Mountain deities in China:

·期刊原文
Mountain deities in China: the domestication of the mountain god
and the subjugation of the margins
Terry F. Kleeman
The Journal of the American Oriental Society
Vol.114 No.2 (April-June 1994)
pp.226-238
COPYRIGHT American Oriental Society 1994

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All mountains, whether large or small, have gods and spirits.(1)
Ge Hong (283-343)
THE MARCHMOUNTS
PERHAPS BEST KNOWN of the mountain gods are the marchmounts or
sacred peaks (yue). These mountains, one in each cardinal direction,
fix and define Chinese space. Their worship may go back as far as
the Shang.
The character yue occurs frequently in the oracle bone inscriptions
as a pictograph of one range of mountains above another.(2) This yue
is the object of a number of sacrifices, including the offering of
burnt sacrificial victims known as liao, as well as the di sacrifice
usually reserved for the high god(s); announcements (gao) are made
to the yue and emissaries dispatched to it.(3) The yue can curse
both the king and the crops. It is, according to Qu Wanli's
calculations, the most common object of prayers for rain and the
second most common object (after the Yellow River) of prayers for
the harvest. Ding Shan concludes that this yue need not refer to any
of the historical marchmounts; the character denotes, he maintains,
a ritual performed on any relatively high mountain.(4) Since,
however, emissaries are sent to yue, the term must refer to some
specific cult site or sites.
We cannot be certain what mountain(s) were intended in these
divinatory charges. Sun Yirang, the first scholar to address this
question, identified this yue with Mount Song near Luoyang, the
later Central Marchmount, and Sarah Allan has recently concurred,
arguing that it had functioned as a cosmic center since Neolithic
times.(5) In the Book of Poetry (Shijing) the word yue sometimes
means nothing more than "lofty peak" (e.g., Mao 273 and 296), but in
one example it seems to refer to a specific peak and that peak has
again been identified as Mount Song.(6) An interesting piece of
corroborating evidence is found in the mountain's earlier name,
Great Palace Mountain (Taishishan). Great Palace was also the name
for the central hall in the ancestral Pure Temple (Qingmiao) where
the ruler communed with his ancestors and Heaven and the name itself
should perhaps be transcribed Palace of Heaven (Tianshi).(7) King
You of Zhou (r. 841-830) is said to have convened the feudal lords
and non-Chinese rulers at Great Palace Mountain, reflecting its
function as symbol of the Zhou state.(8)
Qu Wanli has proposed a different identification for the yue
mentioned in the oracle-bone inscriptions and the Shijing. He argues
that the mountain in question is Mount Huo, also known as the
Taiyueshan or Huotaishan.(9) His best evidence is an incident
recorded in the Discourses of the States (Guoyu) and the Guanzi and
a passage from the Surviving Zhou Documents (Yi Zhoushu). In the
first case, Sire Huan of Qi speaks of the return of sacrificial
meats presented to the Zhou king at Jiang, and in the Guanzi the
place is specified as "the lofty yue" (longyue).(10) Jiang was near
modern Houma in southwestern Shanxi, roughly fifty miles south of
Mount Huo. The passage in the Surviving Zhou Documents tells of King
Wu's establishment of the city of Luo (modern Luoyang) on the
reputed site of the Xia dynasty capital. He extols the commanding
location of this city, from which "we to the north can gaze past the
outskirts of the yue" (wo beiwang guo yu yuebi).(11) Although
neither passage offers definitive proof that the yue referred to is
Mount Huo (the distance from Jiang to Mount Huo is considerable and
that from Luoyang even greater), it does seem the most likely
candidate. Mount Song is southeast of Luoyang and nearly twice as
far from Jiang as Mount Huo.
Other texts of the Warring States era speak of a group of yue. In
the "Canon of Yao"(12) of the Book of Documents (Shujing), the
Thearch Yao consults with ministers called the Four Marchmounts
(siyue) concerning the great flood and his own abdication. Although
commentarial opinion is split as to the identity of the Four
Marchmounts here, all major theories share common conceptions. Kong
Anguo identifies them as the four sons of Xi He, each in charge of
the feudal lords subordinate to one of the marchmounts.(13) Others
take siyue to be a collective term for the feudal lords of the four
directions, or to refer to the leader of the feudal lords in each
quarter.(14) All see the Four Marchmounts as leading or constituting
groups of local nobility with ultimate allegiance to the Zhou royal
house but not under its direct control.
Whatever the exact identities of these officials, they certainly had
some relation to the mountains whose names they bore. When Shun
accepts the abdication of Yao and accedes to the throne, he meets
with the Four Marchmounts and local rulers, then goes on a
procession to each of the four marchmounts to offer sacrifice.(15)
Thus by at least the fourth century B.C. there was a complex of
numinous mountains that were conceived as intimately linked to the
state and its well-being.
The system of four marchmounts was based upon a center/margins
dichotomy. The Tradition of Zuo (Zuozhuan) repeatedly links the
marchmounts to non-Chinese tribes. At a great interstate summit held
in 559 B.C., a leader of the Rong people comments, "Sire Hui !of
Jin^, making illustrious his great virtue, considered us many Rong
to be the descendants of the Four Marchmounts and not to be
mistreated or abandoned."(16) The four human marchmounts are
analogues of the four regional hegemons (bo, lit. "elder brother"),
originally non-Chinese (i.e., not at that time identified as part of
Huaxia) regional leaders who assume responsibility for managing the
tribes of their region and acting as a bulwark against foreign
invasion in return for a privileged alliance with the Chinese ruling
house.(17) King Wen of the Zhou, a Western Rong tribe, had occupied
such a position as Hegemon of the West (xibo) before organizing a
revolt, primarily of the non-Chinese tribes of his region, against
Shang rule. In this system the marchmounts are defined as outside of
or at least peripheral to the Chinese cultural sphere, an allied but
still marginalized "other."
The king is the center and axis of this spatial arrangement,
liegelord of the marchmount-hegemons, and as such, he must have had
his own mountain. This central mountain would have been the acme of
a pyramid of sacred peaks, just as the Shang and Zhou kings held
supreme ritual authority over powerful regional leaders, upon whom
they relied for military support. Whether this supreme central
mountain was Mount Song/Great Palace Mountain, Mount Huo, or some
other peak lost to history, the ordering of Chinese space was
hierarchical with a single focus exalted above its four supports.
