The presentation of the Divination of MaheÅvara divination method in chapter one emphasized the ritual preparations, the method of constructing a numerical trigram, and the process by which the divination ritual invokes gods and spirits, as well as the character of its âdivinatory pantheon.â In doing so, it has referred in passing to other traditions of divination. This chapter more fully engages with select Chinese divination systemsâmostly limited to numerical trigram divinationâin order to consider their continuities and discontinuities with the Divination of MaheÅvara and its ritual assumptions. A variety of numerical trigram divination practices, their material cultural bases, and their ritual assumptions are first introduced through an examination of their introductions and a comparison with the Divination of MaheÅvara. The chapter then devotes three subchapters to closer investigations of related texts. In the first of these, it explores stalk divination as practiced in the Stalk Divination (Shifa) and the Baoshan divination record; in the second, it reviews the use of draughtsmen in the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method (Lingqi bufa), and the use of something like teetotums in the Sutra for the Prognostication of Good and Evil (Zhancha shanâe yebao jing). The third and longest subchapter is a case study that investigates the development of one specific form of stalk divination as represented in three separate texts, the Tricks of Jing, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method (Zhougong bufa), and the Guan Gongming Divination Method (Guan Gongming bufa). As these texts are all short, consisting of an introduction and sixteen entries each, they are translated in full in the appendix. Their divergences and developments with regard to both poetics and pantheons make for an interesting case study to bring into conversation with the Divination of MaheÅvara, whose transcultural twists and turns are detailed in chapter three.
1 Material Culture and Ritual Process in Chinese Numerical Trigram Texts
The Divination of MaheÅvara dictates that one must face west, identify oneself before Åakra, BrahmÄ, the four god-kings, and the assembled spirits, and then focus oneâs mind and express oneâs intentions. Then one casts the dice to receive up to three oracular responses. These short instructions take up themes found in several other Chinese divination texts, and they raise a number of questions. Could one divine by oneself, or did a diviner perform this on oneâs behalf? How decisive or sincere can the connection between dice rolls and an oracular response truly be if one is allowed to discard a response and roll again, up to three times? What is the connection between a given spirit and a given mantic figure? How might the material cultural basis of the randomizing device affect the divination system and its oracular responses? The instructions to several divination texts, as well as accounts of divination rituals offer some materials on which to reflect while considering the answers to such questions.
The locus classicus for the Chinese divination event is drawn from a mourning ritual in the Confucian ritual canon, the Yili å禮, âShi sang liâ 士åªç¦®.1 We see a highly choreographed ritual for divining the burial date of an elite man. The turtle is first burned on the east side of the shell while its head is to the south, and then is burned on the north side of the shell while its head is to the west, covering every direction of the cosmos. First, the auspicious Yang directions (associated with spring and summer) are addressed and then the inauspicious Yin directions (associated with fall and winter) are addressed. Other aspects of this traditional Chinese version of divination ritual are compared below with the Divination of MaheÅvara version.
On divination day, after the dawn wailing, everyone returns outside to stand in position. The diviner first formally presents the turtle in the western family hall for instruction with its head facing south on a mat. Thorn punks are lit and he burns the turtle on its eastern side (left side).
åæ¥ï¼æ¢æåï¼ç復å¤ä½ãå人å å¥ é¾æ¼è¥¿å¡¾ä¸ï¼åé¦ï¼æå¸ãæ¥çç½®æ¼çï¼å¨é¾æ±ã
The clan elder supervises the divination and the ancestral temple representatives wearing auspicious uniforms stand at the western gate, facing east and tiered [in ranks] southward. Three divination interpreters stand to his south, tiered [in ranks] northward. The diviners and those holding the burning punks and mats stay in the western section of the instruction hall. The hostesses [matriarchs] and those of the inner quarters stand behind the door to the east. Mats are placed outside the threshold, to the west of the door sill. When the ancestral temple representatives announce the event, the host faces north, takes off his hemp rope, and holds on to it with his left hand. The supervisor of the divination takes up position to the east of the gate facing west. The diviner holds the turtle and burning punk and formally presents the turtle, then, with its head to the west, and burns it on its northern side (right side).
æé·èåï¼åå®äººåæç«æ¼é西ï¼æ±é¢åä¸ãå è ä¸äººå¨å ¶åï¼åä¸ãå人åå·çãå¸è å¨å¡¾è¥¿ãéæ±æï¼ä¸»å©¦ç«æ¼å ¶å §ãå¸æ¼é西é¾å¤ãå®äººåäºå ·ã主人åé¢ï¼å çµ°ï¼å·¦æä¹ãèåå³ä½æ¼éæ±ï¼è¥¿é¢ãå人æ±é¾çï¼å å¥ é¾ï¼è¥¿é¦ï¼çå¨åã
The ancestral temple representatives receive the turtle from the diviner and present it to the high ancestor. The supervisor looks at the turtle and then returns it. The ancestral temple representatives turn and retreat slightly to receive the command [announcement to the spirits]. The command said: âMourner So-and-so, came on such-and-such day, to divine about the burial of his father, Mr. So-and-so. When his father fell, did he not harbor personal regrets?â It is permitted not to transmit the command, but once he returns to the mat, he sits facing west. When commanding the turtle, rise up. Give the diviner the turtle and back against the eastern door. The diviner sits and, when working on the turtle, rises up. The ancestral temple representatives receive the turtle and present it to the supervisor, who takes a look and then returns it. The ancestral temple representatives retreat and face east. Then displaying the divination [results], they finish up and do not further explain the turtle. They [simply] announce to the supervisor and the host: âThe divination says to follow such-and-such a day.â They give the turtle to the diviner and make the announcement to the hostesses [matriarchs] who wail. They announce it to those of different ranks and then send someone to announce it to the main guests. The diviner removes the turtle. The ancestral temple representatives announce the end to the event. The host, wearing a hemp head covering, enters and wails, going to the divination site. The guests exit; bowing he sends them off. If [the day determined] is not followed then the divination must be performed from the beginning.
å®äººåå人é¾ï¼ç¤ºé«ãèååè¦ï¼åä¹ãå®äººéï¼å°éï¼åå½ãå½æ°ï¼ãååæï¼ä¾æ¥æï¼åè¬å ¶ç¶æç«ãèéï¼ç¡æè¿æï¼ã許諾ï¼ä¸è¿°å½ï¼éå³å¸ï¼è¥¿é¢åï¼å½é¾ï¼èï¼æå人é¾ï¼è² æ±æãå人åï¼ä½é¾ï¼èãå®äººåé¾ï¼ç¤ºèåãèååè¦ï¼åä¹ãå®äººéï¼æ±é¢ãä¹æ å ï¼åï¼ä¸éé¾ï¼åæ¼èåè主人ï¼ãå æ°ææ¥å¾ããæå人é¾ãåæ¼ä¸»å©¦ï¼ä¸»å©¦åãåæ¼ç°çµè ã使人åæ¼ç¾è³ãå人徹é¾ãå®äººåäºç¢ã主人絰ï¼å ¥ï¼åï¼å¦ç®å® ãè³åºï¼æéï¼è¥ä¸å¾ï¼åæå¦ååã
This classic account, although tailored for deciding an auspicious time for an elite burial, provides revealing continuities and differences in practices suggested by the Divination of MaheÅvara. In both texts performing the divination ritual requires facing a particular direction. The older account stipulates the auspicious directions of east and south, with west and north associated with death. The aristocratic culture reflected in the Yili followed the traditional cosmogram of Yin and Yang and Five Agents (wuxing). The Divination of MaheÅvara, by contrast, honors the west. The event in the Yili takes place in a sacred space, a cosmically oriented hall. The Divination of MaheÅvara does not specify this, but one might assume that it also required some sort of sacralized space, perhaps in a local monastery. Common to both divination events was the need to âlook atâ and verify the results, starting over if necessary.
A major difference between the two practices is the divination tools employed. These reflect a typological difference between divination with bones and turtle shells, usually referred to as bu, and divination with stalks, usually referred to as shi. The materials also partly reflect a divide between elite and popular practices. Turtle divination was expensive, wasteful, and less portable. Stalks, counting rods, and other randomizing devices, by contrast, could be carried on the person and used without much preparation, participants, or even elaborate choreography. The turtle symbolized the cosmos, round like heaven above a square earth.2 The direction and shape of the cracks on a turtle shell required the subtle knowledge of specialists who read themâmuch like the varied pulse readings hidden in the channels of the bodyâ, as images representing mantic powers: the Yang of fire over the Yin of (a) water (creature).3 Stalks, counting rods, or even dice, by contrast, were not necessarily symbolic of larger meanings, or else these meanings were little known.
One example of how the act of sorting stalks became a cosmological act is found in the transmitted version of the âAppended Statementsâ (Xici 繫è¾), a text discussing the Yin and Yang relationships within a temporal cosmology. The passage has often been cited in connection with the stalk sorting method of the Changes tradition:
Generally the numbers of Heaven and Earth come to fifty-five, through which changes are achieved and the ghosts and spirits (guishen) move. The numbers of the Great Expansion [method] come to fifty, of which forty-nine are used. Divide them into two piles to form two images, dangling one of them [between the fingers] so as to make up three images and then sort them by fours to make images of the four seasons. Then return the odd ones (the remainders) [into a single group] and use stalk sortilege to make an image of the intercalary month. Every five years there are two intercalations, so one must repeat the stalk sortilege to result in a gua.
å¡å¤©å°ä¹æ¸ï¼äºåæäºï¼æ¤æ以æè®åï¼èè¡é¬¼ç¥ä¹ã大è¡ä¹æ¸äºåï¼å ¶ç¨ååæä¹ãåèçºäºä»¥è±¡å ©ï¼æä¸ä»¥è±¡ä¸ï¼æ²ä¹ä»¥å以象åæï¼æ¸å¥æ¼æ以象éãäºæ²åéï¼æ åæèå¾æï¼å¦ï¼ã
The precise details of this method have been subject to debate, but the passage establishes how the act of moving stalks through oneâs hands and into piles is taken to relate to numbers, heaven and earth, ghosts and spirits, and the seasons and the calendar.4 By the medieval period, the method was standardized into a series of divisions of stalks in order to produce a result. The aforementioned passage was interpreted as the following instructions: 1) take fifty stalks, and remove one from the pile; 2) randomly divide the pile into two, and take one stalk out of one of the piles; 3) divide each of the piles by four, and remove the remainders from both piles (if the pile can be evenly divided, the remainder is considered four); 4) repeat steps 2 and 3 twice using the leftover stalks to remove more remainders; 5) divide the final leftover stalks by four, which would constitute the first, or the bottom line of the six lines of a hexagram. This whole process then needs to be repeated five more times to produce a hexagram from bottom to top. Mathematically speaking, the result of step 5 only has four possibilities: 6, 7, 8, 9. The two odd numbers then are each rendered as an unbroken line and the even numbers as broken lines in a binary system.5
An opposition between turtle shell divination and stalk divination is evident in the introduction to the second-century-BCE Tricks of Jing, a numerical trigram text that appears to stand near the beginning of a tradition also represented by the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method.6 Like the Divination of MaheÅvara and many other divination texts, the Tricks of Jing begins with instructions. The diviners of the Tricks of Jing dismissed turtle divination as less efficient and requiring outside specialized knowledge to view and interpret the cracks. This dismissal also represents a shift of the divination ritual from a public to private process, and from one involving many people to one that could be performed by a single individual, albeit one literate in esoteric arts.
Drilling tortoises and announcing [the results of] stalk [divination] is not as good as [using] the Tricks of Jing. Whether [determining the influences of] Yin or Yang, or the short or long [cracks], their crack-reading is not efficient and their divination is no good; one must be able to inspect [them oneself] in order to understand.
Take thirty stalks to divine whether affairs are auspicious or not, just follow the stalks. In the left hand hold the book and in the right hand grasp the stalks, and face east. Divide the thirty stalks into three piles, placing the ones in the upper pile horizontally, the ones in the middle pile vertically, and those in the lower pile horizontally.
Remove the remainders repeatedly by fours, until [the number of stalks in the remaining pile] does not exceed [four].
é«ï¼ é½ï¼é¾åç®ï¼ ä¸å¦èå³ãè¥é°è¥é½ï¼ è¥çè¥é·ãæåæ¯æ¹ï¼æå æ¯è¯ï¼å¿ å¯ä»¥æãåæåå ç® ä»¥åå ¶äºï¼ è¥åè¥å¶ï¼ å¯ç® æå¾ãå·¦æææ¸ï¼ å³ææç® ï¼ å¿ æ±é¢ãç¨å ç® ï¼ å以ç²ä¸åï¼ å ¶ä¸åè¡¡ï¼ æ¨ªï¼ ï¼ ä¸åå¾ï¼ ç¸±ï¼ ï¼ ä¸åè¡¡ï¼ æ¨ªï¼ ãååèé¤ä¹ï¼ ä¸çè å¿é¤ã
The practical instructions following its slightly polemical opening are terse. There is no mention of the locale, of any cardinal directions, or of any deities to invoke. Similar to the Changes, the method of the Tricks of Jing requires a division process that randomly separates thirty stalks into three piles, marked as âupper,â âmiddle,â and âlower,â respectively. Subtracting from each of the piles four at a time, the remainders of each pile eventually form a âcounting rod-styleâ numerical trigram (see Table 1). The significance of using thirty stalks is unstated, as is any cosmological correlation for the upper, middle, and lower piles into which these are sorted. Nor does the text give any cosmological reason for removing four stalks at a time. The introduction does nevertheless provide us with a powerful image of the material culture of text-based divination: the diviner holding the book in their right hand and the stalks in their left.7
The Tricks of Jing is not the earliest numerical trigram text in China, but it is the earliest extant text to limit itself to numbers one to four, and this is one reason why it is an apt comparandum for the Divination of MaheÅvara. Another important comparandum is the Classic of Empowered Draughtsmen (Lingqi jing), early versions of which were called the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method (Lingqi bufa). This method involved casting twelve game pieces (qi æ£ or qizi æ£å) called âspiritually empowered draughtsmenâ in part because they were carved out of âthunderâ (pili é¹é) wood.8 Three sets of four pieces, each blank on one side, were marked with the graphs âupper,â âmiddle,â or âlowerâ on the other. The number of signs for each tierâfrom blank/zero to fourâformed the numerical trigram which indexed the Empowered Draughtsmenâs oracular responses. A Dunhuang version, P.4048, begins with a statement of its transmission, going back to the third-century Huainan æ·®å region, and then describes its method:
Its divination method employs twelve draughtsmen, each one-inch square, and four each with the graphs âupper,â âmiddle,â or âlowerâ written on them. When divining, one must be purified, light incense, and sit quietly for a short while before holding the pieces (qi) in your hands and incanting: âI, the one divining, Mr. So-and-So, sincerely rely on the four elder spirits, the four middle spirits, and the four younger spirits. The twelve astral officials up above, starting with [1] Heaven and Earth, [and continuing with] the [2] Father and Mother, [3] Lord Lao of the Great Supreme, [4] the Sun and Moon, and [5] the Five Planets, [6] the Seven Stars of the Dipper, [7] the Four Seasons [8] the Five Agents, [9] the Stems and Branches and [10] Yin and Yang, [11] the Twenty-Eight Astral Lodges, and [12] Jupiter when it reaches the Hall of Light.9 Please resolve whatever doubts I, So-and So, have. If it is auspicious then say (yan) âauspiciousâ and if inauspicious say âinauspiciousâ; as for gains or losses and truth or falsehood, please cause them to form omens so that oneâs inner doubts can be articulated (yan).â
Cast (zhi) the pieces (qi) and observe the mantic figure formed through the distribution of [the signs] âupper,â âmiddle,â and âlowerâ to determine [the mantic figure]. Once [the mantic figure of] auspiciousness is settled, do not divine again, because if you do the auspiciousness will become uncertain.
When divining, purify your heart and clear your thoughts, either through the nocturnal invocation or by scrutinizing the affairs. The upper, middle, and lower indicate the three luminaries (heaven, humanity, earth), and they are rolled to display [one of] the 124 mantic figures. Each mantic figure represents auspiciousness or inauspiciousness according to its arrangement of odd or even numbers: odd being Yang and even Yin. Thus the omen is drawn out so that the auspiciousness can be known.10
å ¶åæ³ç¨æ£ååäºæï¼åæ¹ä¸å¯¸ï¼æ¸ä¸ä¸ä¸åï¼ ååæã æ¯åå ä¹æï¼çé æ¸ æ·¨çé¦ï¼å®åå°æï¼ç¶å¾å·æ£èåä¹æ°ï¼âåå è£æä¹ï¼è¬¹å åå諸ç¥ãå仲諸ç¥ãåå£è«¸ç¥ã åäºè¾°å®ï¼ä¸å天å°ãç¶æ¯ã太ä¸å èãæ¥æäºæãåæä¸æãåæäºè¡ãå ç²é°é½ãå»¿å «å®¿ãæ²å¾æå ãæä¹å¿ææçï¼ è«çºå³ä¹ã åç¶è¨åï¼å¶å³è¨å¶ï¼ å¾å¤±æ¯éï¼ è«å½¢äºå ï¼å¿ä¸æçï¼ä½ä¸è¨ä¹ãâ æ²æ£çä¸ä¸ä¸å¸å¦çºå® [å ]ã åå¶å·²å®ï¼ä¸è¦åå ï¼åå³åå¶ä¸å®ï¼å³åå¶ä¸å®ãå¡åé è³å¿æ·¨å¿µï¼æ宿åï¼æç·£äºï¼åæ¥æå¿ï¼äº¦ä¸å宿åãä¸ä¸ä¸ä¸æä¹ç¾©ä¹ï¼å±è½é½æä¸ç¾å»¿åå¦ãå¡å¦ç次å¥å¶çºåå¶ï¼å¥çºé½ï¼å¶çºé°ï¼ä»¥æ¤ç¸æ¨ï¼åå¶å¯ç¥ãããã
The contrast with the terse instructions of the Tricks of Jing could hardly be more striking. One must perform preliminary purification rituals, notably the Daoist rite of ânocturnal invocationâ (suqi 宿å), âthrough which the sacred area is established, purified, and consecrated.â11 One must also chant a ritual incantation. Doing so, one identifies oneself by name as the person divining, marking this as a notionally âdo-it-yourselfâ tradition where client and diviner are united in one individual. The incantation involves holding the draughtsmen in oneâs hands in what would seem to be a part of the process of rendering them âspiritually empowered.â These twelve pieces represent a spiritual hierarchy of sibling relationships: âelderâ (meng å), âmiddleâ (zhong 仲), and âyoungerâ (ji å£). They are referred to as the Twelve Astral Officials (shier chen guan åäºè¾°å®), and each of them is identified with a cosmologically charged force, figure, or grouping, such as Yin and Yang, the Twenty-Eight Astral Lodges, or the Seven Stars of the Dipper. The cosmological richness of this symbolism is overwhelming: one essentially holds the components and forces of the cosmos in oneâs hands and then sets them in motion by casting the draughtsmen to form a specific configuration.
This symphony of cosmological signifiers potentially becomes a cacophony with the addition of another densely packed symbolic object onto which the draughtsmen are cast. This is the shi å¼ or shi pan å¼ç, a mantic device, diagram, or astrolabe dating back to at least the Warring States period.12 Besides its association with liu ren å 壬 divination, shi devices were used for other divination practices and were also employed on their own for a variety of purposes.13 While there are different types of shi devices, a common feature is the use of a circle with twenty-eight sections labelled with the Twenty-Eight âAstral Lodgesâ or xiu, which often turns on a square base that is also marked with such features as the Stems and Branches and the Twenty-Eight Astral Lodges.14 Empowered Draughtsmen divination does not, however, usually provide responses based on which quadrant or section of a shi board the draughtsmen land, and this suggests that the board is used in lieu of a table, the ground, or a spread carpet as a relevant cosmological object, but not as a consequential element in determining the divination.
