illness of cold, the excess of yang causes illness of fever, the excess of wind causes illness of the limbs, the excess of rain causes illness of the abdomen, the excess of darkness causes illness of bewilderment, and the excess of light causes illness of the heart. Women are creatures of yang105 and belong to the period of darkness; the excess of women causes such illnesses as inner fever, bewilderment, and enchantment. Now the lord obeys neither the regulations nor the division of the periods of time, how could he not have suffered from this illness?106

天有六氣，降生五味，發為五色，徵為五聲。淫生六疾。六氣曰陰、陽、風、雨、晦、明也，分為四時，序為五節，過則為菑：陰淫寒疾，陽淫熱疾，風淫末疾，雨淫腹疾，晦淫惑疾，明淫心疾。女陽物而晦時，淫則生內熱惑蠱之疾，今君不節不時，能無及此乎？

According to the yin and yang theory that originated at latest from the Warring States period, females fall into the yin category and males, on the opposite, into the yang category. Such categorization has remained so consistent and influential that many scholars suspect that the consideration of women as ‘creatures of yang’ in the above passage, if not a typo or the result of some sort of textual corruption, must be explained to fit the well-established male/yang and female/yin dichotomy.107 If we take a close look at the above relatively sophisticated framework, however, the consideration of females as ‘creatures of yang’ does not result from a typo, nor does it require any distortion to link it to the more influential male/yang and female/yin categorization. Doctor He clearly states that the excess of yang causes inner fever and excess of the darkness energy, causes bewilderment, exactly as were the symptoms of Lord Ping’s illness resulting from excessive sex with women.

105 This at first seems contradictory to the generally accepted yin-yang dichotomy, but the logic will be discussed following the citation. 106 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1222. 107 For example, see both Du Yu’s and Gu Yanwu’s commentaries on this point; Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1222.

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Vivienne Lo translates the term jieyin 接陰, appearing frequently in the Mawangdui medical texts, as ‘receiving yin’, which may help better understand Doctor He’s medical theory.108 As Lo observes, from the men’s perspective presented in the Mawangdui texts on the art of bedchamber, the explicit aim of both breath- and sexual-cultivation is to receive, ingest, and strengthen yin, not yang. Not only a man’s external sexual organs, but also internal feelings, general vitality, sexual potency, and even the whole inner body are also called yin.109 The ‘overrun’ of yang, or female force, therefore, will inevitably lead to the damage of the male yin and consequently harm his health. What sig- nals the invasion of the harmful female yang energy is the inner fever, which characterises most of the sex-related diseases mentioned both in Chunyu Yi’s account and the Mawangdui medical texts. The recipes listed to cure different kinds of long illnesses in the ‘Wushier bingfang’ from Mawangdui and the ‘Huo ji tang’ (火齊湯) Chunyu Yi prescribed for the sex-related diseases all include plants that reduce the internal fever of the patients.110 All in all, when read between lines, early medical literature is convincing enough to illustrate that, once being defined as yang within Doctor He’s framework, women become the source of illnesses. If this is the case, Lord Ping asks ‘Is it not permitted to get intimate with women (nü buke jin hu 女不可近乎)?’. In answering the Jin Lord’s question, Doctor He makes it very clear that a man, especially a ruler, must regulate his sexual life. He uses music as an analogous metaphor to make his case. The bland style of music allegedly created and consumed by the ‘former kings’ (xianwang 先王) is established as a perfect model for such regulation. This model sets up necessary standards enabling men to avoid the danger of losing peace and harmony when enjoying musical pleasure. This should also be observed in a man’s sexual life. Thus from the men’s perspective the term ‘zither and harp’ (qinse 琴瑟) becomes comparable with women, and making music is seen as analogous to making love. As the argument goes, since harmonious music in nature avoids complicated techniques, so should sex abide by ritual propriety. This idea of avoiding ‘overelaborate skills and excessive sounds’ ( fanshou yinsheng

108 Lo 2000, p. 55. 109 Lo 2000, pp. 54–8. 110 Browsing the various recipes aiming to cure ‘long’ in the ‘Wushier bingfang’, one would see Fructus Malvea (kui 葵), and both the leaves and fruit of certain beans, are the most used herbs; as for ‘huo ji tang’, because Chunyu Yi does not explain what kinds of herbs it includes, the identification of its ingredients has become controversial. For discussion of ‘Huo ji tang’, see Feng Wenlin and Wu Haitao 2007.

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煩手淫聲)111 in making music resonated with both the deep-rooted medical framework governed by the yin-yang principle of balancing the qi energies and the historiographer’s ideology favoring ritual propriety more than anything else throughout the Zuo Commentaries.