By the Han dynasty, at the latest, it had become common to group the
physical marchmounts into a company of five, adding the Central
Marchmount, Mt. Song.(18) Each mountain was now correlated with one
of the Five Agents (wuxing) and, through it, with the whole system
of related colors, flavors, directions, stars, seasons, etc. Part of
this system is the Five Thearchs (wudi), color-coded monarchs of the
five quarters and their marchmounts. The earliest recorded instance
of sacrifice to one of these gods is set in the eighth century B.C.,
when the ruler of the state of Qin institutes sacrifices to the
White Thearch, god of the Western Marchmount or Flowery Mountain
(Huashan). The circumstances are related in the Records of the
Historian (Shiji):(19)
Fourteen generations had passed since the Zhou conquest of the
Shang; generation after generation the Zhou house had waned and the
rites and music had been abandoned. The feudal lords acted without
restraint and King You was defeated by the Dog Rong. Zhou moved its
capital east to Luo. Sire Xiang of Qin (r. 777-766 B.C.) attacked
the Rong, saving the Zhou, and in recognition of this for the first
time he was ranked foremost among the feudal lords. Once Sire Xiang
of Qin had been made marquis, and occupied the Western Appendage, he
concluded that he was the host of the god Shaohao. He created the
Western Sacred Preserve,(20) offering cult to the White Thearch
(Baidi). He is said to have used as sacrificial animals one each of
red horses with black manes and tails, yellow oxen, and rams.
Sixteen years later, Sire Wen of Qin (r. 765-715) was hunting in the
east, between the Qian and Wei Rivers. He divined about occupying
this site and the response was auspicious. Sire Wen dreamt that a
yellow snake hung down from the heavens, touching the earth, with
its mouth reaching the lower slopes of Fu.(21) Sire Wen asked the
historian Dun about this. Dun replied, "This is a summons from the
Thearch(s) on High (shangdi). My lord should offer cult to them
(him). Thereupon !the Sire^ created the Fu Sacred Preserve and,
using three sacrificial victims, performed the suburban sacrifice to
the White Thearch there.(22)
In this important passage the ruler of the state of Qin institutes
sacrifices to the god of a mountain within his territory, the White
Thearch, ruler and occupant of the Western Marchmount. "White,"
being the color of the west, places this god within the framework of
the system of five directionally oriented deities known as the Five
Thearchs. We cannot be certain if this grouping was part of a
pre-existing belief, assimilated by the Qin, or represents the
introduction of a Qin cult to the rest of China.(23) The rulers of
Qin were to build five more of these sacred preserves, two dedicated
to the White Thearch, one to the Green Thearch (Qingdi), one to the
Yellow Thearch, and one to the Fiery (i.e., red) Thearch
(Yandi).(24) The presence of a yellow snake in the above passage may
imply a recognition of the Yellow Thearch associated with the
center, but it seems that there was no attempt to establish within
the borders of Qin a complete set of altars to the Five Thearchs.
The dating of this passage is open to question (it follows
immediately after a famous prophecy predicting the rise of Qin,
which is widely assumed to be late) but the very lack of
systematization argues for an earlier rather than later date. The
special attention directed toward the Green Thearch of the east,
then, may reflect the east-west pairing of gods we see in later
divine twosomes like the Queen-Mother of the West and the King-Sire
of the East or Rushou and Goumang. Riegel places the origin of the
association of every aspect of Chinese life with the Five Agents in
the fourth century B.C.(25) The Qin system may derive from this
period, when these associations were known but not yet dominant.
By the Han the system of Five Marchmounts was firmly established.
Emperor Wu retrofitted the ritual sites of Yong into this system by
establishing another sacred preserve, cosmologically designated as
the Sacred Preserve of the North (Beizhi) and assigning one of the
ritual sites to each agent.(26) This change was in part a reflection
of changed political realities. China had expanded until the
marchmounts no longer marked the frontiers of Huaxia civilization.
Instead, they were now part of the heartland and had to be brought
within the confines of the imperial cult. As part of this program
Emperor Wu took direct possession of all five marchmounts, two of
which had been located in princedoms.(27)
There can be little doubt that in Warring States China the
Yellow Thearch was considered at least a primus inter pares, if not
a true high god, and this is reflected in roles attributed to him as
ancestor of the Chinese people and patron of schools of learning as
diverse as political science, medicine, and sexual techniques--as
well as in Hun popular references to the Yellow God.(28) No such
claims are ever made for the White Thearch, confirming that Qin did
not try to establish its own pantheon centering on the Yong sites.
The Han systematization integrated all five marchmounts into a
system of mutual equality, with suzerainty passing from one
marchmount and its associated thearch to another in accordance with
the rhythms of the seasons. The Chinese tendency toward hierarchy
made such a grouping inherently unstable.(29) In place of the
Central Marchmount we see, beginning in the Han, the rise of the
Eastern Marchmount, Mount Tai, as ruler of the dead and arbiter of
fate. Writing at the end of the Han, Ying Shao describes Mount Tai
as the "leader (zhang) of the Five Marchmounts.(30) In post-Tang
China, temples to the Eastern Marchmount were found in every major
town and city, whereas temples to the other marchmounts were largely
confined to the mountain's immediate vicinity.
GHOSTS, SPRITES, AND IMPS OF THE MOUNTAINS
The marchmounts were only the most prominent of a variety of divine
beings associated with mountains. Arrayed spatially according to
cosmological theory and organizationally in parallel with the
temporal administration, the marchmounts seem to embody the ancient
civilization of China. There was, however, another side to the
supernatural denizens of China's mountains. The Scripture of
Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing) describes the gods of many
mountains, and they are a frightening collection of freaks and
monstrosities. The gods surrounding Mount Min in Sichuan, for
example, have horse bodies and dragon heads, while those of Great
Palace Mountain have human faces on each of their three heads.(31)
Most of the beings that the ancient Chinese envisioned in the
mountains had more in common with these semi-zoomorphic entities
than the staid regional rulers of the marchmounts, but even the
marchmounts reveal a more unorthodox aspect in later legend. This
section will introduce some of these anomalous entities.
The mountains of China were a sacred realm where profane mortals
entered at their peril. Those who did so were drawn by the floral,
mineral, and transcendent treasures hidden therein. Ge Hong (A.D.
283-343), the fourth-century proponent of alchemy, was forced to
enter the mountains to collect the numinous substances needed for
his elixirs. He devotes an entire chapter of his Master Embracing
Simplicity (Baopuzi) to the mountains, their wonders, and their
dangers, beginning with the following passage:(32)
All mountains, whether large or small, have gods and spirits. If the
mountain is large, the god is great; if the mountain is small, the
god is minor. If someone enters the mountain possessed of no magical
arts, he will certainly suffer harm. Some will fall victim to acute
diseases or be wounded by weapons. When frightened and uneasy, some
will see lights and shadows, others will hear strange sounds.
Sometimes a huge tree will topple, though there is no wind, or a
cliff will collapse for no reason, striking and killing people.
Sometimes the man will flee in confusion, tumbling down a cavern or
into a gorge; other times he will encounter tigers, wolves, and
poisonous insects that attack men. One cannot enter a mountain
lightly!