The divination resolves doubts, and it is requested to articulate what is auspicious and what is inauspicious. This request seems to be addressed to the divination system itself, or else to the twelve spiritually empowered draughtsmen as a whole. The practical instructions for creating and interpreting the mantic figures formed by the draughtsmen equip one with cosmological rubrics for understanding the numbers and their positions. Like the Tricks of Jing, it creates a numerical trigram with an upper, middle, and lower number. Here, however, these are explicitly aligned with heaven, humanity, and the earth, respectively. The odd and even sums of each line are also read in terms of their identification as Yang and Yin, respectively. As noted in chapter one, this is a powerful interpretive framework that allows one to âreadâ the trigrams in a highly specific and meaningful way.
The Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Methodâs instructions suggest that one cast the draughtsmen only once for a given query. The Daozang version specifies that one cannot cast again, even if one receives an inauspicious response: â[t]okens should be thrown only once ⦠if cast more than once for the same matter, its auspicious and inauspicious aspects will not be accurately [revealed].â15 This prohibition of trying a second time would seem to be commensurate with the ritual preliminaries involved in manipulating such powerful and charged objects. It contrasts with the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs ârule of three,â and also with its lack of explicit emphasis on the sacrality or symbolism of the dice.
Further instructions preserved in a selection of Dunhuang divination texts involving coins, rods, and other materials offer additional insights into the ritual context of divination performances and attitudes and beliefs about the material bases themselves.16 In a manuscript version of the Twelve Coin method called the Twelve Coin Method of Laoziâs Book of Changes (Li Lao Jun Zhouyi shier qian bufa æèåå¨æåäºé¢åæ³, S.3724), the identification of the time, name, and business of the divination event is emphasized, but there is little in the way of invoking specific deities. The use of twelve items is notable, as is the fact that the pattern must be âlooked atâ to be interpreted. The last line affords an exalted position to the diviner:17
The plain [side] is Yin and the patterned is Yang; if Yin is facing up then Yang is facing down. Laoziâs method for divining with the Changes is to cast (zhi) twelve coins into a basin and look at (kan) whether they are plain or patterned to determine auspiciousness; not one in ten thousand will fail. Anyone who wants to divine grabs the coins in their hands and invocates (zhou): âOn X year X month and X day, I, So-and-So, will divine about X matter: when it is auspicious make it auspicious, producing (zuo) a mantic figure (gua) of mutual generation; when it is inauspicious articulate (yan) it inauspicious, such that the mantic figure signifies inauspiciousness and mutual conquest.â Spirits and coins benefit each other and so oneâs pleas are understood, and thus take the divinerâs position as one of high stature since he/she is responsible for producing (zuo) the mantic figure omen.
縵çºé°ï¼æçºé½ï¼é°ä»°é½è¦ãèååæä¹æ³ï¼ç¨é¢åäºææ²çç¤ä¸ï¼çæ縵å³ç¥åå¶ï¼è¬ä¸å¤±ä¸ãä¾åè 人æé¢ï¼å¦åä¹æ°ï¼âçºæå¹´ææææ¥æä¹æåå ¶äºï¼åæä½åï¼ä½ç¸çä¹å¦ï¼å¶æè¨å¶ï¼å³éå¶ç¸åå ä¹å¦ãâ ç¥é¢åå©ï¼æä¹ä¹ï¼ç¥ï¼ä¹ï¼åè æ é«ï¼ä»»ä½å¦å ã18
As in the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method, the diviner requests that the objectsâor their invoked deitiesâspeak, and say what is auspicious and inauspicious. Both texts thus emphasize orality and speech, despite their being text-based traditions. The Twelve Coin Method of Laoziâs Book of Changes specified a connection between coins and spirits, but not one so strong and explicit as the Empowered Draughtsmen when it identifies each of its twelve draughtsmen with a particular deity or cosmological force. The text does not even correlate the twelve coins to the twelve Branches or any other cosmologically resonant group of twelve. The diviner, who effects this connection between coins and spirits by casting the coins and producing a mantic figure, is praised as being of high stature. It is an open question whether this is a rhetorical device, or whether indeed this method required that one consult a diviner rather than performing it oneself.
Another Dunhuang divination text, Confuciusâ Horsehead Divination Method (Kongzi matou bufa), makes use of nine notched rods, but its introduction similarly ignores any numerological and cosmological significance of the number nine, which otherwise represents the peak of Yang power. This quick method did not require knowledge of a particular spirit pantheon. Nor did the client have to identify themself. It does, like the Divination of MaheÅvara and other Dunhuang divination texts, advocate focusing the mind. It also specifies a range of daily matters it can deal with, including weather, illness, lost items, burial, lawsuits, family relations, and so forth. Each issue has nine possible answers marked by numbers one through nine. There are several versions but the one with the longest preface is found in the Dunhuang manuscript bearing the shelfmark S.5901v.19
In cases of Yin-Yang stalk divination, the way of the Changes is the source. [This tradition] has many words like rivers and seas, such that only the sages could decide, so how could an ordinary person judge? So Confucius created (zao) this divination, in which nine rods are used as tokens for calculation (suanzi), each of which has [a number one through nine] incised on it, is three inches long, and used to fill a bamboo tube. The tube is closed on both ends with a small hole through which the rod can slip in and out. When a person has troubles, engage it to solve whatever doubts one wants. [For] every matter without exception, [it] will hit the mark, so it will not be necessary to look (kan) twice.
While traveling, Confucius was sitting on his horse; he focused his mind and set his intentions. If divining, one cannot have a chaotic mind. The one with problems divines immediately,20 so that is why it is called the Confucius Horse Head divination method, which Confucius prepared for later generations. Whenever divining, focus the mind and set the intentions, to surely get what you tested about.
å¡é°é½åç®ï¼æéçºå®ï¼æ義çå¤ï¼ç¶å¦æ±æµ·ï¼éèä¸è£ï¼è±å¡è½æ±ºï¼æ以ååé æ¤åæ³ç«æï¼ç¨ç®åä¹æï¼æå¥æå¦ï¼å»ï¼ï¼é·ä¸å¯¸ï¼ç«¹æ©¦ï¼çï¼çä¹ï¼ å¯èå ©é ï¼ ä¸é éä¸å°åï¼å®¹ä¸ç®ååºå ¥ï¼ç·£èº«æè¡ææçï¼éæ決ä¹ï¼äºç¡ä¸ä¸ï¼ä¸è¨±åçãååå è¡ï¼é¦¬ä¸åï¼å®å¿åé¡ï¼å¦åä¸å¾äºå¿ï¼æçäºè ç«é¦¬ä¾¿ä¸ï¼åï¼ï¼æ æ°åå馬é åï¼åæ¼å¾ä¸ãå¡åä¹æï¼å®å¿åé¡ï¼å¿ ç²æé©ã
Another Dunhuang manuscript version of this text, whose method seems like an abbreviated version of the famous qian divination with 100 wooden slips known all across contemporary East Asia, appears to differ from the above version in specifying that there should be a diviner and a client.21 It also mentions that there are preliminary invocations. While such preliminaries are probably to be expected, the statement still forms a counterpoint to the very matter-of-fact introduction given above.
The introduction to another divination text from Dunhuang, the Five Omens Divination Method (Wu zhao bufa), contrasts sharply with the Confuciusâ Horsehead Divination Methodâs apparent lack of concern with invocation, cosmology, and the mechanics of the divination process. Before giving its specific method, in fact, the introduction to the Five Omens Divination Method waxes poetic about these topics, effectively catechizing its readers on how to divine properly.
Deities will not descend for whoever comes to divine if they are not [invoked] though stalk divination. Whoever goes out to ask questions of an instructor should not come empty handed. The old saying goes: âwhat good would come from deceiving a teacher or cheating a father?â Whoever wants to divine for a mantic figure must first light incense, focus their mind and bring up the request, invocating: âKindly ask the four elder, four middle, and four younger spirits, up above begin with the Sun, Moon, and Five Planets, the Twenty-Eight Astral Lodges, the Stems and Branches and Yin and Yang, the Supreme Lord of the Great Above, the Four Seasons, and the Five Agents, please resolve all deep and stagnant lingering doubts.â Also invocate: âmilfoil divination, [with] stalk divination achieves the round pattern [of Heaven] like a spirit, and [with] a mantic figure achieves the square pattern [of Earth].22 The spirit already knows the future and the knowledgeable one knows the past when they talk of auspiciousness or inauspiciousness and report their myriad manifestations, changing and uniting, irrespective of the personâs desire. If auspicious, then the mantic figures will generate each other, and if inauspicious, they become empty and falling.â
Whenever studying the method of omens, divide the thirty-six rods with two hands, and then eliminate the remainder by groups of five, each viewed in their own positions, determining the five agentsâMetal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth; first put Wood down in the east on Jia and Yi, next put Fire down in the south on Bing and Ding, next put earth in the center on Wu and Ji day, next put Metal down in the west on Geng and Xin, then put Water in the north on Ren and Gui.23 The numbers for the five omens are: one is called Water, two is called Fire, three is called Wood, four is called Metal, and five is called Earth.
å¡äººå ä¾åäºï¼ä¸èï¼ç¥ï¼ç¥éä¸éãå¡äººåºéå師ï¼å¿ ä¸å¾ç©ºæãå¤èªäºï¼èªå¸«æ¬ºç¶ï¼ä½å¾ç¾åï¼å¡æ¬²åå¦ï¼å é çé¦ï¼è³å¿åè«ï¼åäº: â謹è«ååãå仲ãåå£è«¸ç¥ï¼ä¸åæ¥æäºæãå»¿å «å®¿ãå ç²é°é½ã太ä¸å 主ãåæãäºè¡ï¼æ²æ»¯[X] 豫ï¼è«çºå³ä¹ãâ ååæ°ï¼âèç®ï¼ä¹ï¼å¾ï¼å¾·ï¼åå¦ç¥ï¼å¦ãä¹ãå¾ï¼å¾·ï¼ä¹å¦¨ï¼æ¹ï¼æï¼ä»¥ï¼å¦¨ï¼ç¥ï¼ï¼ç¥å·²ï¼ä»¥ï¼ç¥ä¾ï¼æºå·²ï¼ä»¥ï¼ç¥ï¼èï¼å¾ï¼åå¶è¨ä¹ï¼è®éè¬è±¡ï¼åå¶ä¿±åï¼å¿é人æ ãååå¦å ç¸çï¼å¶å空亡åè½ãâå¡å¸å ä¹æ³ï¼ç¨ç®åå å ï¼å ä»¥å ©æåæï¼ç¶å¾äºäºé¤ä¹ï¼åè¦æ¬ä½ï¼äºè¡éãæ¨ãæ°´ãç«ãåçºå®ï¼åä¸æ±æ¹ç²ä¹æ¨ï¼æ¬¡ä¸åæ¹ä¸ä¸ç«ï¼æ¬¡ä¸ä¸å¤®æå·±åï¼æ¬¡ä¸è¥¿æ¹åºè¾éï¼æ¬¡ä¸åæ¹å£¬ç¸æ°´ãäºå åæ¸ï¼ä¸æ°æ°´ï¼äºæ°ç«ï¼ä¸æ°æ¨ï¼åæ°éï¼äºæ°åä¹ã24
This exceedingly rich passage makes explicit what many others presumably omit as something that âgoes without saying.â Its statements are therefore worthy of unpacking. First, it emphasizes reciprocity in the relationship between the spirits and the diviner. One must make offerings and invocations if one expects them to assist one in determining what is auspicious and what is inauspicious, and the duty to uphold oneâs part in this exchange is likened to oneâs relationship with a teacher or with oneâs father. This involves material offerings such as incense, and a proper ritual attitude of focusing the mind and bringing up oneâs request. The invocation seems to borrow from the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method, even mentioning the four elder, middle, and younger spirits, and then beginningâbut not completingâan enumeration of these twelve that includes the same figures found in the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method. It then emphasizes the responses, which, as in many other texts, âsayâ if it is inauspicious or auspicious. Crucially, the spirits are the sources of knowledge about the future. The passage also stresses the objectivity of divination by stating that its prognoses do not arrive according to a personâs situation. That is to say, one doesnât get a good prognosis because one strongly desires or needs it.
To relate these various textsâ introductions and their assumptions about the divination process to the Divination of MaheÅvara, we can revisit its introduction. As we have seen, it emphasizes focusing the mind, expressing oneâs intentions, and identifying oneself by name before Åakra, BrahmÄ, the four celestial god-kings, and the many spirits. This differs markedly from the cosmological figures and forces invoked in the Empowered Draughtsmen and the Five Omens Divination Method. The Divination of MaheÅvara mentions dice only in the context of casting three times to create a set. Dice are not identified with any gods, spirits, or cosmological forces. Nor does the text state explicitly that there is any connection between dice and spirits, as in, for example, the Twelve Coin Method of Laoziâs Book of Changesâs statement that â[s]pirits and coins benefit each other.â The Divination of MaheÅvaraâs rule of three also contrasts with the Empowered Draughtsmenâs insistence that one divine only once concerning a specific query. The latter injunction seems to emphasize the finalityâand sacralityâof the process by which a mantic figure emerges from the random manipulation of objects. The Divination of MaheÅvaraâs rule of three also differs from those of other divination systems, some of which are explored in chapter three, that insist on repeating the process three times. This latter type of rule of three effectively acts as a âcontrolâ so that the objectivity and veracity of the process is confirmed: even if it may be possible for divinationâor a spiritâto get it wrong once, it is highly unlikely that divinationâor a spirit or, as is often the case, a succession of three spiritsâwill get it wrong three times in a row. The Divination of MaheÅvaraâs rule of three, by contrast, makes the process seem more like a game: three tries for an auspicious result. Such a sentiment is very far from the prescribed ritual stance of sincerity, but it seems to be there in the process nonetheless. Perhaps it is an artefact of the material culture of the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs form of divination, of the use of dice that are just as often the province of gamblers as they are of diviners. This is once again an instance where the explicit and implicit assumptions of divination tell sometimes opposing and sometimes complementary stories. This is much like the contrast between the gods and spirits of the Divination of MaheÅvara and the contents of the prognoses, which create both striking alignments and unexpected juxtapositions.
2 Numerical Trigrams in the Stalk Divination and the Baoshan Divination Record
Having given a brief overview of the methods and ritual assumptions of various forms of numerical trigram divination, it remains to investigate some of these further to see how their poetics, pantheons, and worldviews either contrast or overlap with those of the Divination of MaheÅvara. Beginning with the fourth-century-BCE Stalk Divination (Shifa) and related texts, one encounters a strong emphasis on diagnosis and exorcism which, seen in this longue-durée perspective, lends depth to some comparable features in the Divination of MaheÅvara.
The Divination of MaheÅvaraâs use of numerical trigrams brings it into dialogue with an ancient and vibrant Chinese tradition of divination centered around sets of numerical mantic figures that trace back to antiquity, and which can be seen on twelfth- through- eighth-century-BCE bones and ceramics dating to the Shang and Western Zhou eras.25 These early numerical sets evolved over time, but are preserved in a unique form in the untitled fourth-century-BCE bamboo divination text referred to by modern scholars as the Stalk Divination (Shifa ç®æ³). Other notable material evidence of Chinese traditions of numerical trigrams is found in the second-century-BCE Tricks of Jing and in a variety of mostly tenth-century-CE Dunhuang divination texts, many of which were just introduced. The range of divinatory methods represented in these Dunhuang texts suggest a rich and entangled history since ancient times.
Among the numerous other types of divination popular in ancient China, those that included hemerology or calendrical astrology (including the use of cosmograms and shi devices) reflect two important considerations when examining the cultural contexts of Chinese divination texts.26 One is the continuing importance of time as a cosmic indicator of supreme power, dating back to the origin of the ritual calendar in the Shang. The other is that the texts of different eras and places reflect evolving cosmic understandings, embracing new factors or supernatural agents.
Before the introduction of simplified methods and of non-Chinese cosmologies, numerical omens in Chinese tradition were generally produced in sets of six numbers, including combinations of 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. Traditionally, it is understood that each number was the result of a calculation of stalks, but recently it has become clear that other objects had been used in combination with stalks to produce the recorded numerical results.27 Besides dice, these could have included cowries, spindles, stones in a turtle rattle, bones, or other objects. Unfortunately, there are no records providing details and the earliest dice date only to the third century BCE. Preserved texts for interpreting the numerical images date to only the fourth century BCE and cannot be relied upon to interpret the earlier number sets. These include the versions of the classics, such as the Book of Changes, focused on sets of six figures (hexagrams), or, more precisely, combinations of two sets of three (trigrams).
The Changes further multiplied the Eight Trigrams into sixty-four possible hexagrams, each line of which was linked to an oracle that could be read in sets of six or linked with other hexagrams in a variety of patterns. The numbers in the Changes are essentialized into powers of Yin and Yang and recorded as broken or unbroken lines. However, the numbers were recorded and clearly retained a primary mantic power in the fourth-century-BCE bamboo text, the Stalk Divination (Shifa).28 Here the Eight Trigrams formed of odd and even numbers were essentially the same as those in the Changes, but the manner in which they were combined and read was entirely different.29 Like the Dunhuang Five Omens text mentioned above, mini-cosmograms were formed in which the relationship between the pattern of the mantic figures determined the oracle. The eight component parts of the arrangements, linked to powers of time, gender, and spirits, must also be considered as spiritual pantheons representing a select subset of the larger pantheon invoked and intimately connected to the divinerâs intention and their tools which produce the images.
The Stalk Divination manuscript included a rudimentary cosmogram illustration (later ones include Stems and Branches but these are found separately in the Stalk Divination).30 It featured a human body inside a space mapped out according to seasonally affixed trigrams, colors, deities, and other factors.31 In a chart below the cosmogramâs Stem-and-Branch correlates are noted. The human body depicted in the center is marked in sections with different trigrams, possibly protective like a talisman, or at least indicating which trigram agent should be used to interpret the divination.
Figure 9
Cosmogram from Tsinghua Bamboo Manuscript Stalk Divination
after Cook and Zhao, Stalk Divination, 55, illustration 3.1
The numerical trigrams marking the body in the Stalk Divination diagram likely matched with the chart listing the curse-causing ghosts under each trigram name. Hence, we can be fairly certain that trigrams protected and expelled supernatural influences in the designated sectors of the body. This contrasts with a vapor-based pathology: there are hints in other fourth-century-BCE divination records of a simple vessel theory (mai è) for the internal up-and-down flow of cosmic vapor (qi), or at least that there was a perceived correct direction of flow between the chest and abdomen (downward). The healer, like the diviner, had tools for âattackingâ (gong æ») and âreleasingâ (jie 解) the curse-causing influence. These influences were generically known in Han medical texts as âdeviant vaporsâ (xieqi éªæ°£).32 The wet dark interior of the body was marked off with female trigrams and the exterior exposed to light was marked off with male trigrams. This Yin-Yang balance also accords with later medical theory.
Signs on the body, whether talismans for protection, or trigrams useful for identifying demonic influences, trace back to ancient Chinese culture besides finding currency in medieval Chinese Buddhism.33 The marking of bodies with Branch signs is found in Qin and Han daybooks and in Dunhuang medical manuals. In a text in the Dunhuang manuscript P.2675, the twelve Branches and other hemerological systems denote the locations of the human soul (renshen 人ç¥), which resides in different sections depending on the twelve time periods. Sections where the soul resides cannot be subject to invasive healing methods such as acupuncture or moxibustion.34
Besides the cosmogram with the body in the center, the Stalk Divination diviner constructed micro-cosmograms of four trigrams presumably randomly selected through the process of casting the dice and stalks. These four trigrams represented a pattern that could be mapped onto a diagram supplied in the text with four life areas of concern (army strategy, official relations, family relations, and physical spaces in the residence), each divided into four subcategories.35 Trigrams of different genders, often presented as oppositional pairs and representing what would later be identified with Yin and Yang, deal with different sets of temporal and seasonal factors as well as indicating bad actors. For example, for the most powerful male and female trigrams (composed of all odd or all even numbers), we see that the male (Qian ä¹¾) reveals the curse sources as destroyed ancestral temples, deceased father spirits, and the Middle of the Room, which may have been an early equivalent to the impluvium spirit or Sky Well, possibly seen in the Divination of MaheÅvara. The female (Kun å¤), on the other hand, reveals the sources as places one passes through such as gates and walkways,36 or Yin spirits, such as deceased mother spirits, the ghosts of slaves or those punished, and, oddly, an event, the Western Sacrifice.
