Part 2 Effective Representation Roel Sterckx - 9789004366183 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:02:08PM via free access Roel Sterckx - 9789004366183 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:02:08PM via free access 7 The Limits of Illustration: Animalia and Pharmacopeia from Guo Pu to Bencao Gangmu 本草綱目 Roel Sterckx* In The Eye of the Lynx, a study of the naturalist and founder in any set of botanical or zoological illustrations known of the Accademia dei Lincei, Federico Cesi (1585–1630), in China. And the Bencao illustrators for their part op- David Freedberg draws attention to the perceived limita- erated in a different context, one that required them to tions associated with the use of pictures to classify natural design illustrations to complement an existing naturalist objects in 17th-century Italy. One identified failure of encyclopaedia anchored in a textual format inspired by illustrations was that they showed too much and left the lexicographical and commentarial conventions. These were naturalist caught between the desire to accurately picture predominantly focused on the explanation of graphs and everything and the desire for order. The more accurate texts rather than biological realities. A Chinese scholar’s pictures were, the more detail they had to show. Yet, at the so-called ‘naturalist’ interest was to a great extent centred same time, the more biological detail they revealed, the on the explanation of texts and nomenclature. more they reflected the untidiness and disorder in nature The following anecdote recounted by Yan Zhitui 顏之推, and the less useful they were for taxonomic abstraction 6th-century author of the Yanshi jia xun 顏氏家訓 (Family and classification. The ultimate tension for the Linceans, Instructions of Master Yan), illustrates such an attitude. Freedberg notes, ‘was between the desire to record and de- It suggests that the learned in medieval China were not scribe everything (on the one hand), and the need to reduce necessarily inclined to leave their study and experiment and classify (on the other)’.1 with the observation of nature, recall observations from In China, about a decade after the birth of Cesi, the great the past, or record contemporary hearsay: naturalist Li Shizhen 李時珍 (1518–93) had just completed When I first read about the two-headed hui 螝 worm in his landmark Materia Medica, Bencao gangmu 本草綱目. Zhuangzi 莊子 of which the Han Feizi 韓非子 says: ‘Among Li Shizhen did not see his own work in print (in 1596) and the insects there is the hui, which has one body and two mouths, which struggle for food, gnaw each other and so probably had no hand in the preparation of illustrations kill each other’, I was at a loss, as I did not know the pronun- that came to accompany the text and were compiled and ciation of this character. I asked whomever I met, but no drawn by his two sons Li Jianzhong 李建中 and Li Jianyuan one could explain. According to the Erya 爾雅 and works 李建元.2 By the 17th century, the inclusion of illustrations of the same nature, the larvae of silkworms are called hui, in pharmacopoeia was by no means new. Bencao works but that is not the two-headed creature with two mouths were reported to have been illustrated as early as the Tang. eager to harm each other. Then later on, I noticed in the Gu jin zi gu 古今字詁 (Dictionary of Archaic and Modern Likewise animals, plants, rocks and other elements of na- Characters) that the character is the old form of hui 虺 [a ture had been depicted in various media since antiquity. venomous snake]. So the pending problem unsolved for Yet to the beholder of Bencao illustrations, the problem years cleared up like dispersed fog.3 of representation sketched above by Freedberg and the inherent tension between detail and abstraction is equally Yan Zhitui of course was hardly a naturalist or a physician relevant. What were the Bencao illustrations meant to in search of drugs. The latter might have been intrigued illustrate and, more importantly, wherein lay their value by the biological reality of this creature and perhaps even for medical and pharmaceutical purposes? motivated to prove its existence outside a library. Yet Yan’s To be sure, the Linceans had analytical ambitions that attitude, according to which the mystery clears once a went far beyond the degree of biological scrutiny apparent graph is traced to its etymological or lexical origins and its status in texts, was deeply engrained in writings dealing * I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their com- with the natural world as early as the Han. It is hard to ments on an earlier draft of this chapter. I am grateful to imagine that this textual attitude suddenly gave way to Geoffrey Lloyd, Georges Métailié, Teriyuki Kubo and Vivienne observation and accurate representation in image by the Lo for comments and suggestions, and to John Moffett of the time of Li Shizhen.4 If Yan Zhitui were asked to produce Needham Research Institute for his help in locating materials. an illustration of his two-headed snake, it is not unlikely 1 Freedberg 2003, p. 366. 