Ge Hong goes on to list numerous magical preparations that can
assure one's safety, including selecting auspicious days for the
particular mountain to be ascended and for the substance sought. A
typical example follows:(33)
There are forty-nine true, secret talismans of Lord Lao, the Yellow
Court, and the Central Embryo. When planning to enter mountain
forests on a jiayin day (day 51), write them on a piece of undyed
silk in cinnabar. That night, place them in the middle of the table;
then, facing the Northern Dipper, sacrifice to it with wine and
dried meat, just a bit of each. Pronounce your own surname and
personal name, bow twice, and, taking the talisman, wear it inside
your clothes to avoid the hundred ghosts and myriad sprites, the
tigers, dholes, and five poisonous insects of the mountains and
streams.
In Ge Hong's day there was already a plethora of mysterious beings
lying in wait in the mountains. Let us first consider the category
of the "myriad sprites" (wanjing). Ge Hong has this to say of
them:(34)
As for the aged of the myriad beings (wanwu), the spirit (jing)
of each of them can temporarily assume human form to dazzle human
eyes, and they often test people. It is only in a mirror that they
cannot change their true form. For this reason all the Daoists of
old, when entering the mountains, would dangle a bright mirror nine
inches in diameter from their backs so that devils (mei) would not
dare approach. If one comes to test a person, he should examine it
in the mirror. If it is a transcendent or a good god of the
mountains, then when examined in the mirror it will seem to have
human form. If it is a bird, beast, or evil devil then its !true^
form will be visible in the mirror. Also, if an old devil should
come, it is certain to walk backwards when leaving. You can turn the
mirror to reflect its back; if it is an old devil, it is certain to
have no heels. If it has heels, then it is a divine transcendent.
The belief in sprites (jing) is founded on the conception that as
living beings age, they accumulate spirit (jing).(35) Exceptionally
long-lived beings, be they animals like the turtle or crane, or
plants like the pine tree, could accumulate enough jing to attain
the power of transformation. These are the creatures described
above, and they were usually considered to be malefic in nature. Ge
Hong equates them with mei, which I translate "devil" because of its
common use in collocation with names of fearsome monsters like the
wangliang (variously written as or).(36)
At this early stage there seems to be no consistent
differentiation between mountain gods (shanshen), mountain spirits
(shanling), and mountain ghosts (shangui). All these terms are
ambiguous and their semantic fields overlap. For example, one
denizen of the mountains is noted for being just one foot tall. In
the Guanzi, Sire Huan of Qi catches a glimpse of the god of Mount
Deng, who is said to be "one foot tall but possessing all the
features of a human."(37) The appearance of this supernatural being
is auspicious, heralding the advent of a Hegemon. Ge Hong describes
a mountain sprite whose "form is like a small child but with one
foot."(38) The fifth-century Record of Yongjia Commandery
(Yongjiajun ji) provides record of a mountain inhabitant of similar
stature:(39)
In Angu county (modern Ruian, Zhejiang) there are mountain ghosts.
Their physical forms are like those of men but they have one foot
and are only a little over a foot tall. They love to eat salt and
they are forever stealing the salt of woodcutters. They are not
particularly afraid of men, and men do not dare to offend them
because to offend them is unlucky. They like to capture and eat
crabs in mountain streams.
In this last account the creature seems almost like a forest animal,
perhaps a small monkey, but such beings are extremely dangerous and
not to be trifled with. A story in Hong Mai's Yijian zhi, entitled
"A Citizen of Zhang!zhou^ Takes a Mountain Ghost as Wife," shows
they were still feared in the twelfth century. The spectral bride in
this tale resembles in all respects a normal woman except for having
only one foot, a trait noticed only by the groom's younger sister
!!^. The next morning the groom's parents break into the wedding
chamber, only to find their son reduced to a pile of bones.(40)
Still, if properly propitiated, these mountain spirits could be
powerful allies of human travelers. A Tang tale recorded in the
Taiping guangji tells how a man befriended a female imp (shanxiao)
with an appropriate gift of cosmetics, in return for which the imp
protected him from two ravenous tigers.(41) Mountain gods were less
purposefully evil than amoral, self-centered and egocentric.
MOUNTAIN GODS AS BUREAUCRATS
Ge Hong, like most men of his day, still saw the inhabitants of
mountains as supernatural beings remote from mankind. They might
assume human appearance to deceive naive travelers, but their true
form was zoomorphic or semi-zoomorphic. Even individuals who
attained the status of a divine transcendent were transformed into
feathered creatures (yuren) more akin to birds than men. Their
identities and actions were as mysterious and unfathomable as their
appearance. They could be propitiated with sacrifice or warded off
with powerful prophylactic charms, but they could not be reasoned
with nor could their behavior be predicted.
The institution of a system of marchmounts in the Zhou, detailed
above, was an attempt to integrate the primordial powers of the
mountains into the Zhou cultural order that directly paralleled the
establishment of regional hegemons to unify and subdue unsinified
tribes. Late Zhou and Hun philosophical speculation transformed the
marchmounts into abstract cosmological forces essential to the
circulation of the pneumas of life. But philosophers could not sway
popular devotion, and the sacrificial offerings that assured the
marchmounts' protection continued to stream from all levels of
society and the state. The Buddhist polemicist Zhu Daoshuang, noting
this contradictory behavior, argued in his "Proclamation to Mount
Tai" that the marchmounts, as cosmological forces, are due no cult
whereas the true recipient of the bloody offerings to the
marchmounts must be demonic:(42)
The true gods of the five marchmounts are phases of quintessence
(jing zhi hou). Above they model the Jade Pivot (xuanji, four stars
in the Big Dipper), below they succeed to Qian and Kun (hexagrams
representing pure yang and pure yin, respectively). They are endowed
with a Duo both pure and void, with neither sound nor echo. If one
reveres them, they are not pleased by it. If one scorns them, they
are not troubled by it. Through a thousand compliments or ten
thousand insults the gods are neither augmented nor diminished. Yet
you !demons^(43) appropriate their titles and attach yourselves to
the living. In the void you rouse !angry^ breaths, your mouth full
of murder and injury. If they obey, you bestow on them your grace;
if they disobey, then they suffer calamity.
The mixture of Daoist and Buddhist technical terminology in
this document reflects the shared opposition of these two
institutionalized religions to the sacrificial regime that was at
the heart of popular (and state) cults. Once philosophical
abstractions of the gods had been appropriated by organized religion
as arguments against continued cult praxis, a new means of
increasing the respectability of the mountain gods had to be found.
The solution was to turn them into dead heroes.
Through the following centuries, both folktales and government
pronouncements sought to redefine these alpine gods as
anthropomorphic figures possessing the same virtues and vices as
humans. A governmental model had informed the Chinese sacred realm
since at least Zhou times, but like government at that time, the
sacred realm excluded certain portions of the empire.(44) Just as
the Zhou state and its feudal rulers maintained only nominal control
of mountainous regions populated by unsinified or semisinified
minority peoples, mountain deities possessed considerable autonomy,
with only the awesome regional lords of the marchmounts being
integrated into anything like an administrative hierarchy. In tales
of the Tang and Song, human foibles are increasingly attributed to
these figures and, eventually, they come to suffer the same sort of
institutional constraints that the temporal official felt in his
governmental duties.