This text required detailed knowledge of how to use it, although hints are embedded seemingly at random in a few places in the text. These include a statement found on bamboo slip number 51 (out of 63) tacked to the end of a chart listing the categories of spirits and demons that might curse (sui) (see Table 3): â[i]n the Way of Heaven, the male [trigram] overcomes the female [trigram] and the many [trigrams of one type] overcome the lone oneâ (夫天ä¹é*lˤuÊ-sï¼ç·å女*nraÊï¼ç¾å寡*[C.k]ʷˤraÊ). This rhyming rule reflects the cosmic patriarchy, but also the importance of a majority in a result (three out of four was positive). Essentially, when a talismanic set of four numerical trigrams (in two stacks placed as a square) was produced, the diviner had to privilege the male (Yang) trigram over the female (Yin) one, but if there were three of any kind, that meant the result was affirmative. In fact, it is not always obvious in the examples provided in the text what rules the fourth-century diviners followed. It seemed there were multiple factors depending on which of the charts were consulted or even the values created by the relationships perceived between the four trigrams of the array. For example, paired male and female trigrams (that is, graphic opposites of each other) could weigh more heavily than other values depending on their location in the array. This suggests if not a sense of play, at least a âplay of interpretationâ that gave the diviner some leeway in decoding the array of mantic figures.
A defense of the efficacy of the stalk method is found in the last line of the entire text, tacked onto the list of topics for which it could be used (see below). Such a defense reminds us of the later Tricks of Jing, but in this case it is probably not turtle divinationâwhich required a stable ritual space and wealthâwhich this handy transportable manual warned against, but the use of dice:
In each case, the [topics] will all have their appropriate trigrams, so then one can prognosticate about them using stalk sortilege;37 when prognosticating one must use the stalk sortilege [method] to get the trigram so there is no mistake.
å¡æ¯ï¼åç¶å ¶å¦ï¼ä¹æå ä¹ï¼å ä¹å¿ æï¼å¦ä¹ä¸å¿ã
While seemingly the Stalk Divination diviners were encouraged to use stalks, the proliferation of ones and sixes in the numerical trigrams suggests that stalk sorting may have been to further refine dice results. It is known that some dice in existence around that time had only ones and sixes on four sides and blanks on the other two (see figures 4 and 5 above). Andrea Breárd suggests that throwing a blank with such dice may have then required the use of perhaps fifty-eight stalks, the results of which would further refine the numerical results of the basic 1 (or 7) and 6 to include the âspecial numbersâ 4, 5, 8, and 9.38 A limited number of trigrams included these special numbers, but their appearance in the array affect the interpretation of the entire set, usually negatively.
In all cases of line numbers no matter whether big or small, when arising in the upper outer [trigram] they indicate something baleful; if they arise in the lower inner [trigram] they indicate something baleful; if they arise in both upper and lower [trigrams] then the country will experience military commands, a zhixie monster,39 wind and rain, or eclipses40 of the sun and moon.
å¡ç»ï¼å¦å¤§å¦å°ï¼ä½æ¼ä¸å¤æåï¼ä½æ¼ä¸å §æåï¼ä¸ä¸çä½ï¼é¦æå µå½ãå»ç¬ã風é¨ãæ¥ææç (ç½)ã
Baleful numbers do not seem to be of concern after the Warring States period. Possibly the persuasive strength of Yin-Yang reductionism perpetuated by the Changes allowed for less technical know-how.
A further list in the Stalk Divination gives the oracular images or omens that are associated with each stalk-derived number (4, 5, 8, and 9) versus the common ones and sixes, which may have been dice derived.
Figure 10
Numbers from the Tsinghua Bamboo Manuscript Stalk Divination
With regard to line number images for 8, they are wind, water, words, flying birds, swellings, fish, measuring cylinders; [when 8 appears] in an upper [trigram], it is alcohol [with sediment], and in a lower [one] it is rinse water.
å¡ç»è±¡ï¼å «çºé¢¨ãçºæ°´ãçºè¨ãçºé£é³¥ãçºè «è¹ãçºéãçºç½ç©ãå¨ä¸çºéªï¼ä¸çºæ±ã
The images for 5 are sky and sun, noble men, soldiers, blood, chariots, squares, worry, fear, and hunger.
äºè±¡çºå¤©ãçºæ¥ãçºè²´äººãçºå µãçºè¡ãçºè»ãçºæ¹ãçºæãçºæ¼ï¼çºé£¢ã
The images for 9 are large animals, trees, sacrificial preparations, heads and feet, snakes, snakes, bends, semi-circlets of jade, (archery) bows, hu-jades, heng-jades.
ä¹è±¡çºå¤§ç¸ãçºæ¨ãçºåæãçºé¦ãçºè¶³ãçºèãçºèã41çºæ²ãçºç¦ãçºå¼ãç¥ãçã
The images for 4 are ground, circle, drum, earring, circlet of jade, heels, snow, dew, hail.
åä¹è±¡çºå°ãçºåãçºé¼ãçºç¥ãçºç°ãçºè¸µãçºéªãçºé²ãçºé°ã
While we might imagine that each category of image had a vaguely Yin or Yang sense to it depending on whether the number was odd or even, in fact, the Stalk Divination gives us no clue how the diviner âreadâ or âsawâ these images.42 Perhaps the diviner was to include one somehow in his calculation of the auspiciousness if it was in the immediate environment or perhaps to use as reference when looking up oracles in another text. Did these images project causative or receptive values of âperverse vaporâ? Or, was their power purely visual, somehow connected creatively to the image projected by the written display of numbers themselves?
The oracular responses of the Stalk Divination also indicate possible sources of the afflicting perverse vapor or curse (sui), such as trouble-causing ghosts, for the diviner to consider. Although not described as demons inside the body as in the Divination of MaheÅvara, the ideas are related. This feature of designating ghosts is not shared with hexagram texts in either the Changes tradition or an alternative tradition known as the Guicang æ¸è (âReturning to be Storedâ). A third-century-BCE version of the latter reveals sixty-four mantic figures with numerical lines essentialized into Yin- and Yang-style broken or unbroken lines (written with numbers 1 ä¸ and 8 å «), just as in the fourth-century-BCE Zhouyi (Changes of Zhou) manuscripts. The Guicang however, like the later Tricks of Jing, included no line oracles, only verses following the hexagram name. These verses are completely different than those in the Changes. Notably, the Guicang verses often quote ancient diviners speaking (yue æ°), implying that the poetic imagery or mythical events mentioned were parts of incantations or spells. This suggests that equally vivid imagery and odd bits of tale preserved in the Changes and in the Tricks genre of texts also had a magical dimension. In other words, bits of spells and incantations were perhaps preserved in the Tricks genre texts as well as in the Changes and Guicang. These texts can also include pragmatic advice and evaluations of auspiciousness, but only the Tricks of Jing preserved the Stalk Divination tradition of suggesting lists of curse-originating ghosts and spirits.
Table 3
The Eight Trigrams in the male-female pairs in the order provided in the Stalk Divination. Below each trigram is the list of sui-trouble causing spirits and influences that appeared with each trigram
|
ä¹¾ Qian (M) |
å¤ Kun (F) |
è® Gen (M) |
å Dui (F) |
å Kan (M) |
é¢ Li (F) |
é Zhen (M) |
å·½ Xun (F) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
æ» å® Destroyed Shrine |
é Gate |
æ® Burial |
女å大é¢ç«¯åæ» Girl who died of fright from a big-headed [demon] |
風 Wind |
ç± Heat |
æ¥åºæ±æ¹ The east at dawn |
å殤 One who died prematurely in childbirth |
|
å±± Mountain |
è¡ Walkway |
豦 Boar |
é·å¥³çºå¦¾èæ» Elder daughter who died while a concubine |
é·æ®¤ Elder child that died prematurely |
溺è One [who died] by drowning |
é£æ¥ç£(ç?)天 Blue sky at mealtime |
å·« Shaman |
|
ç¶ä¹ä¸è¬æ» Unburied father |
æ¯ Mother |
æ¥é Drought demon |
ä¼åè One felled by sword |
ç¸è One [who died] by hanging |
ææ¥[é¡¥?]天 White sky in the afternoon |
æ(è )å¿ One split open giving birth to twins43 |
|
|
å®¤ä¸ Middle of the room |
å¥´ä»¥æ» Slave that died |
ç¡è±¦ Male boar |
é·å¥³æ®¤ Elder daughter who died prematurely |
é¨å¸« Rain Master |
ç Insane person |
||
|
ç¶ Father |
è¥¿ç¥ Western sacrifice |
ç¸è One [who died] by hanging |
è¾è One [who died] by being dismembered |
çè Insane person |
ç¸è One [who died] by hanging |
||
|
ç¸è One [who died] by hanging |
è¾ One [who died] by being dismembered |
æ¶ Door |
The spiritual pantheon invoked by the production of numerical trigrams was a key part of the divinationâs efficacy. Notably, differences from the deities in the Divination of MaheÅvara are apparent beyond the lack of influences from an organized religion, such as Buddhism. The names of the Eight Trigrams are given, but these are not specifically deified as, say, the Eight Archivists (ba shi) in later Daoist practice. The sources of the curses are not specifically named spirits or demons either, but rather anonymous ghosts of people, animal demons, and supernaturally charged events (a sacrifice, a period of time) and spaces (an ancestral temple). The most obvious contrast is the bifurcation between ostensibly benevolent trigram names and the curse producers. In fact, it seems that the two layers of spirits (trigrams and curse-producers) were most likely popular in the ancient region dominated by Chu æ¥ culture in the Yangtze River valley during the Warring States period.
Named gods play a more prominent role in a fourth-century-BCE record found in a tomb in Baoshan å å±±, Hubei, which is also concerned with the sources of curses.44 This record covered three years of divinersâ efforts to discover the source of their clientâs curse (sui). This record is particularly attentive to the relationship between diviners, gods, and their divining tools, and helps to broaden our understanding of divinationâs role in interpersonal communication with gods and spirits.45
While this record does not mention trigrams by name, it makes a point of naming the diviner and precisely which divining instrument they used. This naming, along with the precise time of the divination event, suggests a contractual relationship between the diviner and the spirits contacted for help to resolve the specified clientâs issues (career and health). In the Baoshan record we find one set of named spirits contactedâthese tend to receive sacrifices and giftsâand then another set, mostly anonymous, that must be exorcised (âattacked and releasedâ) from the clientâs body or living spaces. Only rarely do the two sets overlap.
Scholars have assumed that the eight divination tools mentioned must accord with the classical categories of turtle divination followed by stalk divination. The tools did seem to be used in alternation, with each divination event commonly requiring more than one method. But although each tool is named, whether it was a turtle, stalk, dice, or other implement remains unknown. Two tools, âUplifting Ascendenceâ (Chengde æ¿å¾·) and âRespecting Fateâ (Gong ming å ±>æå½), did produce numerical trigrams. Since the sets of four trigrams produced were mostly composed of ones and sixes it is likely that dice were used. The divination tool that was most commonly used and tended to start each divination event is believed to be a turtle method called âProtecting Homeâ (Baojia ä¿å®¶), a name that could easily stand for the elite male client. It could summon the greatest number and variety of spirits. Not all tools were capable of further indicating which demons were to be attacked or expelled. Uplifting Ascendance and Respecting Fate were the most versatile. They could help determine the (astral, earth, mountain, residential, ancestral) spirits requiring sacrifices, but also determine those demonic forces (e.g., water spirits, ghosts of people who had died by drowning or in war, or unnamed ancestors) requiring âattack and release,â and, finally, also those, such as the Spirit of the Residence Chamber, requiring âexpellingâ (chu é¤).
The most notable difference between the Baoshan record and the early manuals is in the lists of named ghosts. These are all ancestral spirits to the individual client, who is specifically registered with the use of each divination tool. His name and complaint (e.g., trouble with work, lingering illness) is stated after the date, diviner, and tool are specified. Personalized spirit pantheons would only be effective for specific clients. However, the later texts do not even mention ancestral spirits generally.
Putting alongside one another the methods and assumptions of the Stalk Divination and those of the Baoshan divination record, one observes some clear contrasts, as well as some stark differences from the Divination of MaheÅvara. This is to be expected, given that these two texts come from the fourth and third century BCE, while the Divination of MaheÅvara comes from the tenth century CE. One of the notable points that the Baoshan record brings up is the variety of techniques available to a prospective divination client. The divide between tortoise shell divination and stalk divination is foremost, but as in the Stalk Divination, it is clearly possible that dice were used alongside stalks. The mantic figures in the Stalk Divination, whatever the material means by which they were created, were made up of an array of four out of the eight possible numerical trigrams, the positions of which were read according to a pattern that included temporal and spatial correlates. This contrasts with the manner in which the Changesâ numerical trigrams were arrayed and read, underlining again the mutability and variation of divination methods, even when using similar materials. Additionally, the numbers comprising the trigrams themselves had specific associations: one might say that each number came with a ready-made repertoire of stock images from which a skilled diviner might build an oracular response.
The âpantheonsâ of the Stalk Divination and the Baoshan record, if one may speak of them as such, are not as elaborate as that of the Divination of MaheÅvara. Notably one figure summoned by turtle divination in the Baoshan record, the Supervisor of Life Allotments (Si Ming å¸å½), appears in the Divination of MaheÅvara, but in the latter he is classified as a demon. There are similar ânear missesâ or quasi-continuities regarding the Thunder Lord, as well as spirits of the earth, wind, and mountains. More relevant than such minimal continuities, however, is the general bifurcation in both of these ancient divinations of blessing on the one hand and cursing on the other. The latter mode, in particular, emphasizes the dead and the dangers they pose to the living. In exploring the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs spirit pantheon in chapter one, we noted its eminent underworldly members, as well as a few passages that were concerned with exorcising harmful spirits from oneâs person. While the Divination of MaheÅvara does not explicitly identify sources of curses, when it is not supplying an auspicious prognosis it can be said to be concerned with confirming a personâs worries and prescribing ritual countermeasures. Seen through the comparative lens of these two early numerical trigram traditions, the underworldly inflections of the Divination of Mahesvaraâs spirit pantheon, as well as its correcting rituals and hints of exorcism, suggest continuities with long-standing Chinese divination traditions.
From a technological point of view, we have observed stalk-based methods and dice-based methods from the Changes to the Divination of MaheÅvara. It is unclear in what specific ways the Baoshan divination record and the Stalk Divination produced their results, but by and large stalk-based methods require the random separation of a certain number of stalks and the reduction of the separated piles to generate a result. For dice-based methods, the randomization comes from tossing the dice. Four happens to be the âmagic numberâ for several methods: both the standard Changes method and the Tricks of Jing use four to divide stalk piles; the standard Changes method produces four possible initial results: 6, 7, 8, and 9, and the Tricks of Jing likewise produces 1, 2, 3, and 4; similarly, the Divination of MaheÅvara uses a pÄÅaka die that can land on one of four long sides. We can imagine that by changing the divisor, the number of sides on the dice, or even combining stalks with dice, different numbers can be produced, as we see in the Stalk Divination, where the numbers 1, 4, 5, 6, 8, and 9 appear in sets of four trigrams. Most trigrams in the Stalk Divination and Baoshan sets were composed of numbers symbolizing internal binary oppositions, thus indicating a step closer to Changes-style divination, but not quite the same thing.
3 The Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method and the Sutra on the Divination of Good and Bad Karmic Retribution
The Stalk Divination, the Book of Changes, and the Baoshan divination record lend a longue-durée perspective to numerical trigram divination, but their casting methods are not particularly relevant to the Divination of MaheÅvara. Even if dice were used in conjunction with stalks, the process by which the mantic figure is constructed in the Stalk Divination is entirely different from the process in the Divination of MaheÅvara. Also, the fact that the Divination of MaheÅvara and the Book of Changes each yield sixty-four combinatory possibilities with sixty-four corresponding oracular responses means next to nothing when the latter does so by combining two of the Eight Trigrams whereas the former does so by combining three values of one to four. Two other numerical trigram traditions share more in common with the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs combinatory method, and one employs objects not unlike four-sided pÄÅaka dice. These are the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method and the Sutra on the Divination of Good and Bad Karmic Retribution.
The opening invocation and instructions to a Dunhuang version of the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method was introduced above. There we saw its emphasis on the sacrality of the draughtsmen, each of which was associated with a sacred or cosmological force. In her study of the Daozang canonical version of the text, known as the Classic of Empowered Draughtsmen (Lingqi jing), Carole Morgan dates the text to between 280 and 289â¯CE.46 The Empowered Draughtsmenâs method is to cast twelve âspiritually empowered draughtsmen,â essentially twelve coins each of which has one blank face. As described already, these are correlated to the four elder, four middle, and four younger spirits in the textâs introduction, and their inscribed faces are marked with âabove,â âmiddleâ, and âbelow,â respectively. They are further correlated with heaven, humanity, and earth. Casting them all at once, zero to four draughts can land with âaboveâ facing up, zero to four with âmiddleâ facing up, and zero to four with âbelowâ facing up. The results form a numerical trigram that can either be represented âpictoriallyâ or reduced to numbers in the form of counting rods.47 Three âaboves,â two âmiddles,â and one âbelow,â for example, can be depicted in either of the two forms shown in figs. 11a and 11b.
Figures 11aâb
The numerical trigram 1-4-1 in P.3782 and P.4984, respectively, both being versions of the Empowered Draughtsmen Divination Method
courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
This latter form of numerical trigram is also found in the Tricks of Jing, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and the Guan Gongming Divination Method. As noted in chapter one, the use of counting rodsâsomething also found in talismansâdistinguishes these numerical trigrams from the simple numbers used in the trigrams of the Divination of MaheÅvara. The Daozang version of the Classic of Empowered Draughtsmen, however, also âtranslatesâ these into numbers, including, from about the thirteenth century, zeros.
The Empowered Draughtsmen method of combination makes for 125 possible outcomes, and each of these outcomes indexes an oracular response. (Initially 124, since 0-0-0âor âblank-blank-blankââwas not at first admitted as a response.48) Each of the resulting mantic figures is named, with the name sometimes written around or next to the numerical trigram where it appears in the text. In the image above, the numerical trigram is large, in the top margin of the codex P.4048, with its name, Jiantai 漸泰 âGradual Peaceâ written above it. None of the mantic figures is identified with a named god or spirit.