2 For biographical sketches of Li Shizhen, see Needham 1986, pp. 308–12; Hubei sheng zhongyi yao yanjiuyuan (eds) 1984, pp. 1–16; 3 Wang Liqi (ed.) 1993, 3.226 (‘Mian xue’ 勉學). Wang Jian (ed.) 1996, pp. 1–37. On Li’s quest to get his work pub- 4 I have discussed this prevalence of textual exegesis in more de- lished, see also Nappi 2006, pp. 9–17. tail in Sterckx 2002, pp. 21–43; Sterckx 2005. Roel Sterckx - 9789004366183 Downloaded from Brill.com09/26/2021 02:02:08PM via free access 136 sterckx that he would have to rely on imagination rather than ob- Animal Illustrations servation. The same will apply to many of the illustrations surveyed in this chapter. Little direct or indirect evidence survives for the pre-im- With the exception of a few short passages in pre faces perial and early imperial period of images that might have to Bencao literature, next to nothing is known about the illustrated written texts or complemented performances motivation behind the creation of their illustrations. Yet, such as songs or ritual liturgy. To be sure, pictorial evi- this aporia of itself throws up an important question dence, including scenes that take the natural world as often overlooked in the treatment of illustrated Materia topic, is omnipresent in early China. Shang oracle-bone Medica or naturalist illustration at large in traditional writing includes numerous pictographs representing ani- China: namely, to what extent did such illustrations serve mals; zoomorphic motifs pervade Shang and Zhou bronze a practical – read medical or pharmaceutical – purpose vessel decor; and scenes depicting hunting expeditions, at all? To develop this question, in what follows, I explore sacrificial slaughter, animal combats and games, as well as the contexts in which animal species have been depicted various aspects of agricultural life, abound in Han murals in traditional China leading up to and stretching into the and on decorated ceramic bricks.6 References to officials period that saw the emergence of Bencao illustrations. My recording landmarks and ‘notable objects’ (ming wu 名 account is by no means meant to be exhaustive. It merely 物) on maps suggest that maps too could be illustrated.7 serves to build up an aggregate picture of the types of Likewise, murals have been preserved that illustrate tex- pictorial practices that preceded the Bencao illustrators, tual narratives, often exemplifying famous episodes from of the attitudes adopted towards representation in image, the classics. The most notable examples are preserved in and of the sources that are significant stages along the way. the shrines of the Wuliang 武梁 family (2nd century ce; Generally, two styles of illustration can be distinguished Jinxiang county, Shandong).8 across the transmitted corpus, albeit not always clearly. One Most agricultural or natural scenes in Warring States could be referred to as the ‘performative’ or emblematic and Han murals appear as decorative statements in their image, the other as the ‘illustrative’ or didactic image. The own right; some form part of a larger pictorial narrative former are depictions that invite the observer or user to or are intended to illustrate an existing textual narrative. actively invoke the image as part of a performance, such Zoomorphic imagery appears, or was reported to appear, as concentrating on an image as part of a ritual incanta- tion, divination, or healing. By ‘illustrative image’, I mean images that complement an existing, mostly text ual, ations in pre-modern China. It elegantly resolves many of the confusions about apparently fuzzy boundaries between tu and narrative. Performative images are often accompanied by other graphic categories which have puzzled historians trying explanatory text captions, yet the latter usually remain to place tu as an intellectually coherent category. It highlights subsidiary to the image. Illustrative images offer a type of the fact that from the Chinese perspective tu was not a stylistic annotation, supplement or commentary to the text. Their but a functional category: tu were instructive images conveying logical relationship to the text is usually generated through skilled, specialist knowledge. Tu offered spatial encodings (often juxtaposition or implicit association and their absence does but not necessarily two-dimensional) of factual information, little to detract from the informative function of a text. My struc tures, processes and relationships, translating temporal or use of the term ‘illustration’ or ‘picture’ does not seek to intellectual sequences into purely spatial terms, and encrypting dynamic processes as static layouts’. See Bray et al. (eds) 2007, distinguish pictorial media according to corresponding 圖 畫 像 pp.