The marchmounts were the first to evince this transformation. By the
Han they were already assigned Chinese names, although these names
might still have a symbolic aspect (e.g., the ruler of the Western
Marchmount is surnamed Bai or "White," the color of the west in
five-agents cosmology). The god of this marchmount appears in a Tang
tale that illustrates the increasing bureaucratization of the
Chinese sacred realm:(45)
During the Shining Clouds reign-period (Jingyun, A.D. 710-12) Madame
Wang, wife of a certain Mr. Li of Henan county, was famous
throughout the Three Auxiliaries (sanfu, i.e., the capital region)
for her beauty. Li had left for his office in the morning and had
yet to return. Wang had finished her toilet and sat resting, burning
incense. Suddenly she saw several men from the royal gates
accompanying a calf-drawn cart that descended from the clouds to her
courtyard. Madame Wang, startled, asked their purpose. One replied,
"The Magistrate of Mount Hua has sent us to escort you to him." Not
permitted to refuse, she was about to depart in a rush when she said
to a household member, "I regret being unable to take leave of
Chamberlain Li in person." She left wiping away her tears, and died
beside the steps. In a moment variegated clouds bore the carriage
away into the void. They grew more and more remote, then
disappeared. When Li returned from pre-fectural headquarters and
found his wife dead, he stroked her corpse and wailed, fainting and
reviving several times. After a short while, a man came to the gate,
saying that he could resuscitate the wife. Li bent himself, half
bowing to and welcoming him, and begged for his protection. The man
sat on the bed and asked for vermilion with which to write a
talisman. Because the vermilion had not arrived, he wrote a talisman
in ink and sent it flying off !in smoke^. When, after a moment, the
wife had not arrived, he sent off another talisman. Smiling, he said
to Li, "Do not worry. Soon she will be alive." Presently Madame Wang
revived. Li bowed and thanked him dozens of times, exhausted himself
presenting the man with gifts. The man laughed loudly, saying, "I
have rescued men from disaster and aided the suffering. What need
have I for material rewards!" He then went out the door and
disappeared. When Madame Wang had recovered, she said that when she
had first arrived at Mount Hua and met the king, the king was very
pleased. He had set up screens among the mountain peppers(46) and,
after drinking and banqueting merrily with several of his followers,
was just pouring wine convivially when suddenly a man appeared
riding a black cloud and said, "The Great One has commanded me to
summon Lady Wang." The god remained at ease, requesting that the man
wait until the end of the party. Soon there was another man riding a
red cloud, who said in great anger, "The Great One asks Mount Hua,
why have you seized the wife of a living man? If you do not send her
back quickly, there will be severe punishment." The god, extremely
agitated, thereupon commanded that she be returned to her home.
This tale asserts the authority of the Great One or Taiyi over
the marchmount, a subordination first officially accepted during the
reign of Han Wudi. The Lost History (Yishi) of Lu Zhao (fl. 847-60)
records a similar story with a human savior.(47) There a man passing
by Mount Hua leads his wife to pray at the main temple, where she
falls dead on the spot. The local magistrate recommends a certain
Transcendent Master Ye. Ye ultimately effects her release, but only
after dispatching a red dragon that seizes the King of Metal Heaven,
lord of the marchmount, by the throat. In this story a mortal adept
is able to exert control over the marchmount through his
supernatural abilities, but there still is no regularized
bureaucratic check upon the marchmount's power. Moreover, the
marchmount is still a rather willful and unruly power, checked only
by the oversight of still more powerful astral deities. To observe
in more detail this ongoing process of bureaucratization we must
turn to the scriptures and lore of a specific cult.
A SICHUANESE MOUNTAIN GOD
Many of the multiple aspects of mountain divinities discussed above
can be found within a single cult. The mountain in question is
Sevenfold Mountain, located just north of a town in northern Sichuan
called Zitong. It is really more of a foothill, one of the first
peaks leading to the great Swordridge chain that separates the
traditional macro-regions of Sichuan and Shaanxi, but came to
possess national significance because of its location athwart the
main road connecting these two regions.
The cult site on the mountain is ancient but first enters the
historical record in the mid-fourth century A.D., when it was
mentioned in the Record of the Land of Huayang (Huayangguo zhi),
China's earliest surviving regional history.(48) The original cult
site seems to have been a cave situated high on the mountain slopes.
This cave was inhabited by a fearsome giant snake called simply "the
Viper" (ezi), who, according to later legend, had shaped the seven
twistings of the mountain through the sinuous slitherings of his
gigantic form. The snake's primary attribute was the thunder it
manifested by casting down "thunder shuttles" (leizhu), which the
faithful gathered and returned to the giant serpent once a year in
the spring. The cult was clearly associated with fertility and
thunder as a rain-bringer, but the thunder was also a potent weapon
with which the god might smite his enemies.
This early account of the cult already associates it with an
important Sichuanese myth cycle, that of the wonder-working Five
Stalwarts (wuding) who serve King Kaiming, the dissolute last ruler
of the kingdom of Shu. These colossal siblings were responsible for
a series of misguided feats that eventually led the Shu state to its
ruin at the hands of the Qin. One of these was the transportation of
five Qin princesses to the Shu harem, where they were supposed to
distract the King while Qin plotted his downfall. The stalwarts met
the Qin entourage at Sevenfold Mountain. There they encountered the
Viper, who brought the mountain down upon both stalwarts and
princesses.
Later versions of the tale portray the serpent's actions as a vain
attempt to rescue Shu, but this earliest version is ambiguous. The
Five Stalwarts were once popular in Shu, despite the tragic end they
brought to themselves and their land. A shrine was established to
the Five Princesses, and the Viper's mountain was sometimes referred
to as the Tumulus of the Five Stalwarts. All historical accounts of
these men, however, portray them as unknowing collaborators with the
Qin invaders in Shu's demise. The location of the cult site is, I
believe, crucial in understanding the Viper's role in this myth
cycle. Sevenfold Mountain is the first major cult site after passing
through the Sword Gate that marked the traditional boundary of the
Sichuan region. Further, the snake is a traditional deity of
Sichuan, associated in particular with the Ba state in eastern
Sichuan, but also prominent in Shu iconography. It would seem, then,
that by the fourth century the snake was already viewed as a
protector of the region as a whole, a gatekeeper screening potential
visitors as they descend into the Chengdu plain. Thus the god of
Sevenfold Mountain already subtends a significant historical
development, transformed from an amoral, fearsome predator that had
to be propitiated to a still frightening but righteous protector of
his native land from foreign threats.
There is a third aspect of this early stage of the god's identity.