Figure 12
The numerical trigram 1-1-2 in P.4048
courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
The oracular responses that follow each mantic figure in the Classic of Empowered Draughtsmen include an imagistic oracle, an accompanying verse, and commentary from four different sources. The oracular responses are poetic, including rhymes and quotes from poetry classics such as the Book of Odes (Shijing è©©ç¶) and the Chu song âEncountering Sorrowâ (Lisao é¢é¨·) by the legendary Warring States scholar Qu Yuan å±å. The clear preference for Chinese cosmology in the Empowered Draughtsmen method is noteworthy. It follows the Changes tradition of interpreting odd numbers as Yang and even as Yin, a method evident as early as the fourth century BCE. The commentaries very often include explicit evaluations such as âauspicious.â It is here, and not in the images and verses, that one finds commonalities with the Divination of MaheÅvara. For example, the evaluation for the combination 3-4-4 states, âthis mantic figure means regret in all matters, the official [position] you seek will not happen soon, marriages will be only mildly auspicious as Yin and Yang are only somewhat corresponding; this is what [the mantic figure] saysâ (æ¤å¦ç¾äºææï¼æ±ä»é²å½éï¼å©å§»å°åï¼é°é½é æï¼æ è¨ä¹).49
The arrangement of the mantic figures in the text is methodical. It proceeds in ascending order, with one caveat: the blanks (or, from around the thirteenth century on, the zeros) have a section to themselves. The responses are arranged in thirty-one groups of four. The first four are 1-1-1, 1-1-2, 1-1-3, and 1-1-4; the next four are 1-2-1, 1-2-2, 1-2-3, and 1-2-4; and the sixteenth group goes from 4-4-1 to 4-4-4.50 The next fifteen groups of four employ one or two blanks, e.g., â1-x-1â or âx-1-x.â These blanks came to be represented as zeros, probably from the thirteenth century on, and to these thirty-one groups of four combinations a final combination or numerical trigram, 0-0-0 was added to make 125 in all.51
One notes here that the first sixteen groups comprise the same sixty-four mantic figures as are found in the Divination of MaheÅvara. This is because without the blank or zero the Empowered Draughtsmen method also combines one to four numbers or values into sets of three. It is the blank side that adds a fifth number or value to yield 125 (that is, 53) rather than 64 (which is 43) possible outcomes. It could even be said that from the perspective of the Empowered Draughtsmen, the Divination of MaheÅvara uses essentially its same method, without the blanks/ zeros, and with dice instead of draughtsmen.
Despite a different material cultural point of entryâdraughtsmens versus diceâthe Empowered Draughtsmen method is closer than any other to that of the Divination of MaheÅvara. Besides its differing materials, it is only the use of blanks or zeros that sets it apart. Another divination method also makes use of objects with blank sides, and recalls the blank sides of the excavated dice mentioned above and shown in chapter one. This is the Sutra on the Divination of Good and Bad Karmic Retribution (Zhancha shanâe yebao jing; T.839.17; hereafter, âZhancha jingâ), which employs three sets of four-sided objects to reveal oneâs karmic deeds in the past, present, and future.
The Zhancha jing, besides bringing us closer to something resembling dice divination, also emphasizes the bodhisattva Ká¹£itigarbha (Dizang) and ritual practices geared toward a degenerate world age near the end of the Buddhaâs dispensation. The Zhancha jing is generally regarded as an apocryphal sutra, and is dated to between 580 and 590. It shares the framing and structure of all Buddhist sutras, and in this case the Buddha presides over an assembly in which a bodhisattva named âFirm and Pure Faithâ (Jianjingxin Pusa å 淨信è©è©) asks what method one can turn to in order to resolve oneâs doubts during a degenerate age or in the age of the end of the Buddhaâs Dharma (mofa æ«æ³). The answer, in the form of the entire sutra in two fascicles, comes not from the Buddha, but from the bodhisattva Dizang.52 The first fascicle details the divination method, while the second expounds meditation methods. Taken as a whole, the sutra articulates a three-stage path comprising divination, penance, and meditation.53
The framing story, as well as many of the sutraâs contents, is notable for connecting to one of the overriding concerns identified in our examination of the semantics of the oracular responses of the Divination of MaheÅvara: anxiety. Here the trope of the decline of the Dharmaâas relevant in tenth century Dunhuang as it was in the end of the sixth century when the Zhancha jing was composedâserves to magnify worry and fear. The figure of Dizang, who features in the fourth entry of the Divination of MaheÅvara, supplies a further continuity. In the Zhancha jing, Dizang directly addresses those who are concerned about their divination-related worries and fears: â[a]lways recite my name day and night. If [you are] truly sincere, divination will be auspicious, desires will be fulfilled and [you] will actually be freed from anguishâ (å¿å½æ¼å¤å¸¸å¤èª¦å¿µæä¹ååï¼è¥è½è³å¿è æå ååï¼ææ±çç²ï¼ç¾é¢è¡°æ©).54
As a preliminary to the divination, one performs purification rituals, invokes Dizang, professes vows, and venerates the Three Jewels. One then announces the matter at hand, and requests a true answer to oneâs questions. The sutra cautions that the method will not necessarily work for those lacking sincerity, a point echoed in the Divination of MaheÅvara.55
The divination process itself proceeds in three stages, each stage employing its own set of four-sided objects, referred to as âwooden wheelsâ (mu lun æ¨è¼ª). Here one âturnsâ or spins the âwheels,â just as the Buddha âturns the wheel of Dharma.â The semantics of interacting with these objects, as well as their form, place them between teetotums (spinning tops) and dice. Like a pÄÅaka die, the âwheelâ has four sides, and is cuboid rather than pyramidal. Where a pÄÅaka dieâs four elongated sides make it almost impossible for it to fall on one of its two ends, the âwheelâ has no elongated sides but it has sharpened ends. This is not to say that one object has influenced the other, or that the Zhancha jingâs âwheelsâ are variants of Indic pÄÅaka dice. For these reasons we do not refer to these âwheelsâ as âdice.â56 The wheels are, nevertheless, more similar to pÄÅaka dice than any other object employed in Chinese divination traditions.
Figure 13
Set of âwooden wheelsâ (mu lun æ¨è¼ª) used in contemporary Zhancha jing rituals
by kind permission of Esther-Maria Guggenmos
In the first of the three âturningsâ of the âwheels,â one spins ten âwheels,â each of which is inscribed with one of the ten virtuous actions on one face with the opposing non-virtuous action inscribed on the opposite face. The other two faces are left blank. Spinning these reveals oneâs past virtuous or unvirtuous karmic actions. The next âturningâ involves three âwheelsâ marked âbody,â âspeech,â and âmind,â respectively. These reveal the depth of oneâs karmic actions revealed in the first âturning.â57
The third and last spin is the one that most concerns us, and it stands somewhat apart from the first two by more closely resembling other forms of Chinese numerical trigram divination. Its process creates a number from zero to 189, and each number has a corresponding entry in the sutra with an oracular response relating not only to spiritual matters but also to promotions, wealth, and health. The process involves spinning a set of six âwheelsâ three times. Each âwheelâ is inscribed with numbers on three faces, with one face blank. The numbers proceed from one to eighteen, e.g., one, two, three, blank on the first âwheelâ; four, five, six, blank on the second âwheel,â and so on up to eighteen. When all six âwheelsâ are spun the resulting numbers are not combined in the manner of other numerical trigram traditions, but rather added together to make a sum from zero to sixty-three. When this is repeated twice more, all of the sums are added together to return a number from zero to 189 that is essentially oneâs mantic figure. Looking up the corresponding oracular responses in the Zhancha jing, 1â160 pertain to the present, 161â171 to the past, and 172â189 to the future. All blanks or â0â is the perfect roll, indicating the exhaustion of oneâs karma.58
This method stands in an interesting place between the Stalk Divination and the Divination of MaheÅvara. The dice marked with ones and sixes but also with blank sides, which may have been employed alongside stalks in Stalk Divination divination, seem like ancestors of the Zhancha jingâs âwheelsâ and their blank sides. On the other hand, apart from the analogy of spinning the âwheelsâ and turning the wheel of Dharma, the Zhancha jing pays comparatively little attention to any sacrality of its objects and of the mantic figures they produce. Perhaps this comes of adding sums rather than combining symbols. While the unfussy representation of numerical mantic figures as simply numbers is something the Zhancha jing shares with the Divination of MaheÅvara, the latter places a far greater emphasis on the mantic figure, even if it is only depicted by numbers and not counting rods as in the Empowered Draughtsmen method. There is also the fact that if one spins the numbered âwheelsâ just once instead of three times, the result is sixty-four possible outcomes (zero to sixty-three), just as in the Divination of MaheÅvara (one to sixty-four).59 However, this is as circumstantial a resemblance as that of the Book of Changesâ sixty-four hexagrams, and is similarly arrived at via an entirely different combinatory method. Like the Empowered Draughtsmen method, the use of blanks is significant, and marks its difference from other divination systems that donât employ a blank or a zero value.
The Zhancha jingâs Buddhist framing and its appeal to the âend of the Dharmaâ connect it to the earlier âDivination Sutraâ contained in the Consecration Sutra of 457â¯CE. There, in the Buddhaâs presence, the god BrahmÄ preached a divination method for resolving doubts. These textsâ sutric framings go far beyond the Divination of MaheÅvara in providing a narrative of Buddhist incorporation for a given divination method. The Zhancha jing goes even further, thoroughly embedding divination in a Buddhist program that includes penance and meditation as something more than just preliminaries to the divination ritual.
4 A Case Study in Transmission: The Tricks of Jing, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and the Guan Gongming Divination Method
The Empowered Draughtsmen method displays the closest approximation of the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs method of combining numbers, and the Zhancha jingâs four-sided âwheelsâ are the closest thing in the material culture of Chinese divination to the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs four-sided dice. Another set of related texts, however, is uniquely similar to the Divination of MaheÅvara in also constructing numerical trigrams made up of the numbers one to four. This method is found in the second-century-BCE Tricks of Jing, already introduced above, and in two related texts known as the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method, both of which are found in Dunhuang manuscripts roughly contemporary with the Divination of MaheÅvara. All three texts share the method of employing stalks to construct one of sixteen numerical trigrams, represented with counting rods. Besides sharing a common method, their contents are also similar, and it is possible to demonstrate their textual dependence.
The Tricks of Jingâs introduction, translated above, gives only brief instructions on how to construct a mantic figure. Facing east, one holds the book in the right hand and one holds thirty stalks in the left. One then makes three piles of stalks, with the stalks of the upper and lower piles arranged horizontally, and the middle pileâs stalks arranged vertically. One then removes stalks from each pile by fours until four or fewer stalks are left in each, the result being a counting-rod-style numerical trigram. The text mentions no tutelary deity overseeing the process, and there are no ritual preliminaries of purification, invocation, or sincerely expressing oneâs intentions or announcing the matter about which one is divining.
The Tricks of Jing has sixteen oracular responses, each indexed by a numerical trigram. Each response begins with a name that corresponds to a Stem or Branch. This is followed by the numerical trigram itself, an oracular verse containing both poetic images and interpretation, and then an evaluation, and the source of a curse (sui). The oracular verse, which makes up by far the majority of the response, is rendered in rhymed verse (roughly indicated by approximate reconstructed phonetics) and may have informed the word choice of the prognosis.60 The structure and character of the oracular responses is evident in the following entry, the second in the text:
A Yi (Stem 2) trigram, 4-1-1. The dragon living in the swamp wants to soar to Heaven. On an auspicious day during a fine season, it soars high to look around, signs of it seen by colors [in the sky]. What a day it is today that auspicious joy will be limitless: having crossed a bridge, what is desired will be in accordance with oneâs wishes. Auspicious. The curse will come from outside.
ä¹: 4-1-161 ãè ªï¼é¾ï¼èäºæ¾¤ (*lˤrak)ï¼æ¬²ç»äºå¤© (*l̥ˤin)ãåæ¥åæ (*dÉÊ)ï¼ç»é«æ²ï¼çï¼æ (*maÅ-s)ï¼ç¸é (> ç)ä»¥è² (*s.rÉk)ãä»æ¥ä½æ¥ (*C.nik)ï¼åæ¨ç¡æ¥µ (*grÉk)ãæ´¥æ©æ°£ï¼æ¢ï¼è¡ (*CÉ.gˤraÅ)ï¼ é¡æ¬²ä¸é³ï¼æ*ÊrÉk-sï¼ãåï¼å¤çºç¥ã
Like every other response, this one correlates its numerical trigram with a Stem or Branch, the order of which we will explore shortly. The oracular verse is imagistic (âdragon living in the swampâ), followed by a more pragmatic interpretation (âwhat is desired will be in accordance with oneâs wishesâ). The meter is only abandoned for the evaluation and for the source of the curse. These latter two features appear sometimes in this order and sometimes with the evaluation following the source of the curse. The source of the curse is omitted in three of the sixteen responses, all of which are auspicious. Nevertheless, it is mentioned even in the case of an auspicious prognosis like this one. This is strongly reminiscent of the âbifurcation of blessings and cursesâ mentioned in the context of the Stalk Divination and the Baoshan divination record. It suggests that besides performing this divination for a specific matter such as health or trade, one might also employ it specifically to diagnose misfortune. There is also a difference of character between the interpretations on the one hand and the information on the source of the curse on the other in that the former is general while the latter is specific. In fact, the interpretations are nearly all vague and general, ceding far more space to the imagistic verses that precede them. Only in the mention of a person arriving, in four responses, is the interpretation specific. There is otherwise no detailed prognosis for health, wealth, marriage, and so forth as one finds in some divination texts, including the Tricks of Jingâs descendants, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method.
The oracular responses in the Tricks of Jing are arrayed in the text according to at least two separate logics. First, the numerical trigrams proceed in roughly descending order, beginning with those starting with a four and proceeding through those beginning with threes, twos, and ones. Second, each numerical trigram is correlated to a Stem or Branch, proceeding first through the Stems and then through the Branches in ascending order. As often happens when mapping one numerical group onto another for cosmological or divinatory reasons, the ten Stems and twelve Branches are not congruent with sixteen numerical trigrams. The solution in this case was to omit Stems seven and eight and Branches nine through twelve.62 The trigrams do not seem to appear in related pairs or groups according to inverse numbers or any other discernible pattern significant to, for example, the Changes tradition.
Table 4
Numerical trigrams, Stem-and-Branch correspondences, evaluations, and curses in the Tricks of Jing
|
Numerical trigram; stem or branch |
Evaluation |
Source of curse |
|---|---|---|
|
[1] 4-3-3 ç² Jia S1 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
æ³°ç¶ Exalted Father |
|
[2] 4-1-1 ä¹ Yi S2 |
å Auspicious |
å¤ Outside |
|
[3] 3-4-3 ä¸ Bing S3 |
å Auspicious |
ç¾å² 100 Plague Ghosts |
|
[4] 4-2-4 ä¸ Ding S4 |
å Auspicious |
None |
|
[5] 3-1-2 æ Wu S5 |
å Auspicious |
None |
|
[6] 3-3-4 å·± Ji S6 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
First there will be a curse, but later no consequences |
|
[7] 2-3-1 壬 Ren S9 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
å¤æ»ä¸è¬ One who died outside and was not buried |
|
[8] 2-2-2 ç¸ Gui S10 |
å Auspicious |
çç¶æ¯ Grandparents |
|
[9] 2-1-3 å Zi B1 |
å Auspicious |
å¸å½ Supervisor of Life Allotments |
|
[10] 1-4-1 ä¸ Chou B2 |
Missing: probably Inauspicious |
é½ Yang |
|
[11] 1-3-2 å¯ Yin B3 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
è¡ Walkway; ç« Stove; ç¾å² 100 Plague Ghosts |
|
[12] 3-2-1 å¯ Mao B4 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
è¡ Walkway; ç« Stove |
|
[13] 1-2-3 è¾° Chen B5 |
å Auspicious |
社 Earth Altar |
|
[14] 1-1-4 å·³ Si B6 |
å Auspicious |
æ³°ç¶æ¯ Exalted parents |
|
[15] 4-4-2 å Wu B7 |
å Auspicious |
None |
|
[16] 2-4-4 æª Wei B8 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
å·« Shaman; ä½ [Spirit Altar] stand;63 社 Earth Altar |
The Tricks of Jing is aware of Yin and Yang, since its introduction mentions how these factor into tortoise shell divination, and since Yang is the source of a curse in response ten. It does not, however, appear to meaningfully connect Yin and Yang to the numbers that make up its numerical trigrams. Just to take the final two entries as examples, [15] 4-4-2 and [16] 2-4-4 might each be read as having all Yin lines, but the former corresponds to å Wu, which is valued Yang, and the latter to æª Wei, which is valued Yin. It is debatable, however, whether the Stems and Branches during the Han were seen as gendered as they were in some earlier Qin-period daybooks.
The Stems and Branches can be additionally associated with both temporal and spatial coordinates. Assuming a meaningful use of Stems and Branches, this could also suggest that the Tricks of Jing was employed together with hemerological divination texts or a shi å¼ device, which often combined directions, the Five Agents, Stems and Branches, the Twenty-Eight Astral Lodges, and the Dipper as a kind of dial.
In addition to an apparent inattention to Yin and Yang values, the Tricks of Jing system also seems to be unconcerned with a numerological approach to trigrams. Its seventh and eleventh oracular responses, for example, are for the trigrams 2-3-1 and 1-3-2, which, as numerical opposites or visual inversions would represent gendered pairs in the Stalk Divination. They seem to have no particular value in the Tricks, and their responses are not inverse nor related in any discernible way.
A Ren (Stem 9) trigram 2-3-1. Phoenixes do not roost but fly in all directions. What I would like to see cannot be obtained without too much harm. Flying quickly with mournful cries, the troubled are so gloomy. The hardworking (those who care for others) will not be given credit and their affairs not achieved. Inauspicious. The curse will come from one who died outside and was not buried.
壬ï¼2-3-1ãå¡ï¼é³³ï¼é³¥ä¸èï¼ç¾ç¾ï¼æ´æ´ï¼ååãæ欲è¦ä¹ï¼å¤å®³ä¸å¾ãç¾èï¼é£ï¼åé³´ï¼æå¿å¢¨å¢¨ï¼é»é»ï¼ãå身æ¯åï¼å ¶äºä¸å¾ãå¶ï¼ç¥å¤æ»ä¸è¬ã
A Yin (Branch 3) trigram 1-3-2. There is a dark tree on the mountain, whose leaves have been dispersed. One with a stressed mind will die without anyone knowing about him. One who may wish to meet with an elegant [person] must part with him/her later. One who is secluded is said to be full of sorrow. Those who do not gather at first light will be laughed at by others. Curses may come from the Walkway, the Stove, or the 100 Li Demons. Inauspicious.
å¯ ï¼1-3-2ãå±±æçæ¨ï¼ å ¶èå ï¼æ«ï¼é¢ãåå¿å°æ»ï¼äººè«ä¹æºï¼ç¥ï¼ã欲èç¾æï¼å ¶å¾å¿ é¢ãæé±è ï¼é²å¤ï¼é¢¨ï¼æ»¿æ»¿ï¼ççï¼ãæ¨é³´ä¸æï¼ç´çºäººç¬ãç¥è¡ï¼ç«ï¼ç¾å²ï¼ å¶ã
If one can speak of a divinatory pantheon in the Tricks of Jing, its most colorful characters are the curse-producers, where we find once more the Supervisor of Life Allotments, but also Plague or Haunting Ghosts, a Shaman, the Unburied Dead, and Exalted Parents and Grandparents. There are also more abstract sources of curses, such as earth altars and Yang. The mantic figures themselves are named after natural or cosmological forces rather than gods and spirits. This forms a contrast with the Divination of MaheÅvara, and it raises the question of whether or not one cannot meaningfully speak of Stems and Branches or other (super)natural forces as being âdeifiedâ as supernatural agents that act in the same manner as, say Dizang or The Supervisor of Life Allotments where these appear associated with numerical trigrams.
The Tricks of Jing method is taken up with some modifications in the early medieval period in the Duke of Zhou Divination Method (Zhougong bufa). This text is preserved in at least two Dunhuang codices, both dating to the ninth or tenth century.64 Besides dating to roughly the same time, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method also has in common with the Divination of MaheÅvara that it is included in a large-format compilation codex. P.3398.2, like S.5614 which includes the Divination of MaheÅvara, is a codex of rather large dimensions (20.5â¯Ãâ¯15.3â¯cm). It is also part of a compilation, and it is followed by a hemerological text, Tui shier shi ren mingxiang shu fa disawu æ¨åäºæ人å½ç¸ 屬æ³ç¬¬å äº, that makes use of the twelve branches, and then by the Tui ren shier shi er ming re, zu gang, shou zhang yang deng fa æ¨äººåäºæè³é³´ç±ï¼ 足çï¼ ææççæ³, which offers predictions based on certain bodily conditions or symptoms. The first two texts are written in the same hand. The third is in a messier hand, which is not necessarily to say that it was executed by a different scribe. A colophon at the end of the codex gives a date, and mentions that it was copied by a monk from Sanjiesi Monastery. It presumably refers to the copying of all three texts. This is interesting for putting us in close temporal and physical proximity to the Divination of MaheÅvara, that is, in late-ninth to tenth-century Dunhuang, in codex format, and in a compilation.