Ritual Propriety and the Six-Qi in the Zuo Commentaries This evidence suggests that when the Zuozhuan historiographers collected, compiled, and even composed the Commentaries, they were aware of the tension between men and women within their polygamous households and influ- enced by medical knowledge and theory in circulation aimed to find a solution to ease such tension. Medicine requires specific training, often involving the transmission of secret knowledge, but like other trends of early Chinese thinking sharing the same cultural base, the Zuozhuan historiographers adopted early Chinese medical concepts to convey their own opinions on the moral, social, and political issues that concerned them. The abovementioned six-qi theory further illustrates this point. In Doctor He’s speech, after addressing the necessity of a ruler to model himself on the former kings by listening to a plain instead of lavish style of music, Doctor He brings up the six-qi theory to further explain why regulation is needed for a gentleman’s life:

(c) When a gentleman gets intimate with the ‘zither and harp’, he should regulate himself with ritual propriety and should not excessively gladden his heart with them. (a) Heaven has six types of qi, which descend to produce the five flavors, rise to make the five colors, and are revealed as the five notes. (b) Excess of the six types of qi generates six kinds of illnesses.112

As the ordering of the letters above shows, the reasoning of the passage first emphasises the operation of the six types of qi (a), which, based on the statement of (b), requires a moderate balance; otherwise, these positively produc- tive qi would act negatively to generate diseases instead of the five flavors, five

111 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1221. 112 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 1.12, p. 1222. I broke down this passage and marked them with (a), (b), and (c) according to its reasoning to facilitate a comparison with another Zuozhuan passage (which is also divided into three parts, but marked with (a’), (b’), and (c’), respectively) following the similar line of argumentation, as shown later.

asian medicine 8 (2013) 249–294 Downloaded from Brill.com09/30/2021 03:38:45AM via free access 286 Zhang colors, and five notes. For this reason, a gentleman must regulate himself when he ‘gets intimate with the “zither and harp”’ (c), which fall into the ‘five sounds’ category and metaphorically denotes the gentleman’s sexual life. A similar argument, unrelated to medicine, appears in a different context in the Zuo Commentaries. In the twenty-fifth year of Lord Zhao of Lu 魯昭公 (r. 542–517 BCE), Zhao Yang 趙鞅 (?–475 BCE) of the State of Jin met with You Ji 遊吉 (?–506 BCE) of the State of Zheng and asked him about ritual propriety. In response, Ji offered an elaborate speech, in which the a six-qi theory is brought up as the foundation of his argument:

I, Ji, have heard from what Zichan, Grand Master of Zheng, said: ritual propriety refers to the principle of heaven, the law of earth, and the way of the people. The people should make the principles of heaven and earth their principles. (a’) They should make their principle the brightness of heaven, which produces its six kinds of qi, and follow the nature of earth to make use of its five elements.113 Heaven’s qi makes the five flavors, rises to make the five colors, and reveals itself as the five notes. (b’) Excess of the qi causes confusion and chaos and people will [consequently] lose their innate nature. (c’) For this reason, ritual propriety is made to sustain them.114

吉也聞諸先大夫子產曰，夫禮，天之經也，地之義也，民之行也。天地之經，而民實則之。(a’) 則天之明，因地之性，生其六氣，用其五行。氣為五味，發為五色，章為五聲。(b’) 淫則昏亂，民失其性。(c’) 是故為禮以奉之。

It is clear that this rhymed passage (經 *kêŋ, 行 *grâŋ, 經 *kêŋ, 則 *tsêk, 明 *mraŋ, 性 *seŋ, 行 *grâŋ, 聲 *hjeŋ, 性*seŋ, 奉 *boŋʔ),115 when compared to

113 The translation is based on a rearrangement of the original text to better fit the context. The rearranged passage reads ‘則天之明，生其六氣，因地之性，用其五行’ instead of ‘則天之明，因地之性，生其六氣，用其五行’. The rearrangement does not change the original meaning of this passage but merely attunes it to modern Chinese grammar. James Legge translates this passage differently: ‘[Heaven and Earth] produce the six atmosphere conditions, and make use of the five material elements’. Legge 1899, p. 708. If we examine this passage in its overall context, it becomes less problematic to consider the subject of this passage as ‘the people’ instead of ‘Heaven and Earth’. 114 Yang Bojun 1990, ‘Zhao’, 25.3, p. 1457. 115 The reconstruction of the pronunciations of the old Chinese characters follows Schuessler 2009.