The cult site was sometimes called the Shrine to Shan Ban (Shan Ban
ci). This term has been the subject of much speculation, with Henri
Maspero suggesting that shanban (lit., "good board") referred to the
construction of the cult building.(49) Liu Lin is closer to the mark
in claiming that it is the name of the thunder god.(50) One name
sometimes given for the god of the Western Marchmount is Shan
Lei.(51) Perhaps Shan was a common surname for mountain gods in the
Sichuan-Shaanxi border region.
All three elements of the god of Zitong's identity survive
many centuries. Standard historical sources make no further mention
of the Viper, indicating an elite dissatisfaction with this violent,
primordial, thunder-wielding deity, but two tenth-century tales
reveal that this aspect of the cult was still dynamically alive in
the popular imagination. The first tells of an avatar of the Viper
as Yuanying ???, the fractions eldest son of the Later Shu ruler
Wang Jian ??? (847-918).(52) The young man is said to have been
"vicious, evil, vile, and lewd," and possessed of several serpentine
characteristics, including nocturnal activity, bared teeth, and a
swarthy complexion. He is eventually killed while rebelling, after
which the god's spirit returns to the Zitong temple. The second tale
identifies the god with a serpent/dragon of western Sichuan, famous
for having inundated an entire city in a fit of vengeful anger.(53)
The first tale was never repeated after the tenth century. Perhaps
it was too scandalous to be acceptable to a significant portion of
the cult. The second tale, however, was fully assimilated into the
cult, receiving a permanent place in cult lore in 1181.
Because the mountain god as regional protector was a role that met
with the favor of the literati elite, we have considerably more
evidence for the development of this aspect of the god's image. Our
first source is a tale recorded in the Spring and Autumn Annals of
the Sixteen Kingdoms (Shiliuguo chunqiu ???).(54) The god has now
acquired a Chinese surname, Zhang ???, and new powers as a
wonder-worker. He appears and offers succor to a tribal chieftain
named Yao Chang ??? (330-93), an otherwise unremarkable military
figure known for having killed Fu Jian ???, the proto-Tibetan ruler
who had once threatened to unify all of China. The god thus claims
the role of protector of all China, a role further expanded in the
Tang and Song.
During the Tang, two emperors were forced to flee the capital,
Chang'an, for the safety of Sichuan. Both Emperor Xuanzong ???, (r.
712-56) and Emperor Xizong ??? (r. 873-88) came to the temple on
Sevenfold Mountain to request the god's protection and each rewarded
the god with an official title. In the Song the god was credited
with suppressing rebellions in 1000 and 1132.(55) During the
Southern Song, when non-Chinese people first threatened, then
overran Sichuan, the god and his cult formed a rallying point for
loyalist sentiment, so much so that the cult was forced to go
underground after the Mongol conquest of Sichuan. In his official
pronouncements the god grieved that his thunderbolts had proved
ineffective against the barbarian invaders. Although the god, under
the name Wenchang, was to become the god of literature and the
premier representative of civil (wen ???) virtues, he maintained
this martial reputation until at least the fifteenth century.
The god's career as a mountain god is chronicled in cult scripture.
Between 1168 and 1181 a series of texts were revealed in the name of
the god of Zitong by a Sichuanese spirit-writing medium named Liu
Ansheng. Foremost among these was a prosimetric autobiography of the
god called the Book of Transformations (Huashu ???), which traced
the god through two millennia of incarnations and divine
offices.(56) As one might expect of what was originally a simple
mountain god cult, many of these episodes shed light on mountain
gods and spirits.
In the Book of Transformations the god is provided with an astral
origin and his final apotheosis brings him back to an exalted
celestial office, but as part of his terrestrial sojourn the god
repeatedly takes up divine posts in the mountains. One of the most
interesting episodes begins as the god is touring the mountains of
northern Sichuan aboard a crane. He spies five local mountain gods,
all seemingly completely human in form, who beg audience with him,
saying:(57)
It has been almost a hundred years . . . that we have been without a
king. Now Your Perfection is the descendant of a saint, is unsullied
and resplendent in your person, has accumulated virtue and amassed
good works, has maintained your principles of loyalty and filiality,
and has come here on a spirit-journey. There are times proper to
serving and to withdrawing. Why not rest here a bit? Further, near
Sword Ridge there is a huge beast with a white forehead, over a
thousand years old. It lies in wait in the mountain crevices and
feeds on people. Since Your Perfection was once the high officer of
the Son of Heaven, all the spirits of the mountains and streams were
once under your command. Further, a jade rescript has ordered you
here. You can yourself summon the many spirits and, breathing forth
transformation, dispatch nether forces to drive forth this tiger.
This would both aid Heaven and show your love of sentient beings.
Far from being violent miscreants who must be kept in line by
superior authority, these gods long for the administrative
leadership that political turmoil has denied them. One of their
justifications for putting the god of Zitong forward as their king
is his service during a recent incarnation as a high officer of
state, further linking the temporal and sacred orders.
But even a highly bureaucratized sacred realm has its
miscreants and evil-doers. Here the problem is a giant tiger, who
throughout a long life has accumulated tremendous spiritual power.
The god of Zitong brings together all of the supernatural
inhabitants of the mountains in a great safari to rid the region of
this fearsome predator:
I was persuaded to counterfeit a divine rescript summoning forth all
the ghosts and spirits of the mountains and streams within a
thousand li. All came to hear my commands. I said, "The Thearch has
sent a jade rescript noting that the white tiger is taking human
life, and ordering me, as king of this mountain, to lead you many
spirits in punishing and destroying it. Those who obey this command
will enjoy bloody sacrifice for generation after generation; for
those who do not, Heaven possesses terrible punishments." All said,
"Yes, we reverently obey your commands." I then looked up and gazed
all about. Creating an image and transforming, I manifested a form
as high as the mountain. Plucking out a lone bamboo I chanted a
spell and transformed it into a long sword. Ping Yi summoned the
Masters of Wind and Rain to clear the way. I waved my sword with a
single shout and the echo rambled through the valley. The tiger's
angry breaths formed clouds and the light of his eyes shot forth
lightning-bolts. It leapt back and forth, but I blocked it with my
body. All the blades advanced together, and it died under the
knives. In the midst of the blood and gore I found a round stone
shaped like a fallen star. Gong Yuanchang examined it and said,
"This is a 'tiger's potency' (huwei ???)." When I wore it belted to
my waist all the gods feared me. The deed completed, I memorialized
the Thearch. First I confessed my crime in counterfeiting the
summons, then touched upon my achievements. The Thearch consequently
made me Mountain King of the Northern Gate of Shu.
Despite the god's breach of bureaucratic procedure, the message of
this tale is that there is a civil order, enforced through a variety
of supernatural beings and legitimized through a supreme Thearch,
that works to tame the wild forces of the mountains. The god speaks
of his role as mountain king in terms that any temporal regional
official might agree with: "I concerned myself with every flood,
drought, good or bad harvest, good or evil portent, achievement and
fault within the mountains and streams under my control."