The mise en page of the Duke of Zhou Divination Method in this codex is also interesting for its use of blank space. The numerical trigrams and their names occupy the top third of the page, offset from the oracular responses below them by blank space. This creates an upper register of about seven cm (including an upper margin of about 12â¯mm) and a lower register of about 13â¯cm (including a bottom margin of about 1â¯cm).
Figure 14
A view of the opened Duke of Zhou Divination Method codex, pages two and three. Note the rounded edges, as well as the conservatorâs pagination in pencil in the upper corners. Shelfmark P.3398.2
courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
The scribe of this text tried to preserve this mise en page, deleting the first column of text that s/he had mistakenly begun in the upper register (see fig. 14). The use of blank space is almost always significant, especially in the context of Dunhuang during the Tibetan and Guiyijun periods, when paper was at a premium, and when scribes often repurposed discarded manuscripts by writing on their versos. This blank space can be a mark of respect, for example, where it is used in letters, and on a smaller scale a blank the size of one character often acts as a âreverence markâ preceding a sacred person or place.65 This codexâs use of space to set apart the numerical trigrams and their names emphasizes their sanctity, and forms a contrast with the lack of any such space separating the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs numerical sets from its oracular responses.
Another Dunhuang version of the text is preserved in the Luo Zhenyu collection, now preserved in Beijing under shelfmark San 678. This is notable for including the title of the text, which is missing in P.3398.2. It also includes an incantation following the text.
The Duke of Zhou Divination Method is named after a Confucian sage, a brother of the founder of the Western Zhou Dynasty, who famously invoked the gods to take him instead of his ill nephew, the heir to the Zhou throne.66 His name is linked with many divination texts in later times. The text contains the same sixteen numerical trigrams found in the Tricks of Jing, formed in counting-rod style using a nearly identical stalk-sorting method. As in the Tricks of Jing, the sixteen numerical trigrams of the Duke of Zhou Method bear names, and they are divided into two groups of eight. Instead of Stems and Branches, however, the first eight mantic figures are associated with legendary or notorious figures in Chinese history, drawing from Confucian and Daoist pantheons, while the last eight are correlated to the Eight Trigrams (bagua) of the Changes tradition, which can also be traced back to the fourth-century-BCE Stalk Divination.
The Duke of Zhou Divination Methodâs introduction is only slightly more detailed than that of the Tricks of Jing in that it might reveal something about its intended uses and clientele. The stalk-sorting method itself is the same, except that the diviner begins with thirty-four instead of thirty stalks.
Whenever divining the auspiciousness of experiences and inquiries regarding market negotiations, marital relations, contracting marriages, distant travel, visiting people, agriculture and sericulture, illness â¦.or lawsuits, focus your mind, and then opening with an oath, divine it and youâll never go wrong.
[San 678]å¡åç¶æ±ãè²·è³£ãå©å§»ãå«å¨¶ãé è¡ãç人ãç°è ¶ãç¾ç ããããçè¨åå¶ï¼ä½è«å¿å¿å [P.3398.2] åªåä¹ï¼è¬ä¸å¤±ä¸ã
The details on focusing oneâs mind and making an oath emphasize sincerity, but there is nothing here explicitly Buddhist or Daoist such as one finds in the Empowered Draughtsmen and the Zhancha jing.
The Duke of Zhou Divination Methodâs oracular responses themselves consist of the name, the numerical trigram, and an oracular verse containing rhymed poetic images and interpretation, as well as an evaluation. This differs from the Tricks of Jing by incorporating the evaluation into the verse and by not including anything about curses (sui). The first entry suffices to illustrate the textâs form and style:
The Duke of Zhou trigram. 3-4-3. A phoenix flies to a high tower, beating its wings, flapping back and forth. The sick will recover on their own; misfortune will depart and good fortune come. You will get everything you seek. There will be unexpected money and goods. Travelers will arrive and there will be no disasters at home. This mantic figure is greatly auspicious.
å¨å ¬å¦ã3-4-3é³³é£é«èº (doj)ï¼å¥®ç¿¼å¾å¾ (hwoj)ãç è èªå·®ï¼ç¦å»ç¦ä¾ãææ±çå¾ï¼æ©«å ¥é¢è²¡ãè¡äººå³è³ï¼å® èç¡ç½ãæ¤å¦å¤§åã
On balance, the interpretations are as long or longer than the imagistic verses, and are also more detailed and methodical. The interpretations begin with vague pronouncements like âyou will get everything you seekâ or âwhat you seek will not be obtainedâ and then proceed to prognoses for such categories as wealth, travelers arriving, household affairs, births, marriages, illness, and âadministrative entanglementsâ (guan shi å®äº). This latter category appears to refer to the predations of officials, itself a popular theme in Buddhist and Daoist literature, where officials are often likened to demons or ghosts.67 In the Daoist Scripture on the Prolongation of Life (Yisuan Jing çç®ç¶), each of the seven stars of the Northern Dipper drives out a particular class of affliction. These include evil qi (eâqi æ¡æ°£); the undead (feishi éå±); various demons (baigui ç¾é¬¼); arguments (koushe å£è); nightmares (eâmeng æ¡å¤¢); administrative entanglements (guan shi å®äº); and bankruptcies (xuhao èè).68 That these âadministrative entanglementsâ are also perilous in the Duke of Zhou Divination Method is clear from the contexts in which they appear. Take the following couplet, from the second entry: â[t]he sick will recover on their own and administrative entanglements will not harm [you]â (bingren zi chai, guanshi wu shang ç 人èªå·®ï¼å®äºç¡å·). Or, in the sixth entry, âadministrative entanglements will dissipate by themselves and travelers will soon returnâ (guanshi zi san, xingren ji gui å®äºèªæ£ï¼è¡äººå³æ¸).
The arrangement of the numerical trigrams in the text is perhaps even more haphazard than the Tricks of Jingâs roughly descending order. If one assumes that the Duke of Zhou Divination Method derives from the Tricks of Jing then this is curious, because one would expect that the Tricksâ order would be kept, or else that any changes to the order would be meaningful. Similarly, the Duke of Zhou methodâs using thirty-four instead of thirty stalks comes with no cosmological or numerological justification. Both starting sums mathematically limit oneâs possible results when dividing them into three piles and subtracting by fours.
The text does have something more like a pantheon, made up of Confucian and Daoist figures and the Eight Trigrams. The figures themselves include those who are closely associated with divination, such as Confucius and the Duke of Zhou. They roughly divide into heroic or villainous characters. The five positive characters, the Duke of Zhou, Confucius, Red Pine, the King of Yue, and Tai Gong, are linked to immortality, morality and positive political power (the beginning rather than the ending of a state). The lives of the three negative figures were all cut short. While some like Qu Yuan and Zitui had noble yearnings, Jie-Zhou were corrupt rulers that died with the fall of their state.
The use of the names of the Eight Trigrams to designate the second and final group of eight numerical trigrams ostensibly marks a shift from historical and mythical figures to abstract cosmological/ divinatory forces. The Eight Trigrams have long been deified, however, as the Eight Archivists (ba shi), who are the essences of the Eight Trigrams thought to reside among the stars of the Northern Dipper. They were the subject of a form of divination that was popular from the late-Han to the early Six Dynasties period.69 Similarly to the Tricks of Jingâs use of the Stems and Branches, the Duke of Zhouâs use of the Eight Trigrams theoretically opens up further avenues for correlative cosmology. It is equally possible, however, that these were used simply as a convenient group of eight to correlate with the second group of eight numerical trigrams. The latter is suggested by the non-correspondence of the Eight Trigrams to the numerical trigrams when looked at in terms of their linesâ putative Yin and Yang values. It is also curious that the Eight Trigrams do not appear in their usual order, from Qian to Kun. This might suggest that they are being inserted into a system with its own logic to which they are made to cohere, but what logic if any that might be remains opaque. The (non-)correspondences are apparent in Table 5 below (note that the full list of combinations, names, and evaluations can be found in Table 6):
Table 5
Numerical trigrams and their Bagua names in the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, Sets 9 to 16
|
Numerical trigram |
Ostensive Yin-Yang values |
Name / Bagua trigram |
Ostensive Yin-Yang values of trigram |
|---|---|---|---|
|
[9] 3 1 2 |
Yang Yang Yin |
å Dui -- â â |
Yin Yang Yang |
|
[10] 3 2 1 |
Yang Yin Yang |
å¤ Kun -- -- -- |
Yin Yin Yin |
|
[11] 4 3 3 |
Yin Yang Yang |
é¢ Li â -- â |
Yang Yin Yang |
|
[12] 2 3 1 |
Yin Yang Yang |
ä¹¾ Qian â â â |
Yang Yang Yang |
|
[13] 2 4 4 |
Yin Yin Yin |
å·½ Xun -- -- â |
Yin Yin Yang |
|
[14] 1 2 3 |
Yang Yin Yang |
å Kan -- â -- |
Yin Yang Yin |
|
[15] 4 2 4 |
Yin Yin Yin |
é Zhen -- -- â |
Yin Yin Yang |
|
[16] 4 4 2 |
Yin Yin Yin |
è® Gen â -- -- |
Yang Yin Yin |
As the table makes clear, there is not a single cosmological correspondence. The impression is that the link between a given numerical trigram and its assigned bagua trigram is entirely arbitrary. Alternatively, if one assumes the deification of the bagua as the Eight Archivists, then it is possible that these latter had already effectively unmoored themselves to float free from the symbols whose essences they ostensibly embody. This would be to express the âshiftyâ aspect of the gods that we underlined in the introduction.
As noted above, a second Dunhuang codex of this text, San 678, includes an incantation following its final oracular response. Whether integral to the text or not, the incantation appears prior to the textâs end title. It quite explicitly participates in the full deification of cosmological forces, in this case invoking the most famous Stem deities.
Invocate saying: â[You] Six Jia and Six Yi that possess demonically, speedily depart! The Six Gui and Six Ding know your names, [you] possessing vapors of Poshe.70 [You] spooks and deviant spirits quickly retrieve your impish essences, and so likewise â¦.be punished, so if you donât seem to leave, I will apply spiritual power, [calling up by] naming the Six Ding, tens of thousands of feet tall with two eyes like solar crystals, who will retrieve them with iron ropes and [once] capturing the deviant imps will use tongs to pull out their tongues and then dare to eat them whole. Speedily come out, speedily depart! You may not halt or linger! Quickly, quickly, as the statutes command!â
åªæ°ï¼å ç²å ä¹ï¼é注éåºãå ç¸å ä¸ï¼ç¥å¦ (> æ±) å§åï¼ç ´å°æ³¨æ°£ãééå¤ (> å¦) éï¼éæ¶æ±ç²¾ï¼äº¦åååï¼ å¦è¥ä¸å»ï¼å¾å°ç¥åï¼ ååå ä¸ï¼èº«é·ä¸ä¸ï¼éç®æ¥æ¶ï¼æ¶æéµç´¢ï¼ææå¤ (> å¦) ç²¾ï¼åéæèï¼æ¢é£æ±åï¼å½¢ï¼ãéåºéåºï¼ä¸å¾åæµï¼çï¼ï¼æ¥æ¥å¦å¾ä»¤ï¼
The incantationâs presence here is remarkable for how it draws together two different modes for dealing with the spirit worldâdivination and incantationâeach of which so often work in tandem with other ritual technologies. The incantation makes use of cosmological sensibilities of the Stems and Branches, invoking groups of six deities each of which takes its name from a Stem (Six Jia = the six days out of the sixty-day calendar which begin with Stem 1; Six Yi = Stem 2; Six Gui = Stem 10; Six Ding = Stem 4). The technology of invocation is explicit: it is through knowing their names that the demons can be controlled and defeated. This recalls our discussion of naming and its role in the Divination of MaheÅvara, but its relevance here is more in the context of invocations and of talismans, where the emphasis is on writing down the name of a demon to be expelled, and sometimes also drawing its image. One of the two threatening groups at the start of the incantation, the Six Jia, are warded off, for example by a seal, the creation of which is modelled in the Dunhuang manuscript P.3810.71
Figure 15
Six Jia Seal, P.3810
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Against the Six Jia and Six Yi, and against the deviant imps, this incantation summons the Six Gui and especially the Six Ding. The latter figure prominently in the Secret Lingbao Method Concerning the Spirits of the Six Ding Days (Lingbao liuding bifa é寶å ä¸ç¥æ³).72 Each Ding spirit oversees ten days in the sixty-day cycle, a function they share with the Jade Maidens.73 In this incantation they are activated to capture and devour the deviant imps.
The closing words, âQuickly, quickly, as the statutes command!â (ji ji ru lü ling æ¥æ¥å¦å¾ä»¤), constitute a closing formula that functions as the âcanonical intensifier of incantationsâ in both Buddhist and Daoist texts.74 Just after these is a glyph, apparently in medieval seal script that may represent the word of command, the character chi æ/å, âofficial order,â the latter appearing frequently in talismans after this formula. The same glyph is found at the end of the famous Stein Painting 170, âDhÄraá¹Ä« Talisman for Offerings to Ketu and Mercury, Planetary Deity of the North,â where it follows the same formula and closes the talisman (see fig. 16). In the lower left corner one can see the glyph in question, enlarged here and displayed side-by side with ostensibly the same glyph in San 678 (see figs. 17a and 17b).
Figure 16
âDhÄraá¹Ä« Talisman for Offerings to Ketu and Mercury, Planetary Deity of the North,â Stein Painting 170
copyright Trustees of the British Museum
The shared context and slightly different orthography suggest that this glyph functions here like the formula it follows, to add potency to, and perhaps to seal the incantations.75 Provided that this glyph is as rare and idiosyncratic as it appears to be, it may also help to date the texts in which it is found. The Stein Painting 170 is roughly dated by the British Museum to 926â975.
This incantation for expelling deviant imps is interesting for its appearing at the end of the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and not in a more âbespokeâ fashion like the correcting rituals that address individual responses in the Divination of MaheÅvara. It appears to act like an all-purpose correcting ritual that can be employed as an evasive measure in the event that one receives a bad prognosis. The incantation also returns us to the dangers of the spirit world lurking beneath the surface of divinationâsomething taken for granted in the Tricks of Jing and in the Stalk Divination. This addition of incantation, along with the different naming of the mantic figures, the extension of the prognoses, and the inclusion of categories like âadministrative entanglements,â demonstrates the adaptation of the Tricks of Jing tradition to new ritual norms and to its usersâ milieux. It also helpfully connects divination and its material culture to that of talismans and seals.
Figures 17aâb
Glyph following incantation in San 678 and Stein Painting 170
copyright Trustees of the British Museum
The third text belonging to this group, the Guan Gongming Divination Method, also features links to talismans. It is also very close in space and time to the Divination of MaheÅvara. It is preserved in a tenth-century Dunhuang codex, P.4778 + P.3868, and in a fragment, Dh 2375 Vo.76 Unlike the large (30â¯Ãâ¯21.5â¯cm) codex S.5614, which contains the Divination of MaheÅvara, this one measures a more manageable 11.5â¯Ãâ¯10.3â¯cm, and is not a compilation text.
Following its title on the cover, the next page includes the names of the seven Buddhas in large sloppy characters and idiosyncratic orthographies. There is then a long introduction, and sixteen oracular responses each headed by a counting-rod style numerical trigram. After the last of the sixteen oracular responses, it helpfully states âsixteen mantic figuresâ (yi shi liu guaä¸åå å¦). This might be to guard against any scribal lapses that could result in omitted or repeated oracular responses. It could equally be an alternative title or a genre descriptor to refer to this form of divination shared with the Tricks of Jing and the Duke of Zhou Divination Method.
Following the text there is then a colophon that states that âMister Zhai revised [the text]â (zhai yuanwai xun guo ç¿å¡å¤å°é). Marc Kalinowski tentatively identifies him with Zhai Fengda ç¿å¥é (born 883), a famous literatus at Dunhuang who was active from 902 to 966, and who edited nearly all of Dunhuangâs almanacs between the years 926 and 959.77 This would place the manuscript in the early- to mid-tenth century, roughly contemporary with the manuscripts of the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Divination of MaheÅvara.
Figure 18
A view of the opened Guan Gongming Divination Method codex, pages four and five. Note the rounded edges, as well as the conservatorâs pagination in pencil in the upper corners and the notation â3â near the middle, which numbers the bifolio. Shelfmark P.3868
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
The Guan Gongming Divination Method is deeply indebted to the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and is also named after a sage.78 Guan Gongming (aka Guan Lu ç®¡è¼ , 209â256â¯CE), like the Duke of Zhou, was a legendary diviner-strategist with magical abilities. Affiliated with the Wei Kingdom during the Three Kingdoms period, he was proficient at stalk divination, the Zhouyi, and at physiognomy. Books on divination attributed to him include Essential Instructions for Contacting Spirits with the Zhouyi (Zhouyi tongling yaojue å¨æééè¦æ±º), Scripture for Destroying Tempers (Puo zao jing ç ´èºç¶), and Prognostication Winnowing Basket (Zhan qi å ç®). The textâs long introduction calls for Guan Gongming to be worshipped, and sets out a divination ritual that blends Daoist, Buddhist, and divinatory sensibilities.79
Calculations come out of the Heavenly Gate; Changes come out of the Nine Palaces. Driving the Six Dragons, prognosticate on the omens to resolve doubts. If you have an issue, divine on your own employing thirty-four counting rods, from top [to bottom, in three piles] reduce them by factors of four, until you have completed the divination.
Whenever initiating divination, with clarity and quiescence worship Guan Gongming, focus and call to mind the divination as well as naming the Seven Buddhas.
If you get an auspicious result with the first divination and with the second get an inauspicious one, use it. If your divination results in three mantic figures and two of them are good and one bad, then go ahead and use it. If two are bad and one good, donât use it. Focus and recite while divining, proclaiming the names of the Seven Buddhas; Guan Gongming plays the role of Later Sage, and Wu Zhong prognosticates the auspiciousness, and observes all matters.
With all thirty-four counting rods, make an invocation (zhou) and say: âNuminous Rods (linggan), clearly settle the Qian and Kun, drive the Heavenly Dragons, and travel through the Eight Gates to prognosticate the auspiciousness.â To resolve the doubts of So-and-so set up horizontal [groups] removing factors of four until you no longer can, then divine the matter. If you rely on the mantic figure, you can never go wrong. If you have an issue, divine yourself and donât keep bothering your teacher.
èï¼çï¼åºå¤©éï¼ æåºä¹å®«ãä¹é§å é¾ï¼ å ç¸å³çãæäºèªåï¼ ç¨èï¼çï¼åå åæï¼ å¾ä¸ååé¤ä¹ï¼ ç¡å³æåãå¡ç²åè ï¼ æ¸ æµç¤¼æç®¡å ¬æï¼ å°å¿å¿µåï¼ å稱ä¸ä½ååãè¥åå¾ä¸åï¼ æ´åå¾å¦æ¡ï¼å¯ä½¿ ã è¥åä¸å¦ï¼å ©å¦å¥½ä¸å¦æ¡ï¼ ç¨ï¼ å¦å ©å¦æ¡ä¸å¦å¥½ï¼ ä¸å¯ç¨ãå¡åå¯é 念ä¸ä½ååï¼ ç®¡å ¬æç²åè³¢ï¼ å³ä»²å åå¶ï¼è§ä¸äºãå¡ç«¿ï¼çï¼åå åæï¼åªæ°ï¼ âé竿審å®ä¹¾å¤ï¼ ä¹é§å¤©é¾ï¼ åæ¸¸å «éï¼ ä»¥å åå¶ãâ æä¹å³çï¼ æ¨ªä»¥åé¤ï¼ é¤ç¡ååäºï¼ ä¾å¦ä¸ç¡å¤±ä¸ãæäºèªåï¼ ä¸åå師ã
This introduction is a jumble of invocations, formulas, and practical instructions. Both the Heavenly Gate and the Nine Palaces refer to Daoist ritual choreographies used among other things for manipulating or transcending time. Riding Six Dragons refers to using the six lines of a hexagram. Driving a dragon chariot goes back to the myth of King Mu of Zhouâs travels to the goddess of immortality located in the West. In the Kunlun Mountains, the Grandmother of the West (Xiwangmu) was so famous that she was also included in the Divination of MaheÅvara pantheon. Notably in the Guan Gongming, while Seven Buddhas are invoked, the Chinese sage Guan Gongming is the tutelary spirit of the process and therefore perhaps higher in the hierarchy. Guan Gongming âacts as a Later Sageâ (houxian å¾è³¢) as opposed to the original sages, qiansheng åè, and remains in the background while Wu Zhong å³ä»², the younger brother of the legendary founder of the ancient state of Wu,80 divines and oversees (guan è§) everything. We will encounter similar divisions of roles in the introductions to two Sanskrit dice divination texts in the next chapter.
