Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China Handbook of Oriental Studies Handbuch der Orientalistik section four China Edited by Stephen F. Teiser Martin Kern Timothy Brook Paul W. Kroll VOLUME 33 The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ho4 Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China The Daybook Manuscripts of the Warring States, Qin, and Han Edited by Donald Harper and Marc Kalinowski LEIDEN | BOSTON Cover illustration: The “Heaven Jail” diagram in the Kongjiapo daybook, slips 352–359. After Suizhou chutu wenwu jingsui, p. 170. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 0169-9520 isbn 978-90-04-31019-3 (hardback) isbn 978-90-04-34931-5 (e-book) Copyright 2017 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. 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Contents List of Maps, Tables, Figures, and Plates ix Acknowledgments xv Tables 0.1–0.9 xvii Map 0.1 xxvi Introduction 1 Donald Harper (University of Chicago) and Marc Kalinowski (École Pratique des Hautes Études) Hemerology 2 Technical Occult and Scientific Literature 4 Codicology of Daybook Manuscripts 6 Daybook Studies and Ancient Chinese Hemerology 7 Conventions Used in this Volume 9 Chinese Terms and Translations 9 • Latin, Medieval Vernacular, and Cuneiform Sources 10 • Chinese Conceptual Terms and Hemerological Terminology 10 1 Daybooks in Archaeological Context 11 Alain Thote (École Pratique des Hautes Études) Daybooks in Tombs 11 Manuscript Sources 12 • A Phenomenon Embedded in Time and Widely Diffused 12 • First Hypotheses 16 The Four Tombs 17 Jiudian Tomb 56 17 • Fangmatan Tomb 1 21 • Shuihudi Tomb 11 25 • Kongjiapo Tomb 8 29 • Other Tombs Containing Daybooks and Daybook-Related Manuscripts 34 Manuscripts in Tombs 37 Conditions of Preservation 37 • A Marginal Phenomenon 38 • The Mingqi Question 39 • What Types of Manuscripts? 47 • Who Was Involved? 48 Conclusion 55 2 Daybooks: A Type of Popular Hemerological Manual of the Warring States, Qin, and Han 57 Liu Lexian (Capital Normal University) Content and Defining Features of Daybooks 57 Overview of Fully Published Daybooks and Daybook-Related Manuscripts 66 Manuscripts of the Daybook Text Type 66 • Daybook-Related Manuscripts 70 • Hemerological Slips, Slip Fragments, and Tablets Discovered at Han Sites in the Northwest 75 Unpublished or Partially Published Hemerological Material 76 Comparison of Daybooks to Related Technical Literature in Excavated Manuscripts 79 Daybooks and Other Hemerological Texts 80 • Daybooks and Calendars 81 • Daybooks as One among Multiple Sources of Technical Occult Knowledge 82 vi Contents Daybooks from the Perspective of the Bibliographic Treatise of the Book of Han 84 “Tianwen” (Heaven Patterns) 86 • “Lipu” (Calendars and Chronologies) 86 • “Wuxing” (Five Agents) 86 • “Shigui” (Milfoil and Turtle) 87 • “Zazhan” (Miscellaneous Divination) 87 • “Xingfa” (Form Structures) 87 Daybooks and Later Hemerological Texts 87 Conclusion 89 3 Daybooks in the Context of Manuscript Culture and Popular Culture Studies 91 Donald Harper Hemerology and Hemerological Literature through the Lens of Late Han Historiography 94 Makers and Users of Daybooks 97 Literacy 97 • Who Made Daybooks? 104 The Form and Function of Daybook Manuscripts 110 Making the Manuscript and Textual Strategies 111 • Writing the Text and Lexical Strategies 116 Daybooks in Everyday Life 127 The “Spellbinding” Prologue 129 • The Pace of Yu 130 • Orphan- Empty Hemerology 133 • Hemerology and Cultural Memory 136 Conclusion 137 4 Hemerology and Prediction in the Daybooks: Ideas and Practices 138 Marc Kalinowski Daily Activities and Life Expectations in the Daybooks 138 General Hemerologies 139 • Topical Hemerologies 142 • Predictions and Predictive Systems 145 • The World of Rishu: Representation and Reality 148 Techniques and Systems 152 The Year Cycle and Its Subdivisions 153 • The Sexagenary Cycle 160 • The Twenty-Eight Stellar Lodges 164 • The