The zoomorphic nature-spirits of the mountains and streams were
clearly the most problematic in this new order. In the story above,
the tiger spirit had to be slain. In another episode two dragons
engaged in a race inundate the area surrounding their rivers and
must be restrained by threats of the Supreme Thearch's punishment
and a solemn oath (chapter 51). But in another case (chapter 32,
discussed below), a dragon follows proper bureaucratic procedure in
reporting the improper actions of a colleague. Temporal officials
must have experienced the same mixed results in domesticating the
deep-rooted nature cults found throughout China both then and now.
There are two other examples in the Book of Transformations of the
god's interactions with other mountain deities, both of which shed
interesting light on the new role of mountain gods. The first
(chapter 32) concerns a corrupt mountain god within the new mountain
king's territory. According to the report of a local dragon-god,
this god had seized and ravished the soul of a maiden on her wedding
night. The deviant god confesses, is given three hundred lashes,
then cashiered, and a filial young man who had copied the
Lankavatara Sutra is recommended to replace him. Thus proper legal
procedures are applied in punishing the otherworldly evildoer and a
new official is appointed because of his personal virtue rather than
magical power or self-cultivation.
The second case (chapter 33) involves that most ancient of
Marchmount Lords, the White Thearch. The Western Zhou state was
brought to its knees by a beautiful woman named Bao Si ???,
resulting in a brief interregnum and the movement of the capital to
the east. The White Thearch was indignant at the havoc wreaked by
this depraved female and determined to punish her by destroying the
town of Bao from which she hailed. The god of Zitong, whose
territory bordered on Bao, heard of this and, concerned for the
innocents who would die, remonstrated with the Thearch, who ordered
the White Thearch to desist. Again, a bureaucratic model is applied
to interactions among mountain gods.
Finally, there is the question of the relationship of mountain
gods to Daoism. Mountains were the site of grotto-heavens ???, where
transcendent beings dwelled in pure splendor. These were also
bureaucratized to a certain extent, and supplied with a complement
of otherworldly soldiers who could quash nefast influences.
Possessors of potent talismans like the Chart of the True Forms of
the Five Marchmounts (Wuyue xhenxing tu ???) could count on each
marchmount dispatching five of these divine warriors to protect
them; but these transcendent gods would also report on their
sins.(58) The Shangqing patriarch Sima Chengzhen drew a sharp
distinction between the transcendent inhabitants of famous mountains
and the vulgar gods, saying:(59)
Now the sacred shrines to the Five Marchmounts are all to gods of
the mountains and forests. These are not duly appointed, perfected
gods. The Five Marchmounts all have grotto headquarters and there
are perfected men of Supreme Purity who descend to assume these
posts.
The god of Zitong also has some experience with these transcendent
abodes. After his first and second human incarnations the god
retreats to mountains to gather his wits and prepare for his next
incarnation (chapters 20 and 30). In the first case, he proceeds to
the grotto-heaven under Mount Monarch ??? in the middle of Lake
Dongting. In the second, it is to Snow Mountain in the Himalayas
that he flies for respite after a tumultuous life, ending in forced
suicide and three days of haunting his slayer. In each case he is
granted a high title, fitting for one who had held high office at
court during his lifetime.
These alpine experiences are strongly Daoist in character; the god
devotes himself to repose and contemplation rather than the duties
and responsibilities that characterize his other mountain posts. But
notice that they precede the god's postings as mountain king.
National god cults like that to the god of Zitong, nascent in the
Song, promoted a new, unified sacred realm in which gods of the
terrestrial administration and divine transcendents intermingled.
The astral reaches at the top of the pantheon were beyond the reach
of dead humans subsisting on a diet of bloody victuals, but earthly
transcendents and terrestrial gods were not so clearly separated.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, let us pass in review some elements of Chinese
mountains and their gods. Chinese mountains are inhabited by a
variety of supernatural beings. The most famous of the peaks are the
marchmounts. Originally there were four marchmounts delimiting
Chinese space and ruling over the supernatural forces in their
respective quadrants. There were analogous and eponymous human
officials who ruled over the temporal spheres of each marchmount.
The four marchmounts surrounded a central sacred peak, Mount Song,
which represented the Chinese emperor. During late Warring States
and Han times the central peak was added to the marchmounts,
yielding a system of five that was correlated to the Five Agents.
All were defined as within Chinese space, and the central peak lost
its primacy. To a degree this role was later assumed by the Eastern
Marchmount, Mount Tai.
Other denizens of the mountains include mountain gods, ghosts of the
dead, demons, and sprites, as well as fearsome fauna like tigers,
wolves, and dholes. In early accounts all these creatures are
dangerous because of their capriciousness, amorality, and
supernatural powers. Over time the class of mountain gods was
redefined as dead human beings filling fixed official posts in the
supernatural bureaucracy; ghosts, sprites, and demons were
subjugated to their rule. In this way the order of civilized life
was gradually extended to the mountains, which had once been defined
as a marginal realm beyond the confines of the Chinese world.
Many of these changes are concretely represented in the cult to the
god of Zitong. The god was originally a snake controlling thunder
and was related to other mountain gods of the northern
Sichuan-southern Shaanxi region. In part because of the geographical
location of the cult site, the god became known as a martial
protector, first of the Sichuan region, then of the Chinese cultural
sphere as a whole; as a protector, the god was provided with a human
identity. Revelations in the twelfth century further redefined the
god's image, providing several tales of the god's experiences as a
mountain god and his interactions with other mountain deities. These
tales reflect the increasing assimilation of all aspects of the
divine world to the temporal order. Because the cult was founded on
an amalgam of Daoist and popular beliefs and practices, cult lore
minimized the distinction between the sphere of the divine mountain
official and the transcendent inhabitants of the pure grotto-heavens
deep within the mountain's belly.
The unifying force in these changes is a tendency toward
integration. The mountainous regions of China were integrated into
its cultural space, the gods of these mountains were integrated into
the larger pantheon of popular worship, and Daoist transcendents
were integrated into a continuous, though hierarchically arrayed,
pantheon incorporating all aspects of the divine world--what I call
the unified sacred realm. These changes in the understanding of
Chinese mountains and their gods were part of a larger trend toward
incorporation and assimilation that has resulted in the highly
syncretistic Chinese religious world of today.
1 Baopuzi (Basic Sinological Series ed.; rpt., Taibei: Shijie shuju,
1969): 17.76. Cf. James Ware, Alchemy, Medicine, and Religion in the
China of A.D. 320 (Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1966), 279-80.
2 Qu Wanli summarizes a variety of opinions concerning this
character and argues persuasively for the identification adopted
here in "Yue yi jigu", Qinghua xuebao, n.s., 2.1 (May 1960): 53-68,
esp. 61-63. Qu estimates that the graph occurs more than two hundred
times in the limited corpus of inscriptions available in 1960.