There is a strong emphasis on recitation and on synchronizing oneâs speech with oneâs physical actions of sorting the counting rods. The diviner must worship Guan Gongming with âclarity and quiescenceâ (qingjing æ¸ æµ)81 as well as recite the names of the Seven Buddhas. The invocation, which had to be recited when holding the thirty-four counting rods, effectively activates them as ânuminous rodsâ (linggan éç«¿).
The rather verbose introduction to the text also provides some practical instructions. Like the Tricks of Jing and the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, it mentions that one sorts the counting rods into three groups, reducing each pile by factors of four until one can produce a mantic figure. Near the beginning it also introduces something like a motto: âif you have a problem, divine it yourselfâ (you shi zi bu æäºèªå). Its closing line reiterates that this is a divination that one can do for oneself. That is to say that this method was, theoretically, not just the province of professional diviners. In this sense it is accurate to refer to the text as a âmanual,â a term that should otherwise be used sparingly in reference to sacred or mantic books. The other very practical information that sets it apart is its reference to up to three repetitions of the divination process. This makes an interesting point of comparison with the Divination of Mahesvaraâs ârule of three,â described in chapter one. There, one had essentially three chances to get an auspicious result. In the Guan Gongming Divination Method, by contrast, there is something like a âmajority ruleâ policy that also admits up to three divinations. It seems that if one has one or more good results, these are kept, but if one has two bad results this can be rejected. These instructions raise more questions than they answer: Was it permissible to divine just once? What if one receives three bad responsesâcan one still ânot use it,â or is this inauspiciousness unavoidable? If one gets two good responses and one bad, does one treat the specifics of those two good responses as having equal validity, does one have to choose one or the other, or can one âcherry pickâ parts of each?
The richness of the invocations and recitations forms a contrast with the simplicity of the âdo-it-yourselfâ method, and one can ask whether or not these are truly relevant or were perhaps borrowed into the text from another form of divination. It is fair to ask, for example, how the âSpirit Rods inspect and settle the Qian and Kun, drive the Heavenly dragons, and travel through the Eight (directional) Gates to prognosticate the auspiciousness.â The Eight Trigrams have ostensibly nothing to do with this method. They do not lend their names to the mantic figures as they do in the Duke of Zhou Divination Method. And the creation of a grid of the terrestrial Nine Palaces with the Eight Trigrams arrayed in a âmagic squareâ serves no integral function in this cleromantic method of sorting counting rods. These features in the invocation, and the invocation itself, seem to consist of efficacious multipliers, present for their ability to confer additional potency, rather than for their coherence within the ritual and cosmological system. This could equally explain the invocations to the Seven Buddhas, whose messy names on the inside cover of the codex make it look like something of a crib sheet. This use of ritual/cosmological multipliers to the point of cacophony is something weâve already observed in the Empowered Draughtsmenâs use of a shi board, and it is in fact a common occurrence in a variety of medieval Chinese rituals.
What is seen from one angleâwe hesitate to say âpopularââas multiplying potency may be seen from another, however, as conferring legitimacy by bringing divination into alignment with Daoist and Buddhist cosmologies. Gil Raz summarizes the problem in a Daoist context, but it is one that certainly has broader applicability.
I suggest that it is in the cosmological entailments of the mantic procedures, as interpreted by the Daoists, that we will find reasons for both the Daoist proscription of and assimilation of divination. If divination were perceived as actual manipulation of cosmological emblems then diviners would be seen as playing havoc with the normal harmonies of the universe. When these same emblems were incorporated into the coherent ritual systems of the Daoistsâin which the entire cosmos was manipulated simultaneously and synchronicallyâthen the effect was attainment of the Dao.82
In the Guan Gongming Divination Method and in related numerical trigram divination texts the question seems to be who is incorporating whom into a coherent ritual system. Divination is elastic and unpredictable, and it adapts a variety of gods, ritual sensibilities, and cosmologies as it moves across linguistic and religious bordersâsomething that chapter three will illustrate in some detail. There we will also question how divination and playâso well embodied by the dieâtend to resist their usersâ efforts to impose on them a given structure or order. From the perspective of the underlying divination system, the Guan Gongmingâs introduction and invocation reveal the rough edges of its being incorporated into a Buddhist and Daoist milieu. We suggest something further: these rough edges are equally produced by divinationâs tendency to partner with other techniques and traditions while simultaneously resisting, by way of its own aleatory sensibilities, the rigorous imposition of ritual and cosmological order.
While its ritual preliminaries are well articulated, the Guan Gongming Divination Method differs from the Tricks of Jing and the Duke of Zhou Divination Method by leaving its mantic figures unnamed. Its sixteen responses therefore include the numerical trigram, an oracular verse containing poetic images and interpretation, and an evaluation. Its interpretations are slightly shorter than those in the Duke of Zhou, but they include the same categories, particularly illness and travel. Unlike the Duke of Zhou, it does not incorporate the evaluation into verse.
The numerical trigrams are sometimes messy and sometimes even wrong. For the very first trigram, for example, the scribe drew four lines on top, four in the middle, and three below. Realizing the mistake, either the editor âMister Zhai,â or the scribe added thin ink to make two of the top lines into one very thick line in order to produce the correct trigram, 3-4-3 (see fig. 19).
Figure 19
The first numerical trigram in the Guan Gongming Divination Method codex P.4778
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
The scribe made further such errors that went uncorrected in the eleventh and thirteenth trigrams, drawing â3-3-3â for 4-3-3 and â2-4-1â for 1-4-1, respectively. These sorts of gaffes immediately recall the repetition in the Divination of MaheÅvara of combinations 1-4-3 and 1-3-1 and the omission of 1-3-2. Oneâs first recourse when faced with this and similar phenomena is to assume sloppy scribes and lazy editors. This, however, is a well-produced text with a colophon, possibly even edited by a famous literatus. We therefore take these errors as evidence of the same type of divinatory mouvance we have observed in the Divination of MaheÅvara, and which we will also see in the Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Turkish dice divination texts surveyed in chapter three.
The Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method overlap significantly. They begin with the same two responses, 3-4-3 and 2-2-2, and end with 4-4-2, but otherwise follow different orders. The contents of the Guan Gongming, however, are largely dependent on the Duke of Zhou, as can be seen in the close correspondences between the two textsâ responses in both poetic image and prognosis for the combinations 3-3-4, 3-2-1, 2-3-1, 2-1-3, and 1-3-2, as well as some close overlaps (of image or prognosis) in the combinations 3-4-3, 2-2-2, 3-1-2, 4-1-1, and 4-4-2. Also, the image and prognosis of the response for 3-3-4 in the Duke of Zhou correspond to those for 1-1-4 in the Guan Gongming. Only five responses, for 4-3-3, 1-4-1, 2-4-4, 4-2-4, 1-2-3, do not have significant overlaps, though they may end with identical evaluations, e.g., âgreatly auspicious.â83
Table 6
Numerical trigrams and evaluations in the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method
|
Zhougong Gua; name |
Zhougong evaluation |
Guan Gongming order (no name) |
Guan Gongming evaluation |
|---|---|---|---|
|
[1] 3-4-3 å¨å ¬ Zhou Gong |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
1 |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
|
[2] 2-2-2 åå Kongzi |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
2 |
åå© Auspicious and Profitable |
|
[3] 1-4-1 å±å Qu Yuan |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
1384 |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
|
[4] 2-1-3 èµ¤æ¾ Red Pine |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
14 |
åå© Auspicious and Profitable |
|
[5] 1-1-4 æ¡ç´ Jie and Zhou |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
6 |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
|
[6] 3-3-4 è¶ç King of Yue |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
4 |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
|
[7] 1-3-2 åæ¨ Zitui |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
15 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
|
[8] 4-1-1 å¤ªå ¬ Tai Gong |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
9 |
å Auspicious |
|
[9] 3-1-2 å Dui |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
3 |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
|
[10] 3-2-1 å¤ Kun |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
5 |
å Auspicious |
|
[11] 4-3-3 é¢ Li |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
1185 |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
|
[12] 2-3-1 ä¹¾ Qian |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
12 |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
|
[13] 2-4-4 å·½ Xun |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
7 |
å¶ Inauspicious |
|
[14] 1-2-3 å Kan |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
10 |
大åå© Greatly Auspicious and Profitable |
|
[15] 4-2-4 é Zhen |
å¤§å¶ Greatly Inauspicious |
8 |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
|
[16] 4-4-2 è® Gen |
大å Greatly Auspicious |
16 |
å Auspicious |
An example of a response where numerical trigram, image, and evaluation all overlap is as follows:
Duke of Zhou Divination Method:
The Red Pine trigram. 2-1-3. From time to time it will seem like going up a high tower with wise men coming of their own accord. What youâve sought for a while will be harmonious, with unexpected cash and goods brought in. The sick will not die. This mantic figure is greatly auspicious.
赤æ¾å¦ã2-1-3 ææå¦ä¸é«èº (doj)ï¼è³¢äººä¸å¬èªä¾ (loj)ãç¶æ±ååï¼æ©«äºé¢è²¡ï¼ ç è ä¸æ»ãæ¤å¦å¤§åã
Guan Gongming Divination Method:
2-1-3 Quiet in nature and open minded, as if climbing a high tower. Then there appears a spirit without being summoned. Whatever direction you go will be harmonious and unexpectedly result in wealth. The sick will recover on their own and travelers will quickly return. Auspicious and profitable.
2-1-3 æ§æ·¨å¿é (khoj)ï¼å¦ç»é«èº (doj)ãä¹æç¥äºº (nyin)ï¼ä¸å¬èªä¾ (loj)ãæåååï¼æ©«å¾é¢è²¡ãç è èªå·®ï¼è¡è éè¿´ãåå©ã
As noted already, the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, and by extension the Guan Gongming Divination Method, is indebted for its method and text to the 2nd-century-BCE Tricks of Jing. The corresponding response in the latter text demonstrates that the debt extends beyond method:
Tricks of Jing:
A Zi trigram 2-1-3. So good, the beginning [of the Earthly Branches]! It is like climbing up a high tower. An elegant personage will come without being called. His evenly spaced emerald wings rise up like a banner. If it is not taken as a beginning, it will be like climbing up a high hill; there will be no blame ensuing. Today or any day, a person from far away is coming. Auspicious. The curse will reside in the Supervisor of Life Allotments.
å 2-1-3 ãååï¼ é¦å¦ç»é«èº (*lˤÉ) ãå¸ï¼ç«ï¼æç¾äºº (*ni[Å])ï¼å¼å¬èªä¾ (*rˤÉ)ãé½å ¶ç¿ ç¾½ (*[É¢]Ê·(r)aÊ)ï¼æ (> åï¼èï¼èï¼ææ (*C.[É¢]Ér)ãé以çºé¦(*lÌ¥uÊ)ï¼å¦ç»é«ä¸ (*[k]Ê·Ê°É)ï¼å®èæ¯è» (> å *[g](r)uÊ) ãä»æ¥ä½æ¥ï¼é 人å°ä¾ãåï¼ç¥å¨å¸å½ã
We find similar correspondences of images for the numerical trigrams 1-2-3 (dragon in a deep spring, clouds in the sky) and 4-4-2 (passes and bridges).
These three related texts allow one to chart developments and variations in a single divination method over time. They also make for an interesting comparandum for the Divination of MaheÅvara. Among the main themes and points of comparison are the presence or absence of numerological or cosmological (e.g., Yin-Yang) beliefs, the physical method, the ritual stance, the physical appearance of the mantic figure, its being named or unnamed in association with Stems, Branches, bagua, or mythico-historical figures, and the poetics of the oracular responses.
On a superficial level, there are two obvious differences between the four trigram texts using numbers one to four: their mantic figures do not bear the same names, whether of gods or of cosmological forces, and similarly numbered numerical trigrams do not necessarily have the same evaluation. If we compare only the sixteen combinations shared by all four texts and simply reduce them to positive â+,â negative ââ,â or neutral â0,â the incongruity becomes obvious (see table 7). As one would expect, the greatest incongruity is between the three Tricks-genre texts and the Divination of MaheÅvara. There is, however, considerable variance even within the three texts which so closely overlap in their methods and contents. In each case, the majority of trigrams have auspicious results: 9/16 for the Tricks of Jing, 11/16 for the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method (although not all the same ones), and about 50/64 for Divination of MaheÅvara. The diviners clearly wanted good odds for happy customers.
Table 7
Comparison of numerical trigrams and evaluations
|
Numerical trigram |
Tricks of Jing |
Duke of Zhou Divination Method |
Guan Gongming Divination Method |
Divination of MaheÅvara |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
4-3-3 |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
|
4-1-1 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
0 |
|
3-4-3 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
4-2-4 |
+ |
- |
+ |
+ |
|
3-1-2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
3-3-4 |
- |
+ |
- |
+ |
|
2-3-1 |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
2-2-2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
2-1-3 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
NA [+] |
|
1-4-1 |
- |
- |
- |
+ |
|
1-3-2 |
- |
- |
- |
NA |
|
3-2-1 |
- |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
1-2-3 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
1-1-4 |
+ |
- |
+ |
+ |
|
4-4-2 |
+ |
+ |
+ |
+ |
|
2-4-4 |
- |
+ |
- |
+ |
We have repeatedly noted the lack of a numerological sensibility in each of these texts. It appears certain that in each case these numerical trigrams were not read line by line but taken as a whole. In the case of the three Tricks-genre texts, the method constructs a counting-rod style trigram, which is then rendered âpictoriallyâ on the page of a divination book. It is easy to comprehend how such a system could lend itself to comprehending the mantic figure holistically as a symbol that lacks any phonetic value as a sign or else has to have this assigned as the name of the numerical trigram. Seeing the numerical trigram holistically and compartmentalizing or ignoring the numerical values of each of a trigramâs three layers seems like a more difficult task in the case of the Divination of MaheÅvara, where the trigrams are composed of three written numerals, that is, signs with immediate phonetic values.
5 Poetry, Talismans, and Divination
One major contrast between the Divination of MaheÅvara and most of the texts surveyed in this chapter is the general lack of poetic images in the former. Michel Strickmann in his book Chinese Poetry and Prophecy: The Written Oracle in East Asia explains that â[T]he bond between poetry and prophecy is primordial ⦠[r]hymed, rhythmic, or assonantial verse has at all times been a vehicle for the gods, whether as a direct conduit for oracular voices or through the medium of a divinely inspired poet.â86 The attachment of set verses to mantic figures, named or not, written in a text mitigates the immediacy of âdirect conduit.â On the other hand, this sense of original immediacy can be revived through singing or incanting them. This display of a magical bond lends authorization to the pragmatic advice following and to the ultimate determination of auspiciousness. Only some of the texts under consideration included such verses. Verses with bits of myth and history, and some magical imagery used as oracles are seen in the Guicang and the Changes, but not in the Stalk Divination.87 In the Tricks genre the verses themselves depict a world magical with flying beings, clouds, light beams, dragons, towers, and trees. This persists in the Duke of Zhou and the Guan Gongming, but it is somewhat muted by their expansion of the interpretations.
The incantatory power of poetic imagery may have allowed the diviner a bit of interpretative flexibility. It may have functioned much like the opening nature imagery in the Book of Odes (Shijing è©©ç¶) called âupliftâ (xing è) in the preface to the Odes and understood variously by later scholars as the use of a natural image to evoke a feeling, or to create a âstimulus.â88 Much in the way that we can understand invocations to stimulate a response from the gods, we might understand the magical landscapes and beings of the poetic oracular responses to also evoke a response. Many of the images of flying monsters, dragons, and birds along with mountainous, watery, or heavenly landscapes filled with numinous trees, luminous clouds, and certain colors of leaves or wings and so forth shared by the Tricks, the Duke of Zhou, and the Guan Gongming can be found in the Book of Odes, Songs of the South (Chuci æ¥è¾), and the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhai jing 山海ç¶)âthe latter two associated with Chu culture. Somewhat similar images can also be found in stalk divination texts, to a lesser degree in the Guicang and the Changes, but to a greater degree in the Han Mr. Jiaoâs Forest of Changes (the Jiaoshi yilin ç¦æ°ææ).89
The most colorful imagery in the Tricks of Jing is found in its first oracular response. We can understand this to be a travel warning, which is a type of warning found in the Stalk Divination and other divination texts.
A Jia (Stem 1) trigram 4-3-3. The Qiongqi monster will soar up into the sky and float on clouds like a person. But once heâs already up there, the clouds he is riding on will turn murky and dark, so that going along he will encounter a Great Spirit as tall as a city [tower] breathing in great breaths like thunder, startling him midway. The Great Father will cause a curse to appear during my life. Inauspicious.
å·±(> ç²)ï¼4-3-3ã窮å¥æ¬²ç»äºå¤© (*l̥ˤin)ï¼æµ®é²å¦äºº (*niÅ)ãæ°£ï¼> æ¢ï¼å·²è¡ä¹ (*tÉ)ï¼ä¹é²å¥å¥ (*mˤeÅ)ï¼è¡ç¦ºï¼> éï¼å¤§ç¥ (*CÉ.lin)ãå ¶é«å¦å (*deÅ)ï¼å¤§ï¼> 太ï¼æ¯å¦å£ï¼é· *C.rˤujï¼ï¼ä¸éèé© (*kreÅ)ãæ³°ï¼> 大ï¼ç¶çºç¥ï¼æ¬²ä¾ç¾©ï¼> æï¼ç (sreÅ)ï¼å¶ã
The Qiongqi monster is unusual because it is named. It is described in the Shanhaijing in the section on Western Mountains (âXishan jingâ 西山ç¶) as a hairy bovine that roared like a dog and ate people. During the Han, it may also have become linked to the legendary dragon-like Gonggong å ±å·¥ that wreaked havoc in Heaven. The image of a dragon soaring up to Heaven is seen in the Guicang, but soaring up to Heaven is also mentioned in the Changes; floating on clouds is also found in the Songs of the South and Mr. Jiaoâs Forest of Changes. Images of flying phoenixes and dragons are again found in the Dunhuang trigram texts.
If we look at the imagery of inauspicious trigrams in the Duke of Zhou Divination Method, we find nature images in a topsy-turvy scenario. Commonly fish are up in trees, birds fly without getting anywhere or are found in wells, and rivers have no water. The Guan Gongming Divination Method describes a scenario not unlike the Tricks of Jing in its oracular response for the mantic figure 4-3-3, but without the Qiongqi monster. While the magical landscape persists, there is a hint that the metaphors represent the feelings of the client, as is the case for the few uses of similes in the Divination of MaheÅvara.
A bird jolts into the sky, gloomy and dark, it runs into a Celestial Spirit and is frightened mid-way. What you seek will not be obtained, what you do will not be completed. Greatly inauspicious.