Five Agents 168 • Day Qualifiers 171 • Diagrams 176 Conclusion 192 Supplement 4.1 193 Supplement 4.2 194 Supplement 4.3 198 Supplement 4.4 199 Supplement 4.5 200 5 Daybooks and the Spirit World 207 Yan Changgui (Wuhan University) The Spirit World 208 Levels of the Spirit World 208 • The Appearance and Traits of Spirits 214 • Spirit Origin and Background: Explanation of the “Death Corpse-Ghost” Diagram 216 Controlling and Expelling the Spirits 220 Controlling Spirits: Spirits in the Illness Hemerologies 220 • Expelling Demons and Spirits: Techniques of Exorcism in “Spellbinding” 225 Spirits in the Context of Hemerology 231 Conclusion 243 Supplement 5.1 244 Contents vii Plates following 248 6 The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts 249 Li Ling (Peking University) Discovery of the Zidanku Silk Manuscripts and the History of Ownership 250 The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts: Physical Description and Contents 259 Zidanku Silk Manuscript 1: Sishi ling (Ordinances of the Four Seasons) 260 • Zidanku Silk Manuscript 2: Wuxing ling (Ordinances of the Five Agents) 266 • Zidanku Silk Manuscript 3: Gongshou zhan (Divination for Attack and Defense) 267 • Additional Manuscript Fragments 267 The Zidanku Silk Manuscripts and Ancient Chinese Hemerological Literature 267 Hemerology and Hemerological Literature 268 • Shi-Method Writings 270 • Seasonal-Ordinances Writings 274 • Daybook Writings 274 Conclusion 277 7 Calendars and Calendar Making in Qin and Han Times 278 Christopher Cullen (Needham Research Institute) Looking at a Calendar 278 Month Lengths 280 • Number of Months and the Year 280 • Marking the Seasons 282 • Hemerological Markings 282 Calculating the Calendar 289 Cycles and Quarter-Remainder Calculations 289 • Constants and Cycles after the 104 bce Reform 290 • The Six Systems 291 • Identifying the Qin and Han Systems: Textual Evidence 292 • Identifying the Qin and Han Systems: Calculating Back 294 Who Calculated the Calendar? 296 The Traditional View: The Ruler “Grants” the Calendar 296 • The Abortive Reform under Emperor Wen 297 • The Origins and Nature of the Reform under Emperor Wu 298 • The Case of Lang Yi: A Non-Official Center of Astronomical Learning 303 Conclusion 303 8 Daybooks in Qin and Han Religion 305 Marianne Bujard (École Pratique des Hautes Études) The First Tiller Cult: Public and Private Rites 306 Local Cults of the Qin and Han 313 Mountain and River Cults 314 • Long-Life Practices 323 Private Rituals in the Daybooks 325 A Heterogeneous Pantheon 328 • The Pace of Yu 330 • Levels of Complexity of Ritual Behavior 332 Conclusion 334 9 The Legacy of Daybooks in Late Imperial and Modern China 336 Richard Smith (Rice University) Brief Overview of Calendars and Almanacs from the Tang through the Ming Dynasty 337 State-Sponsored Cosmology in the Qing 342 The State Calendar and Its Derivatives 347 viii Contents Qing Dynasty Almanacs 353 Concluding Remarks 367 10 Hemerology in Medieval Europe 373 László Sándor Chardonnens (Radboud University) Hemerology and Daybooks 374 Hemerology and the Study of Time 376 Divination, Commemoration, and Natural Philosophy 383 Hemerology as Divination 384 • Hemerology as Commemoration 386 • Hemerology as Natural Philosophy 389 Hemerological Practices 390 Auspicious Hours for Bloodletting 391 • Dog Days 392 • Egyptian Days and Egyptian Hours 392 • Journey Hemerology 396 • Lunaries 397 • Mansions of the Moon 400 • Miraculous Birthdays 402 • Moonbooks 402 • Perilous Days 403 • Unlucky Days 403 • Zodiacal Lunaries 403 Conclusion 406 11 Babylonian Hemerologies and Menologies 408 Alasdair Livingstone (University of Birmingham) Research Background 408 Textual Context 409 • Cultic and Magical Background and Context 410 • Religious Context 411 The Babylonian Cultic Calendar 411 The Hemerologies 412 “Babylonian Almanac” 413 • “Offering Bread Hemerology” 414 • “Prostration Hemerology” 415 • “Hemerology for Nazimaruttaš” 417 • “Eclipse