Keightley notes that sacrifices to the yue are discontinued, or at
least no longer recorded in oracle-bone inscriptions, toward the end
of the Shang. See David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang History
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1978), 177.
3 Inscriptions including the character yue are collected together by
Shims Kunio, Inkyo bokuji sorui (Tokyo: Kyuko shoin, 1971):
174.1-176.2. This character appears to depict one range of mountains
on top of another, according well with the simpler graphic variant
for yue.
4 Ding Shan, Zhongguo gudai zongjiao yu shenhua kao (1961; rpt.
Shanghai: Wenyi chubanshe, 1988), 407.
5 Sun Yirang, Qiwen juli, cited in Qu Wanli, "Yue yi jigu," 62;
Sarah Allan, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art, and Cosmos in Early
China (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1991), 99-100.
6 Shijing (Harvard-Yenching Index Series ed.), 70/259/1; Maoshi
zhengyi (Shisanjing zhushu ed., 1815; rpt. Taibei: Yiwen chubanshe),
18.3/lb; Arthur Waley, The Book of Songs (London: Allen and Unwin,
1937), 133. The term songgao in this poem is a stative verb, "to be
lofty and high," and the word "lofty" is sometimes represented by
the graph. Its use as the name of the Central Marchmount is founded
upon the identification of the yue in this poem with that mountain.
I have found no reference to this mountain as Songshan or Songgao
prior to the Han dynasty.
7 The characters tian and tai are indistinguishable in oracle bones
and early bronzes. It is unclear when the convention of
distinguishing them arose and how it was applied. See the examples
cited in Gao Ming, Gu wenzi leibian (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1980),
28.
8 Shiji (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972), 40.1704.
9 Located about ten miles southeast of Huo county in modern Shanxi
province, 36 !degrees^ 30" N, 112 !degrees^ E. See Aoyama Sadao,
Shina rekidai chimei yoran (Tokyo, 1933; rpt. Taibei: Hongshi
chubanshe, 1971), 168; Gu Zuyi, Dushi fangyu jiyao (Basic
Sinological Series ed.), 39.1647-48.
10 The Tang commentary to the Guanzi, by Fang Xuanling (578-648),
understands longyue to refer to Sire Huan and his state of Qi, who
as members of the Jiang clan were descendants of the Four
Marchmounts. The Guoyu passage, which continues, "None of the feudal
lords bordering on the yue dared not come in submission," clearly
implies a place near Jiang. In his translation of the Guanzi
passage, Rickett inexplicably identifies the yue as the Southern
Marchmount, Mount Heng in Hunan. An alternate interpretation of this
incident, which has the Sire Huan returning the ruler of Jin to his
throne (zuo) at the Jin capital of Jiang, does not alter its
significance for the identification of the yue. See Dong Zengling,
Guoyu zhengyi (1880; rpt. Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe, 1985), 6.25b;
Guanzi (Basic Sinological Series ed.), 1:106-7; W. Allyn Rickett,
Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from Early
China (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), 338, n. 114. The
role of sacrificial meat in early China, and the Guanzi passage
under discussion here are examined by Toyota Hisashi in "Shu Tenshi
to 'Bun, Bu no so' no shiyo ni tsuite", Shikan 127 (1992.9): 2-17.
11 Zhu Youceng, Yi Zhoushu jixun jiaoshi (Taibei: Shijie shuju,
1957), 44.121.
12 The received text of the "Canon of Yao" shows Han-period editing
but contains elements that must date to at least the fourth century
B.C., because the text is quoted by a different but identifiable
name in Mencius and Zuozhuan. That the Four Marchmounts play such a
central role in the main narrative events of this chapter suggests
that they were part of this original stratum. See Ikeda Suetoshi,
Shosho, Zenshaku kanbun taikei, v. 11 (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1976),
51-52.
13 Shangshu zhengyi (Shisanjing zhushu ed.), 2.19a. Kong Yingda's
subcommentary explains that each of the feudal lords worshipped at
the Marchmount in his quarter of the world and in that sense each
was subordinate to that marchmount.
14 Ikeda Suetoshi, Shosho, 62, note. Ikeda notes that in the
Tradition of Zuo the term seems to be used as the name of a
non-Chinese people.
15 Shangshu zhengyi 3.9a/b; Ikeda, 68.
16 Zuozhuan (Harvard-Yenching Index ed.) 278/Xiang 14/1; Zuozhuan
zhengyi (Shisanjing zhushu ed.), 32.9b; cf. James Legge, The Ch'un
Ts'ew with the Tso Chuen (The Chinese Classics, vol. 5 !Hong Kong,
1872^).
17 Han etymologies of the character yue emphasize the administrative
aspects of the role. The Baihu tong of Ban Gu (32-92) defines yue as
jue ("to compare") because the marchmount "compares the achievements
and virtues !of his subordinates^" and Ying Shao (ft. ca. 190) is
even more explicit, saying "yue means to compare (jue) and examine
achievements and virtues, demoting and promoting the benighted and
enlightened". See Ban Gu, ed., Baihu tongde lun (Han Wei congshu
ed., 1592; rpt. Taibei: Xinxing shuju, 1977), 2.6a; Ito Tomoatsu et
al., eds., Byakkotsu sakuin (Tokyo: Toho shoten, 1979): 40-19-10;
Ying Shao, ed., Index du Fong sou t'ong yi (Centre Franco-chinois
d'Etudes Sinologiques), 10/78.
18 The Erya (Harvard-Yenching Index ed., 22/11/1) implies a
different system, with Mount Hua in the middle and a Mount Wu, which
the Erya calls simply Yue, to its west. This may reflect a regional
Qin systematization that did not catch on.
19 Shiji, 28.1358.
20 Xu Shen defines a "sacred preserve" (zhi) as a place where one
"erects an edifice to sacrifice to the Five Thearchs Of Heaven and
Earth." Here I follow Duan Yucai's commentary in interpreting this
difficult passage. See Duan Yucai, ed., Shuowen jiezi zhu (1808;
rpt. Taipei: Lantai shuju, 1974), 13.46a/b.
21 Southeast of modern Luochuan county in Shensi. Xu Shen records an
alternate tradition that this sacred preserve had been established
by the euhemerized Yellow Thearch. Shuowen jiezi zhu, 13.46b.
22 Note that in the previous passage I translated the term shangdi
ambiguously. Robert Eno has argued that the term di in the oracle
bones can be plural, referring at times to a group of divine beings.