æé³¥æ²å¤© (then)ï¼å¹½å¹½å¥å¥ (meng)ï¼è¡é¢å¤©ç¥ (zyin)ï¼ä¸éèé© (kjaeng)ãææ±ä¸å¾ï¼æä½ä¸æ (dzyeng)ã大å¶ã
Inauspicious trigrams in the Duke of Zhou and the Guan Gongming also feature directionless or circuitous travel, emblems of frustration and helplessness. For example, in the Duke of Zhou:
The Li trigram. 4-3-3. A bird heads up into the sky watching upon high, flapping around back and forth. Travelers on the road will have poor [roads and] blocked paths. What you seek will be hard to get with an unexpected loss of wealth. The sick will become much sicker, resulting in tears and mourning. This mantic figure is greatly inauspicious.
é¢å¦ã4-3-3 é³¥é¼»å¤©é¤ (yo)ï¼é«æå¾å¾ (hwoj)ãè¡äººå¨è·¯ (luH)ï¼çª®éä¸é (khoj)ãæ±äºé£å¾ï¼æ©«å¤±é¢è²¡ (dzoj)ãç è æ²éï¼åæ³£æ²å (âoj)ãæ¤å¦å¤§å¶ã
Or in the Guan Gongming:
A deity has come down while dragons fly up into space. The travelers are tired and the roads blocked. Nothing you try to complete will be managed; nothing you do will be worthwhile. Inauspicious.
ç¥äººå¨ä¸ (haeX)ï¼é¾é£å¨ç©º (khuwngX)ãè¡äººéå¦ (kjwenX)ï¼éå¡ä¸é (thuwng)ãçºæä¸å°±ï¼æä½ç¡å (kuwng)ãå¶ã
[4]-3-3 The waves on the river go back and forth against the wind. Someone will be unhappy outside and go into a state of sad mourning. The household will be separated and the cash and goods lost. The sick will not recover and travelers will not come. Greatly inauspicious.
河水波浪 (lang)ï¼é風å¾å¾ (hwoj)ã人ä¸æ¨å¤ (ngwajH)ï¼äººæ²åå (âoj)ã家室é¢å¥ï¼æ£å¤±é¢è²¡ (dzoj)ãç è ä¸å·® (tsrheaj)ï¼è¡äººä¸ä¾ (loj)ã大å¶ã
[1]-4-1 The spirit does not fly up high but flits back and forth over dangerous hills. It runs into a swallow carrying an egg in its beak. The yellow bird has lost its flock and been captured by someone. Gossip unexpectedly comes and one will witness imprisonment. Greatly inauspicious.
ç¥é£ä¸é« (kaw)ï¼å¾å¾çä¸ (khjuw)ãèéç¸é¢ (*C.broÅ)ï¼æ©«çºåµå (*mÉ-tˤrok)ãé»é³¥å¤±ç¾¤ (gjun)ï¼è¢«äººæé (ljowk)ãå£èæ©«ä¾ï¼åè¦ç¢ç (*Årok)ã大å¶ã
In all three texts, auspicious rhymed imagery involves dragons flying up into the sky, brilliant colored birds flying and gathering, receiving sunlight when everywhere else is dark, unusual trees, certain mountains, a boat in the river, sunlit clouds, and so forth. The Guan Gongming also includes meetings with immortals, whereas the Tricks simply refers to the arrival of an elegant person (meiren ç¾[人]). While few of the shared images between the Tricks and the Dunhuang texts are exact, the Tricks image for Wu 3-1-2 is clearly related to the Guan Gongming image for 3-1-2:90
A Wu (Stem 5) trigram 3-1-2. In the sea of Darkness, I alone get its light. In thunder and lightning, and great shadow (Yin), I alone get the light (Yang). Someone is coming who is as noble as a lord or a king. The trees have not yet produced [fruit], but the leaves are so, so green. Inauspicious matters will all be exorcised and the auspicious matters will be completed smoothly. Auspicious.
æ 3-1-2ã å¥å¥ä¹æµ· (*mÌ¥ ˤÉÊ)ï¼å¾ç¨å¾å ¶å (*kʷˤaÅ)ãé·é»å¤§é° (*qrum)ï¼ [å¾]èï¼ç¨ï¼å¾é½ (*laÅ)ãæ人å°è³ (*tit-s)ï¼ è²´å¦å ¬ç (*ɢʷaÅ-s)ã樹æ¨æªç¢(*s-ÅrarÊ)ï¼å ¶è綪éï¼éé *s.r̥ˤeÅï¼ãå¶äºç¡é¤ (*lra)ï¼åäºé æ (*deÅ)ãåã
3-1-2 Clouds and rain darken the sky, yet one gets sunshine. Gloomy and dark, yet one gets radiance. Immortals arrive, yet one avoids [their] black and yellow [powers]. Troublesome illness can be expelled and cured. Good fortune and salary flourish auspiciously. Greatly auspicious.
é²é¨å¤©é° (âim)ï¼å¾å¾å ¶é½ (yang)ã幽幽å¥å¥ (meng)ï¼å¾å¾å ¶å (kwang)91 ãä»äººä¾è³ (tsyijH)ï¼å¾å çé» (hwang)ãæç é¤å·®ï¼ç¦ç¥¿åæ (tsyhangH)ã大åã
The images in the three Tricks-genre texts tend to be fabulous rather than consisting of objects possibly viewed in the environment where the diviner was located. This suggests their use in incantations. They all appear to be informed by the Han-period poetry exalting immortality and the transcending of time. However, in medieval times they also seemed to be poetic reflections of human feelings. We will return to these sorts of celestial images, and especially to the thunder and the wind, in the concluding chapter.
In the context of the Stalk Divination, it was stated above that its named arrays of four numerical trigrams âmust also be considered as spiritual pantheons.â In chapter one, we saw that within the semantics of the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs oracular responses, it is the gods and spirits more than the mantic figures that are the agents of protection. This points to a larger issue about the nature of the mantic figure and its relationship to gods and spirits, a point introduced through a semantic analysis in chapter one. Here, we have observed that the counting-rod trigrams of the Tricks and its descendants are âpictorialâ in the sense of rendering precisely on the page the mantic figure created with counting rods. We have also seen how these mantic figures can be set apart from the text by their mise en page, as in the codex P.3398.2. The counting-rod trigrams bring to this discussion a further element, which is their use in talismans.
Notably, there is the âDivine Talisman of Guan Gongmingâ (Guan Gongming shenfu ç®¡å ¬æç¥ç¬¦), found in the Protecting Residence Spirit Calendar (Hu zhaishen lijuan è·å® ç¥æå·, P.3358), along with a variety of dhÄraá¹Ä«s, incantations, and talismans (see fig. 20).92 Here two numerical trigrams, 1-3-2 and 2-2-2, appear over a depiction of water and possibly of seven stars. The latter is the second mantic figure in the Guan Gongming Divination Method, and the former is the second to last; so, almost alpha and omega, but not quite. In the Tricks of Jing, Duke of Zhou, and Guan Gongming texts, 1-3-2 is inauspicious and 2-2-2 is auspicious. The âDivine Talisman of Guan Gongmingâ explains that when a person looks at this divine talisman, demons will leave out of the mouth. The talisman also protects oneâs wealth and is to be affixed to oneâs door.93
Figure 20
âDivine Talisman of Guan Gongmingâ (Guan Gongming shenfu ç®¡å ¬æç¥ç¬¦), in the Protecting Residence Spirit Calendar (Hu zhaishen lijuan è·å® ç¥æå·, P.3358). The numerical trigrams are near the top, in the second column from the right
Courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France
That this talismanic use of numerical trigrams should be associated with Guan Gongming is particularly appropriate, since the Guan Gongming Divination Method is the only of these three related texts that allows the mantic figures to stand on their own, unnamed, and not associated with a Stem, Branch, sage, Villain, or bagua. This puts the emphasis squarely on the mantic figure itself, and returns us to the question of the extent to which a mantic figure acts not only as an index of a response, or of a god or spirit, or as a medium of communication, but perhaps as a divine agent in its own right.
In the most general terms, talismans are usually either protective/ preventative or they are for exorcising demons and misfortune.94 The former type of talisman is often associated with stars, planets, and Stems and Branches, not unlike the mantic figures in the Tricks of Jing and the Duke of Zhou Divination Method. The latter type of talisman often depicts iconographically the demon to be exorcised, or prominently displays the word âdemonâ (gui 鬼; see fig. 20, left side). Protective talismans like Stein Painting 170 (fig. 16), which includes images of Mercury and Ketu, also iconographically depict protecting figures. In the talisman of Guan Gongming, the two numerical trigrams form a part of the âdepictionâ of Guan Gongming, who here chases demons out of oneâs body. Two mantic figures lifted from the divination textâone auspicious, the other inauspiciousâin this way embody, pars pro toto, the sage Guan Gongming and help to activate his exorcistic powers. This dual point of reference using two ostensibly opposing mantic figures is a fascinating way to depict and invoke a god, since it does not name him directly or refigure him iconicly, but instead alludes to his creative and destructive functions. (That is, unless the selection of an auspicious and inauspicious mantic figure was purely coincidental; we find this unlikely, even if the random and the coincidental may never be ruled out completely where divination is concerned.)
This relationship between gua-s and gods in the talisman is interesting to think with when considering the same relationship within divination texts. Specifically, it points to how divinationâs mode of engagement with gods and spirits diverges from that of talismans. In the Duke of Zhou Divination Method the first six mantic figures are each associated with a sage or a mythical figure. These names appear just next to the mantic figures, with names and mantic figures being the only two elements found in the upper register of the divination codex P.3398.2, and the oracular responses themselves in the lower register, separated by blank space (see fig. 14). The nature of this âassociationâ between a given mantic figure and a given name is unstated, and the oracular responses themselves do not allude in any notable way to, say, Confucius or Red Pine or whoeverâs name they follow. Does this imply that the mantic figure 2-2-2 somehow is Confucius? Does it invoke or activate Confucius? Is Confucius then the source for the oracular response and its auspiciousness? Or is Confuciusâ name and presence there more arbitrary or even desultory? Here one hesitates to make any claim that overdetermines a relationship that is in a characteristic state of flux.
Where the comparison with talismans is more instructive is in the visual and structural similarity to talismans of placing the âpictorialâ element of the counting-rod numerical trigram at the top, with a caption as it were, and placing the text of the oracular response below. Such is the typical layout of image and text in talismans, so that if one were to apply the latterâs logic to divination texts, the mantic figure and the name in P.3398.2 occupy the space appropriate either to protective gods to be invoked or to noxious demons to be expelled. Beyond these documentary features, similarities extend to the semantic level as well: both genres tend to feature short entries with such terms as fear (bu), worry (you), calamity (zai ç½), and misfortune (huo ç¦), and many end with âgreatly auspicious.â95
In the Divination of MaheÅvara it is clear that a given mantic figure is named for a god or spirit, and that this god or spirit is a source of protection or harm. But a given numerical trigram is the ânumerical set (ju) ofâ such-and-such a god or spirit like, say, Dizang. Even if one takes this relationship of possession as one in which the mantic figure is something like the godâs symbol or sigil, this falls well short of the mantic figure embodying or constituting the god in the way that the two mantic figures do in the above talisman of Guan Gongming. And as we observed in chapter one, the relationship of possession is mutual: it may be that âthis mantic figure is the set of xxx god,â but it is also the case that âits [that is, this setâs] god protects you.â This leaves a remarkable amount of interpretive leeway for what this dual possession means for the nature of the relationship between gua and god. This is particularly apt for understanding these as actors in a network that constitute themselves through their interactions.
In the case of Guan Gongming, accessing him through the divination text is quite different from accessing him through the talisman, even if both use overlapping mantic figures. While one might turn to either mode of ritual action to solve a specific problem, the outcome of the divination is far more uncertain than that of making and using the talisman. Even if Guan Gongming or perhaps Wu Zhong are held to be responsible for the oracular response(s) one receives when divining, these come by chance, unpredictably, and they can be either auspicious or inauspicious. Where talismans use specific methods for specific outcomes, divination uses specific methods but furnishes uncertain and unspecified outcomes. If talismans wield the gods, divination reinstates the gods as unwieldy. Where a talisman is coercive, divination is receptive, open to many possible responses. In the Divination of MaheÅvara, divination can also call forth gods and spirits one may not know or wish to know.
Both talismans and divination interact with the elements and with human bodies in a process of transformative efficacy. In the case of talismans, this transformation (hua å) occurs after the talisman is manufactured, when it is worn, burned, eaten, etc., but the transformative efficacy of the material objects of divination such as dice or counting rods is activated earlier in the process of divination, when the dice fall through the air and when the counting rods or stalks pass from the divinerâs hands.96 In both cases, this is the point at which the proceedings are turned over to the gods, but the talisman relays a command while divination poses a question. This is also where the contrast is most glaring, since in divination one turns at this point to the oracular response in a divination book for the answer, whereas the person using a talisman must simply wait, or perhaps divine to see if the ritual was successful. This dynamic also pertains to the point made in the introduction, where we noted that some see a mantic figure as a god and while others understand it as a means of communication that can be discarded once the communication is completed.
Looking at other forms of interpersonal communication with the gods in Chinese traditions, and to the role of physical media and signs, there is perhaps an analogy to be drawn with the Daoist practice of sending a written missive to the gods by burning it. Of this practice Michel Strickmann wrote, â[t]hrough the action of fire, the priestâs writing is transmuted into a gigantic, otherworldly script bearing a command that can move the gods.â97 Here the semiotics of interpersonal communication seems rather more straightforward, perhaps because the transformative power of fire is more familiar than the analogous processes of wind or air that seem to govern divination. Adapting this remark to dice divination, for example, one might say, âthrough the action of wind (as they fall through the air), the fall of the dice is transmuted into a mantic figure that has the power to summon a spirit or god.â As we have seen, however, from exploring its talismanic function, the mantic figure is more than a âsmoke signal to the godsâ: it is a medium created through an aleatory process that harnesses oneâs intentions, and it is the act of naming that marks the transition from gua to god.
âµ
This survey of numerical trigram texts has brought us from the fourth century BCE to the tenth century CE in Dunhuang, and afforded us a deeper comparative perspective on where the Divination of MaheÅvara stands in relation to other Chinese numerical trigram texts. It has introduced a wide array of material cultural bases including coins, stalks, counting rods, dice, âwheels,â and draughtsmen. Some of the objects and a few of the methods come very close to those employed in the Divination of MaheÅvara, but there is no clear antecedent tradition one might point to as the Chinese source for its method. The methods and contents of the texts surveyed here display some interesting continuities and contrasts. In the first place, there are those texts like the Stalk Divination, the Empowered Draughtsmen, the Five Omens Method, and Confuciusâ Horsehead Divination Method that are deeply enmeshed in correlative cosmologies, and whose mantic figures and interpretations participate meaningfully in correspondences with Yin and Yang, the Five Phases, the Stems and Branches, and so forth. On the other hand, there are those texts like the Tricks of Jing and its descendants the Duke of Zhou Divination Method and the Guan Gongming Divination Method where any such correlations, if present, appear to be skin deep at best, much like what weâve observed in the case of the Divination of MaheÅvara. This is exemplified in the naming of the Tricksâ and the Duke of Zhouâs numerical trigrams after Stems, Branches, and bagua while apparently ignoring their cosmological values. Another persistent theme is the use of divination to identify the source of a curse or of harmful, perverse vapors. This is clearly a concern in the two earliest texts surveyed here, the Stalk Divination and the Tricks of Jing, but it is absent or else implicit in the other texts. In the incantation included inâor appended toâthe Duke of Zhou Divination Method, however, we are reminded again of these noxious elements that may be revealed or perhaps even summoned by the act of divination.
Turning now from the Divination of MaheÅvaraâs Chinese cultural inheritance to its foreign progenitors, we will similarly explore the underlying methods, cosmologies, pantheons, and poetics of Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Old Turkish dice divination texts in chapter three before returning to these issues of gods, mantic figures, and poetic incantations in the concluding chapter.
Ruan Yuan é®å , ed. Yili zhushu å禮注ç, in Shisanjing zhushu, Taipei: Yiwen, 1960, Vol. 4, 441â442.
Sarah Allan, The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art. and Cosmos in Early China (Albany: State University of New York, 1991).
For the Han practice of crack reading, see Stephan Kory, Cracking to Divine: Pyro-plastromancy as Archetypical and Common Mantic and Religious Practice in Han and Medieval China (Phd. Dissertation: Indiana University, 2012), 442â448 (appendix three).
How exactly one dangled the stalks in oneâs fingers is a matter of controversy. Wang Li (1900â1986) defined le æ as âin between the fingersâ (ææä¹é), presumably influenced by its loan for lei è ârib bonesâ which Changes scholars understand as a metaphor for the two sides of the body. By extension, they understand the method as âdangling the stalks by two sidesâ (æèèä¹å ©æ). See Wang Li gu Hanyu zidian çåå¤æ¼¢èªåå ¸ (Beijing: Zhonghua, 2000), 348; Chen Guying é³é¼æ and Zhao Jianwei è¶å»ºç, Zhouyi zhuyi yu yanjiu å¨æ注è¯èç 究 (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu, 2000 rpt), 907.
See Cook and Zhao, Stalk Divination, 22â23; Xiang Chuansan åå³ä¸, âZhouyi shifa de gailü yanjiuâ å¨æç®æ³çæ¦çç 究, Zhouyi yanjiu å¨æç 究4 (1997): 67â83; Sun Jinsong å«åæ¾. âLue lun Zhu Xi he Guo Yong de shifa zhi bianâ ç¥è«æ±ç¹åééçèæ³ä¹è¾¯. Shantou Daxue xuebao æ±é 大å¸å¸å ± 26, no. 6 (2010): 19â25.
Beijing daxue chutu wenxian yanjiusuo å京大å¸åºåæç»ç 究æ, Beijing daxue cang Xi Han zhushu å京大å¸è西漢竹æ¸, Vol. 5 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2014), 169â177; Zi Ju åå±
, âBeida jian Jingjue jiexiâ å大簡ãèå³ã解æ (
Comparing this with the Yili passage above, if the divinerâs head was facing south like the turtle, then the book would be oriented east, a Yang direction, and the stalks would be oriented west, a Yin direction.
P.3782, S.557, P.4048, P.4984V, S.9766, see Zheng & Zhang, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian xulu, 35â37; Wang Jingbo, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian yu shehui shenghuo, 61â74; Morgan, âAn Introduction to the Lingqi jing,â 102.
The celestial Hall of Light was the northern polar asterism around which the Twenty-Eight Astral Lodges rotate; it was also another name for the Heart Lodge; David Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China (Cambridge University Press, 2013), 347â349, 461. Guan Changlong reads de as a loan for âvirtueâ but we follow the original; Guan Changlong, Dunhuang ben shushu wexian jijiao, Vol. 1, 419.
For a translation of the prefaces to the Daozang version, which overlap somewhat with this Dunhuang version, see Morgan, âAn Introduction to the Lingqi jing,â 100â103.
See The Encyclopedia of Taoism, Vol. 1, ed. Fabrizio Pregadio (London: Routledge, 2008), 539â544. Suqi forms the first part of a tripartite ritual program: it is âfollowed by the main rite of communicationâconceived as an audience with the supreme deitiesâin which a Declaration (ci) is read. The program concludes with the Statement of Merit (yangong), the purpose of which is to reward the spirits that have assisted the priest in transmitting his messages to heavenâ; ibid. In the divinatory context one notes that suqi is also a preliminary to communication with the gods and spirits.
There is a long Sinological tradition of studying these boards, going back to Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 4.1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), 261â269. For an overview and for further references, see Marc Kalinowski, âThe Notion of shi å¼ and Some Related Terms in Qin-Han Calendrical Astrology,â Early China 35 (2013): 331â360.
Guan Changlong, Dunhuang ben shushu wexian jijiao, Vol. 1, 471â483 includes several different types of divination manuscripts under the shi æ » divination category: Liuren (2 Dunhuang mss), Tui shi lu nishun ge æ¨å祿éé æ (1 ms), and Qimen dunjia å¥ééç² (2 mss). The title Liuren and Qimendunjia are not originally on the manuscripts, but given by Guan, indicating their affinity with the received methods.