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 287 that in Doctor He’s speech, shares the same reasoning and, when addressing the six-qi theory, even the same wording. If we follow the order given by the letters preceding the passages above, it is interesting to note that passage (a’) is verbally almost identical with passage (a) in Doctor He’s speech. Both state that the six-qi theory as well as its operation are revealed in the five elements. Both the six types of qi and the set of five elements represent the principles of heaven and earth that reject excess, as passage (b’) suggests. The violation of this principle of moderateness inevitably causes the loss of the environment (created according to the principles of heaven and earth) where human nature innately fits and consequently leads to confusion and chaos on both individual and societal levels. As the second passage suggests, since ritual propriety defines ‘the principle of heaven, the law of earth, and the way of people’, it must be applied to avoid excess so that the harmony among heaven, earth, and human beings could be achieved. The comparison of the above two passages, although from different contexts (medical vs. ritual), illustrates not only a common philosophical basis, but also the Zuozhuan historiographers’ emphasis on the principle of ritual propriety embedded in the Zuozhaun narratives. Within this framework, the social and political issues concerning the Zuozhaun historiographers, however differently they may have been interpreted, must be in accordance with the principle of ritual propriety. Lord Ping’s illness, for example, originally a medical topic, is linked in Doctor He’s speech to the six-qi theory, which is ultimately tied to the principle of ritual propriety. Sex, like music and food, must be enjoyed within limits; the excess of it causes the imbalance of the heavenly qi and, as a result, generates sexually-related illnesses, such as the disease from which Lord Ping suffered. Since the Zuozhuan historiographers view this issue from the men’s perspective, women, especially sexually attractive women, become the cause of excess in men’s sexual life, and were thus portrayed as femmes fatales. In the meantime, it is also worth noting that the idea of the femme fatale cannot be reduced to a deduction from the abstract principle of ritual propriety, but may indeed reflect some common issues, awareness of sexually-related diseases, for instance, faced in early Chinese polygamous families. Viewed from this perspective, ritual propriety may have been deliberately chosen by the Zuozhaun historiographers as a moral solution to those social issues. This also explains why the idea of the femme fatale is not merely limited to men’s health, but also carries social and political significance in the Zuo Commentaries related to the destiny of powerful families and even the fate of states.

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Conclusion

The idea of the femme fatale, as presented in a few speeches in the Zuozhuan, was framed coherently as an issue of ritual propriety and affected later Chinese thinking. Inspired by the extant scholarship on this issue as well as some newly excavated medical texts from Mawangdui and Wuwei and the almanac writings from Shuihudi, this paper also considers the femme fatale concept as a response to the tensions and problems faced in early Chinese polygamous familial and social environment. The Zuozhuan narrative indicates that both the Zheng Minister Zichan and the Qin Doctor He understood that long, the diagnosis of Lord Ping of Jin’s illness, resulted from his excessive sexual life. Nevertheless, in explaining the cause of his disease based on the six-qi theory, Doctor He points out that women, belonging to both aspects of yang (which causes inner fever, a most common symptom of sexually-related diseases) and darkness (the type of qi related to confusion and chaos) in nature, have the potential to harm men, especially through sexual contact. The solution that Doctor He prescribes is ritual propriety. As I have shown, this solution also predominantly constitutes the Zuozhaun historiographers’ worldview. Such a worldview was not ungrounded. Information found in both transmitted and newly discovered sources regarding the art of charming suggests the existence of tensions particular to polygamous social and familial environ- ments in early China. In other words, in order to gain or monopolise the favor of the husband, the women in his bedchambers would, as indicated by orally or textually transmitted healing methods, secret prescriptions, almanac writings as well as later historical writings, resort to what was presented as dark magic, sex, or other sorts of techniques to attract the attention and secure the love of their man. These strategies were very often viewed as being at the cost of their husband’s health. The ten sex-related illnesses recorded in the Western Han doctor Chunyu Yi’s biography reminds us of the possibility that this not only reflects the early Western Han situation, but could also be an indication of a similar situation right before the Western Han. Based on this understanding, I argue that it is highly possible that ritual propriety was indeed the prescription the Zuozhaun historiographers offered to solve the problems with sexual indulgence and competition among their women facing men in the polygamous households. But it was immediately colored with obvious social and political significance because of the predominant role that men played in social and political life in early China. Finally, although this paper did not comprehensively study the notion of nühuo, or calamities caused by women, it did bring to light a related early phase of this

asian medicineDownloaded from 8 Brill.com09/30/2021(2013) 249–294 03:38:45AM via free access Enchantment, Charming, and the Notion of the Femme Fatale 289 gender-related issue by examining relevant materials, transmitted and newly excavated, from China’s antiquity on the concept of the femme fatale, its political undertones, and its deeper meanings underlying Lord Ping’s medical case and Doctor He’s diagnosis.

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