Hemerology” 419 • Fruit, Lord of the Month 420 • The Therapeutic Release of Animals 422 The Menologies 423 “Cult Menology 1”: Babylon 423 • “Cult Menology 2”: Uruk 427 • “Bilingual Menology” 429 Use of the Hemerologies 432 Retrospect: A Scientific Experiment in Hemerology 433 Extispicy 434 • Legal Activity 434 Appendixes   Appendix A: Survey of Excavated Daybooks, Daybook-Related Manuscripts, and Other Hemerological Material 439 Appendix B: Summary of Published Daybooks and Daybook-Related Manuscripts 443 Appendix C: Description of Select Hemerologies and Classificatory Systems in Daybooks 460 Bibliography 477 Index 502 List of Maps, Tables, Figures, and Plates Maps 4.1 Types of activities and the number of sections and occurrences in the Jianchu and Congchen 0.1 Archaeological sites with manuscripts and sections of the six published daybooks 141 documents XXVI 4.2 Section headings written in the upper margin of 1.1 Locations of tombs with daybooks and daybook- the recto of SHDA 143 related manuscripts 13 4.3 Types of activity in hemerologies and the 11.1 Major discovery sites for Sumerian and number of sections for each category in Babylonian textual materials 409 SHDA 144 4.4 Divination topics in the Changes from Shuanggudui tomb 1, Fuyang 152 Tables 4.5 Occurrences of the four seasons in the six published daybooks 154 0.1 Chinese dynasties xvIi 4.6 Day-night proportions for the twelve months of 0.2 Rulers of the Qin and Han dynasties and the Xin the year 155 period xviii 4.7 Correspondence between Qin numbered months 0.3 Basic weights and measures for the Western Han and Chu month names with day-night dynasty, with metric equivalents xix proportions for each month as given in 0.4 Ten stems (tiangan) and twelve branches (dizhi) SHDA.16 156 with numerical codes xx 4.8 Examples of day designations other than 0.5 Sexagenary cycle with numerical codes for the sexagenary binoms, stems, and branches in the sixty binoms xx six published daybooks 157 0.6 Basic correlations of the five agents in the 4.9 Comparison of the traditional system of generation and conquest cycles xxi the twelve time periods of the day with the 0.7 Twenty-eight stellar lodges (xiu) with numerical Shuiquanzi hemerological slips and the codes xxi Kongjiapo and Shuihudi daybooks 159 0.8 Archaeological sites with manuscripts and 4.10 The relationship between the traditional twelve documents on wood, bamboo, and silk xxii time periods and the sixteen time periods in the 0.9 Acronyms for daybooks, daybook-related Fangmatan daybooks 160 manuscripts, and Dunhuang manuscripts xxv 4.11 The system of Orphan and Empty branches 161 1.1 Estimated burial dates and present-day locations 4.12 Pit days for the twelve months of the year and of tombs with daybooks and daybook-related the distribution of the middle stems wu and s5 manuscripts 14 ji in relation to their location on the Dipper s6 1.2 Geographic distribution of tombs containing astrolabe from Shuanggudui tomb 1 163 manuscripts listed in table 0.8 15 4.13 The keying of the twelve months to the twelve 1.3 Average slip lengths of some daybook and branches according to the Dipper Establishment daybook-related manuscripts 49 method 164 1.4 Writing implements and related items found 4.14 The twelve monthly lodges in the daybooks, in tombs with daybooks and daybook-related correlated with the Dipper Establishment manuscripts 53 method 165 3.1 Orphan branches and corresponding Empty 4.15 Representation of the stellar lodge day-count for branches in Orphan-Empty hemerology 134 the short months and long months of the 3.2 Standard directions for the Orphan and Empty calendar year 166 branches 134 4.16 Stellar lodge hemerology in SHDA.12 167 3.3 The Empty and Orphan directions in KJP.16 4.17 The old system of stellar lodge widths 168 compared to the two sets of directions in 4.18 The three-unions arrangement of the four ZJTB.20 135 seasonal agents in relation to the twelve branches and the four quarters 170