In classical times as well, the term shangdi, usually assumed to
refer solely to the high god of the Shang, is, at least in some
contexts, glossed by Han commentators as a plural expression
referring to the Five Thearchs. When the "Monthly Ordinances"
preserved in the Record of Rites lists the objects of communal
sacrifice, viz., "August Heaven, the Thearchs on High, famous
mountains, great rivers, and the gods of the four quarters", Zheng
Xuan identifies the Thearchs on High as the Five Thearchs of Supreme
Tenuity. These five astral deities are, of course, correlated to the
five marchmounts below. I believe that in the passage above,
describing the eighth century B.C., shangdi is plural, and even
though the yellow snake may be a symbol of the central Yellow
Thearch, the ruler of Qin responds to a request for worship from the
Thearchs on High by offering sacrifice to their representative
assigned to his region, the White Thearch. See Robert Eno, "Was
There a High God Ti in Shang Religion?," Early China 15 (1990):
1-26; Liji zhushu (Shisanjing zhushu ed.), 16.9b.
23 Mitarai Masaru, among others, makes the claim that these are
originally Qin deities in his Kodai Chugoku no kamigami (Tokyo:
Sobunsha, 1984), 347-86.
24 Shiji, 28.1358-60, 1364.
25 Jeffrey K. Riegel, "Kou-mang and Ju-shou," Cahiers d'Extreme-Asie
5 (1989-90): 55-83, esp. p. 69.
26 Shiji, 12.452.
27 Shiji, 12.458.
28 On the Yellow God in Han tomb documents see Anna Seidel, "Traces
of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs," in Dokyo to shukyo
bunka, ed. Akizuki Kan'ei (Tokyo: Hirakawa shuppansha), 714-678.
29 The same dynamic is responsible for redefining the earlier system
of yin and yang, from a relationship of equal importance and mutual
need, to the privileging of yang and demonization of yin that
dominated religious and philosophical thought in imperial China.
30 Fengsu tongyi tongjian, 10.77.
31 Yuan Ke, Shanhai jing jiaozhu (Shanghai: Guji chubanshe, 1980),
5.160, 150. The dating of the Shanhai jing is the subject of much
controversy but it seems safe to affirm that the first five chapters
are pre-Han. See Remi Mathieu, Etude sur la mythologie et
l'ethnologie de la Chine ancienne, vol. 1 (Paris: College de France,
Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, 1983), ci.
32 See above, note 1.
33 Baopuzi, 17.81-82. Cf. James Ware, Alchemy, Medicine, and
Religion, 295-96.
34 Baopuzi, 17.77.
35 Jing seems originally to have referred to select, refined grain,
then to the essence distilled from food and utilized by the body. As
a concept, it is closely related to qi, which originally referred to
the steam from boiling grain but came to be understood as a
structive force in nature, and in this meaning is variously
translated as "breath," "ether," or "vital force."
36 Xu Shen shared this conception of them, for he defines mei as
"the sprite of an old creature". See Shuowen jiezi zhu, 9A.41a.
37 Guanzi (Basic Sinological Series ed.), 2.110.
38 Baopuzi, 17.79.
39 Cited in Hanyu dacidian, vol. 3 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing,
1989), 779, sub shangui. This lost work of Zheng Qizhi of the Liu
Song dynasty has been reconstructed by Sun Yirang, in editions
published in 1878 and 1912, which I have not seen. The editors of
Hanyu dacidian may have had access to this text, but more likely
they have taken the quotation from some encyclopedia. I have been
unable to trace the source.
40 Yijian zhi (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1981), jia 14, 1.119.
41 Taiping guangji, 428.2.
42 Zhu Daoshuang, "Xi Taishan wen", in Hongming ji, 52.91c; Gumyoshu
kenkyu (Kyoto: Institute for Humanistic Science, 1973-75), 2:401-5.
Zhu Daoshuang may be a pseudonym for the compiler, Sengyou
(445-518). See Gumyoshu kenkyu, 2:748, n. 1.
43 The editors of Gumyoshu kenkyu take the second-person pronouns in
this passage to refer to human proponents of the cult rather than
the demonic beings themselves, but this is inconsistent with the
document as a whole, which is addressed to Mount Tai.
44 On the bureaucratic nature of the early Chinese pantheon as a
whole, see Mori Mikisaburo, "Shina no kamigami no kanryoteki
seikaku", Shinagaku 11.1 (1943): 49-81. Anna Seidel discusses the
subterranean bureaucracy implicit in Han tomb documents in "Traces
of Han Religion."
45 Guangyiji, quoted in Gujin tushu jicheng, ce 491 ("Shenyi", juan
24), 3a.
46 Presumably, a variety of Zanthoxylum, but I have found no
specific reference to it. See G. A. Stuart, Chinese Materia Medica:
Vegetable Kingdom (Shanghai: American Presbyterian Mission Press,
1911), 462-64.
47 Taiping guangji, 378.9.
48 Chang Qu (fl. 350), Huayangguo zhi (Basic Sinological Series
ed.), 3.22.
49 Henri Maspero, "The Mythology of Modern China," in Asiatic
Mythology: A Detailed Description and Explanation of the Mythologies
of all the Great Nations of Asia, ed. J. Hackin et al. (New York:
Crescent Books, n.d.), 311.
50 Liu Lin, ed., Huayangguo zhi jiaozhu (Chengdu: Ba Shu shushe,
1984), 146, n. 3. Ren Naiqiang's suggestion that ban refers to a
ledger (ji) of good deeds provides an intriguing link to the god's
later role as keeper of the Cinnamon Record, but is unsupported by
any evidence and inappropriate for a rural nature cult. See Ren
Naiqiang, ed., Huayangguo zhi jiaobu tuzhu (Shanghai: Guji
chubanshe, 1987), 92, n. 5.
51 This name occurs in the Wuyue zhenxing tu, quoted in Gujin tushu
jicheng, ce 491 ("Shenyi," juan 24), 2a. I have been unable to find
this quote in Dongxuan lingbao wuyue guben zhenxingtu.
52 Sun Guangxian ???, Beimeng suoyan ???, quoted in Taiping guangji,
458.11.
53 Wang Renyu ???, Wangshi jianwen ???, recorded in Taiping guangji,
312.2.
54 Tang Qiu ???, ed., Shiliu guo chunqiu jibu ??? ??? (Basic
Sinological Series ed.), 50.379.
55 Xu Song ???, ed., Song huiyao gao ??? (Beijing: Datong shuju,
1936), 20.55a/b.
56 The Book of Transformations survives in two major recensions, the
Book of Transformations of the Divine Lord of Zitong, in the Daoist
canon (Zitong dijun huashu ???, HY 170), and the Book of
Transformations of Thearch Wen (Wendi huashu ???), preserved in
Daozang jiyao and many free editions. See Terry F. Kleeman,
"Wenchang and the Viper: The Creation of a Chinese National God"
(Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1988).
57 Book of Transformations, ch. 31; Kleeman, "Wenchang and the
Viper," 258-59.
58 Yunji qiqian ???, 79.17a/b, citing a Rite of the Chart of the
True Form of the Five Marchmounts (Wuyue zhenxing tu fa ???).
59 Tongdian ???, cited in Gujin tushu jicheng, ce 491 ("Shenyi,"
juan 25), 10b.