See Marc Kalinowski, âLes instruments astro-calendériques des Han et la méthode Liu ren,â Bulletin de lââ¯Ãcole Française dââ¯Extrême-Orient 71 (1983): 309â419; and Kalinowski, âThe Notion of shi å¼.â
Morgan, âAn Introduction to the Lingqi jing,â 102.
See Kalinowski, âLa divination par les nombres.â
S.3724; Wang Jingbo, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian yu shehui shenghuo, 77; Zheng & Zhang, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian xulu, 22; Guan Changlong, Dunhuang ben shushu wexian jijiao, Vol. 1, 450â460.
Zheng & Zhang punctuate differently and consider gua zhao to begin the next section which quotes from the Yi.
See also S.2578; Wang Jingbo, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian yu shehui shenghuo, 103; Zheng & Zhang, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian xulu, 28. On S.9501V+9502V. We see first the issue presented for divination (lost objects, rain, etc.), and then an oracular response written in regular-sized script under large numbers one through nine. Guan Changlong, Dunhuang ben shushu wexian jijiao, Vol. 1, 439â449.
This is a pun: ç«é¦¬ lima means both âstopping the horseâ and âimmediately.â The text is not suggesting that one needs to sit on a horse in order to divine.
Kalinowski, âCléromancie,â 319.
Guan Changlong, Dunhuang ben shushu wexian jijiao, Vol. 1, 257, n. 1 points out the similarity of this invocation to a line in the Xici shang commentary to the Changes: æ
èä¹å¾·ï¼åèç¥ï¼å¦ä¹å¾·ï¼æ¹ä»¥ç¥. Legge translates, âthe virtue of the stalks is versatile and spirit-like; that of the diagrams is exact and wiseâ (available in Ctext
From Jia and Yi to Ren and Gui, the whole sequence of the Heavenly Stems corresponds to the directions as part of the procedure to generate a mantic figure.
P.2859B; Wang Jingbo, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian yu shehui shenghuo, 33; Zheng & Zhang, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian xulu, 41.
Constance A. Cook and Andrea Bréard, âPlacing the Zhouyi in BCE Stalk Divination traditions: Views from Newly Discovered texts,â in The Yijing: Alternative Visions and Practices, ed. Hon Tse-ki (Leiden: Brill, forthcoming). Li Xueqin æå¸å¤, âQinghua jian Shifa yu shuzigua wentiâ æ¸ è¯ç°¡ãç®æ³ãèæ¸åå¦åé¡, Wenwu æç© 2013.8: 66â69; Wang Huaping çåå¹³ and Zhou Yan å¨ç, Wanwu jie you shu: shuzigua yu xian Qin Yi shi yanjiu è¬ç©çææ¸ï¼æ¸åå¦èå 秦æç®ç 究 (Beijing: Renmin, 2015).
Donald Harper and Marc Kalinowski, eds, Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China: The Daybook Manuscripts of the Warring States, Qin, and Han (Leiden: Brill, 2017).
Cook and Bréard, âPlacing the Zhouyi.â
Li Xueqin æå¸å¤, ed, Qinghua daxue cang Zhanguo zhujian æ¸ è¯å¤§å¸èæ°å竹簡, Vol. 4 (Shanghai: Zhongxi, 2013); Cook and Zhao, Stalk Divination.
Cook and Zhao, Stalk Divination. Similar variants are found in the Guicang, a hexagram text discovered in Hubei. See E.L. Shaughnessy, Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yijing (I Ching) and Related Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
See for example, Marc Kalinowski, âHemerology and Prediction in the Daybooks: Ideas and Practices,â in Books of Fate, ed. Harper and Kalinowski, 182â183.
Deities of the four directions include: Kan, the Supervisor of Trees (Si Shu å¸æ¨¹), south, Fire, Red; Zhen, the Supervisor of Thunder (Si Lei å¸é·), east, Wood, Green; Dui, the Supervisor of Receiving (bringing in the harvest) (Si Shou å¸æ¶), west, Metal, White; Li, Supervisor of Storing (the harvest) (Si Cang å¸è), north, Water, Black. Note that the layout of the text in C.A. Cook and Zhao Lu, Stalk Divination, p. 132 is flawed in organization.
The nefarious influence of âwindâ and âheatâ in the Stalk Divinationâs lists of sources for sui suggest an active theory of xieqi as defined in Han medical texts. In the Baoshan record, the client is having problems with his qi moving upwards (instead of the proper direction of downward as described in Han theory), but external sources of natural vapors/winds/breaths are not listed among the possible sources of sui (except named deities or altars of earth and sky). The most dangerous sources seem to be ghosts and revenants. It is possible that the sui that had to be expelled from his residence chamber was related to the ancient idea of corpse-ghosts that would haunt specific places and specific times. See the discussion of the death corpse-ghost diagrams (si shi tu æ»å¤±å) in Kalinowski, âHemerology and Prediction in the Daybooks,â 179, 190; and Yan Changgui, âDaybooks and the Spirit World,â in Books of Fate, ed. Harper and Kalinowski, 216â219.
Donald Harper, âDunhuang iatromantic manuscripts P.2856Ro and P.2675 Vo,â in Medieval Chinese Medicine, 134â164. Examples of sui-causing spirits in P.2856 Ro include Tree Spirit (Shu Shen 樹ç¥), Lord of the North (Bei Jun åå), Supervisor of Life-Allotments (Si Ming å¸å½), the Venerable (Zhangren ä¸äºº), [Ghosts] who Died by Weapons (Bingsi å µæ»), Ghosts who are without Descendants (Wuhou Gui ç¡å¾é¬¼), and Southeast Earth Sir (Dongnan Tugong æ±ååå ¬) (translation following Harper, p. 141). These spirits can more or less be traced back to the Warring States. See also Copp, The Body Incantatory: Spells and the Ritual Imagination in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014).
See the discussions in Donald Harper, âIatromancie,â in Divination et société, 471â493; Despeux, âÃmes et animation du corps,â 71â94; Vivienne Lo and Sylvia Schroer, âDeviant Airs in âTraditionalâ Chinese Medicine,â in Asian Medicine and Globalization, ed. Joseph S. Alter (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 45â66; Li Jianmin æå¥æ°, Faxian gumai: Zhongguo gudian yixue yu shushu shentiguan ç¼ç¾å¤èï¼ä¸åå¤å ¸é«å¸èæ¸è¡èº«é«è§ (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian, 2007).
Cook and Zhao, Stalk Divination, 119â121.
Note a âdoorâ (hu æ¶) spirit was indicated by a male trigram, possibly because unlike a gate, it represented the wooden door and not the opening.
This is the earliest occurrence of the verb for âusing stalk sortilegeâ (le æ). It appears again only much later in the transmitted version of the âAppended Statementsâ (Xici) given above. The first century CE Shuowen dictionary corrects the verb âto dangle [stalks between the fingers to make a gua]â æ to âcreate a guaâ å¦. The former word is distinguished only by the addition of the âhandâ semantic element (æ). For texts and discussion, see Chen Guying and Zhao Jianwei, Zhouyi zhuyi yu yanjiu, 607â613; Ding Fubao ä¸ç¦ä¿, comp. Shuowen jiezi gulin zhengbu hebian 說æ解åè©ææ£è£åç·¨ (Taipei: Dingwen, 1978), Vol. 9, 1327â1329. The idea that le referred to stalk sortilege per se also comes from this Han period gloss and is assumed by modern scholars to apply to the earlier Shifa.
Cook and Bréard, âPlacing the Zhouyi.â
A zhixie monster was a one-horned goat-like spirit that is first mentioned in Mozi as an arbitrator of truth and honesty. Reference to this beast is found in various Han texts written in a number of ways, such as xiezhi 解å», xiexie è§ð§£¾, xiezhi ç¬è±¸, zhixie 豸ç¬, and so on. See âMing gui, xiaâ æ鬼, Mozi jiangu 31.144. The Shuowen defines it as a goat used to decide trials, Shuowen jiezi gulin Vol. 8, 10, shang. 517â521. Han texts with mention of this animal include Shiji, Hanshu, Hou Hanshu, Lunheng, Du Duan.
The Tsinghua team read the original word, meaning to âbe cut, reduced,â as shi é£ for è âto eclipseâ which was certainly the larger meaning. The original graph however was zai ç (minus the âfireâ ç« semantic), which was not phonetically close to shi. The word zai (also written ç½) meant âcalamity,â which is how eclipses were interpreted.
This repetition was a copyist error.
There is some doubt whether the concept of Yin and Yang as cosmic powers had actually evolved by then; see Sarah Allan, âYin é° and yang é½ before yin-yang theory: Evidence from the Guodian and Tsinghua University Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts,â in Li Xueqin, Ai Lan è¾è, and Lü Dekai åå¾·å± ed., Qinghua jian yanjiu 3 (2019): 358â380.
For a study of this phenomenon in Chu myth, see C.A. Cook and Luo Xinhui, Birth in Ancient China: A Study of Metaphor and Cultural Identity in Pre-Imperial China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2017).
Ke Heli æ¯é¶´ç«, âShiyong Qinghua jian âShifaâ jiedu Baoshan zhanbu jilu zhong gua yiâ 試ç¨æ¸ è¯ç°¡ ãç®æ³ã解è®å å±±å åè¨éä¸å¦ç¾©, Jianbo yanjiu ç°¡å¸ç 究 2016: 12â22; C.A. Cook, âA Fatal Case of Gu è ± Poisoning in the Fourth Century BC?â East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine 44 (2016): 61â122. For a study of the complete text, see Constance A. Cook, Death in Ancient China: The Tale of One Manâs Journey (Leiden: Brill, 2006). For recent studies of the spirits in Chu texts, see Yan Changgui ææè²´, Wugui yu yinsi: Chu jian suojian fangshu zongjiao kao 巫鬼èæ·«ç¥ï¼æ¥ç°¡æè¦æ¹è¡å®æè (Wuhan: Wuhan daxue, 2010).
The spirit world depicted in Qin and Han daybooks is even more vast (including most of the Chu spirits); the categories of ghosts indicated by the many systems of divination (such as by musical notes, Branches, Five Agents) are too many to account for here, see Yan Changgui, âDaybooks and the Spirit World.â
See Morgan, âAn introduction to the Lingqi jing.â
See Kalinowski, âLa divination par les nombres,â 56â57.
Morgan, âAn introduction to the Lingqi jing,â 99.
Wang Jingbo, Dunhuang zhanbu wenxian yu shehui shenghuo, 62.
Morgan, âAn Introduction to the Lingqi jing,â 99.
Dotson, âThree Dice, Four Faces,â 33.
Esther-Maria Guggenmos, âQian Divination and its Ritual Adaptations in Chinese Buddhism,â Journal of Chinese Religions 46.1 (2018): 51â52.
ItÅ Makoto, âThe Role of Dizang Bodhisattva in the Zhancha Jing,â Journal of Indian and Buddhist Studies 64.3 (2016): 256.
T17.906c; ItÅ, âThe Role of Dizang Bodhisattva,â 257.
Whalen Lai, âThe Chan-châa ching: Religion and Magic in Medieval China,â in Chinese Buddhist Apocrypha, ed. Robert Buswell (Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 1990), 182.
See, by contrast, Guggenmos, âQian Divination,â where the âwheelsâ are called âdice,â 51â54.
Lai, âThe Chan-châa chingâ, 180â181; see also Beverley Foulks McGuire, Living Karma: The Religious Practices of Ouyi Zhixu (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), 42â45; Kuo Liying, âDivination, jeux de hasard et purification dans le bouddhisme chinois: Autour dââ¯un sutra apocryphe chinois, le Zhanchajing,â in Bouddhisme et cultures locales: Quelques cas de réciproques adaptations, ed. Fukui Fumimasa and Gérard Fussman (Paris: Ãcole Française dââ¯Extrême-Orient, 1994), 145â167.
Lai, âThe Chan-châa ching,â 181â182.
Dotson, âFour Dice, Three Faces,â 27.
William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, Old Chinese: A Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). PDF available online. Archaic Chinese reconstructions are applied here for the Jingjue and Middle Chinese for the Dunhuang texts.
These numbers are represented pictorially as counting rods, which is why weâve opted for Arabic, rather than Chinese numerals in the transcription.
The skipping of Geng and Xin (stems 7 and 8) may have observed a taboo associated with dangerous spirits. In the Qin daybook A from Shuihudi, affliction on a Geng or Xin day indicated a fatal curse coming from a ghost outside the kin-group, requiring an offering of dog meat and fresh white eggs åºè¾æç¾ï¼å¤é¬¼å·æ»çºç¥ï¼å¾ä¹ç¬èãé®®åµç½è². See Shuihudi zhujian zhengli xiaozu, ed., Shuihudi Qin mu zhujian ç¡èå°ç§¦å¢ç«¹ç°¡ (Beijing: Wenwu, 1990), 193. Alternatively, there may have been a reason for excluding any Stems (7 and 8) or Branches (9 and 10) associated with Metal.
For a discussion of Han and later spirit âseats,â see Wu Hung, The Art of the Yellow Springs: Understanding Chinese Tombs (Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 2010), 64â84.
See Kalinowski, âCléromancie,â 316â317, 338. A third, S.557, is only fragmentary.
See Imre Galambos, âPunctuation Marks in Medieval Chinese Manuscripts,â in Manuscript Cultures: Mapping the Field, ed. Jörg Quenzer and Jan-Ulrich Sobisch (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2014), 355â357.
For a summary of the Duke of Zhouâs role in divination, see Vincent Durand-Dastès, âDivination, Fate Manipulation, and Protective Knowledge in and around The Wedding of the Duke of Zhou and Peach Blossom Girl,â in Coping with the Future: Theories and Practices of Divination in East Asia, ed. Michael Lackner (Leiden: Brill, 2018), 132â134. The literature on the Duke of Zhou as a literary figure and culture hero is immense.
Strickmann, Chinese Poetry and Prophecy, 67â68.
Christine Mollier, Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China (Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 2008), 122.
Gil Raz, âTime Manipulation in Early Daoist Ritual,â 29â32.
This is a body critter, a type of shoushi å®å°¸ ghost, which like the nine worms causes mortality; for more details see note to translation in the appendix, section two.
See Shih-san Susan Huang, âDaoist Seals, Part One: Activation and Fashioning,â Journal of Daoist Studies 10 (2017): 95, fig. 13.
DZÂ 581, 10: 751.
Catherine Despeux, âTalismans and Diagrams,â in Daoism Handbook, ed. Livia Kohn (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 530; Gil Raz, âTime Manipulation in Early Daoist Ritual,â 55.
See Copp, The Body Incantatory, 54; see also Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 31, 146â147.
Assessing this talismanic writing in Stein Painting 170, James Robson writes, âthis talisman looks like what might be produced by someone who was trying to copy or mimic the style of other talismans without understanding, or having mastered, the logic that goes into their constructionâ; James Robson, âSigns of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism,â History of Religions 48.2 (2008): 155. Note, however, that Yu Xin wrote of the glyphâs appearance in the talisman, â[a]t the end of the prayer is a cipher in red ink. It is probably the signature of the sorcererâ; Yu Xin, âPersonal Fate and the Planets: A Documentary and Iconographical Study of Astrological Divination at Dunhuang, Focusing on the DhÄraá¹Ä« Talisman for Offerings to Ketu and Mercury, Planetary Deity of the North,â Cahiers dââ¯Extrême-Asie 20 (2011): 169. We did not come across the glyph again when perusing dozens of Dunhuang incantations and talismans, but further instances would help clarify its meaning. There is in P.3106, the Bai guai tu ç¾æªå, a totally different glyph in seal script following this formula, which again speaks in favor of our contention that the glyph is there to add potency. See further discussion in the notes to the translation of the text in the appendix, section two.
Kalinowski, âCléromancie,â 317.
Ibid., 317, 343. On Zhai Fengda, see Stephen Teiser, The Scripture of the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 1994), 102â121, 242â243; Qiang Ning, Art, Religion, and Politics in Medieval China: the Dunhuang Cave of the Zhai Family (Honolulu: University of Hawaiâi Press, 2004), 76â77.
See Guan Gongming bu yaojue jing yi juan ç®¡å ¬æåè¦æ±ºç¶ä¸å· in Kalinowski, âCléromancie,â 317â318, 343, 345.
Christine Mollier, âTalismans,â 414.
Wu Zhong was the legendary royal Zhou descendant and younger brother of the Wu State founder, Wu Taipo, according to the Late Han Zhao Ye è¶æ, Wu Yue Chunqiu åè¶æ¥ç§, âWu Taiboâ å³å¤ªä¼¯, juan 1.3aâb (see Kanripo
This is a Huang-Lao expression which refers to the ideal state of mind and body. It is also the name of a popular Daoist scripture by the tenth century as well as an early Buddhist term; Encyclopedia of Taoism, Vol. 2, 799â800.
Raz, âTime Manipulation in Early Daoist Ritual,â 61.
Kalinowski has a slightly different tally, stating that nine responses are similar, two have a vague connection, and the remaining five have none; Kalinowski, âCléromancie,â 318, n. 61.
The text reads 2-4-1, which is an error; ibid., 318, n. 61.
The text reads 3-3-3, which is an error; ibid., 318, n. 61.
Strickmann, Chinese Poetry and Prophecy, 87.
The use of myth and history in incantations and talismans is commonly found in other religions; see, for example, Ayo Opefeyitimi, âAyajo as Ifá in Mythical and Sacred Contexts,â in Ifá Divination, Knowledge, Power, and Performance, ed. Jacob K. Olupona and Rowland O. Abiodun (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2016), 17â31; Mary R. Bachvarova, âAdapting Mesopotamian Myth in Hurro-Hittite Rituals at HattuÅ¡a: IÅ TAR, the Underworld, and the Legendary Kings,â in Beyond Hatti: A Tribute to Gary Beckman, ed. Billie Jean Collins and Piotr Michalowski (Lockwood, 2013), 23â44. See Sarah Allanâs discussion of historiolea in ââ¯âWhen Red Pigeons Gathered on Tangâs House:â A Warring States Period Tale of Shamanic Possession and Building Construction set at the turn of the Xia and Shang Dynasties,â Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 25.2 (April 2015): 1â20.
For âopening evocative stimulusâ see Pauline Yu, âAllegory, Allegoresis, and the Classic of Poetry,â Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43.2 (1983): 377â412; Pauline Yu, The Reading of Imagery in the Chinese Poetic Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987).
This latter text was presumably composed in the first century BCE, after the Tricks of Jing, although most scholars believe it was actually compiled later. It was originally a collection of 4096 verses reflecting all the possible combinations of 64â¯Ãâ¯64 hexagrams, that is, the basic hexagrams multiplied into all possible paired combinations (much like the idea of multiplying the Eight Trigrams to come up with all possible pairs of trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams). It seems that the Tricks and Mr. Jiaoâs Forest may have drawn on some of the same sources of mantic lore, or that texts like the Tricks of Jing were sources for the later compilation.
For a comparison of the text for each numerical trigram in the three texts, see Zhou Xiaoyu, 255â258.
Interestingly the rhyming words guang å and yang é½ appear in both verses, but in reverse order. The rhyme is continued with wang ç in the Tricks and huang in the Guan Gongming. Hai æµ· and yin é° do not rhyme in ancient Chinese, nor did yin and ming å¥ in middle Chinese.
Mollier, âTalismans,â 416, 421, 427; Kalinowski, âMantic texts in their cultural context,â 128, 133 n. 85. On talismans more generally, see Copp, The Body Incantatory.
Mollier, âTalismans,â 421.
Ibid., 409.
Despeux, âTalismans and Diagrams,â 531.
On the various methods for transforming the talismans through contact with bodies and elements, see Mollier, âTalismans,â 408.
Strickmann, Chinese Magical Medicine, 9.