Understanding China Qicui Tang Ritual Civilization and Mythological Coding Cultural Interpretation of Li Ji Understanding China The series will provide you with in-depth information on China’s social, cultural and economic aspects. It covers a broad variety of topics, from economics and history to law, philosophy, cultural geography and regional politics, and offers a wealthofmaterialsforresearchers,doctoralstudents,andexperiencedpractitioners. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/11772 Qicui Tang Ritual Civilization and Mythological Coding Cultural Interpretation of Li Ji 123 QicuiTang ShanghaiJiao Tong University Shanghai, China Sponsored by“B&R”BookProgram ISSN 2196-3134 ISSN 2196-3142 (electronic) Understanding China ISBN978-981-15-4392-0 ISBN978-981-15-4393-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-4393-7 JointlypublishedwithShanghaiJiaoTongUniversityPress TheprinteditionisnotforsaleintheChinaMainland.CustomersfromtheChinaMainlandpleaseorder theprintbookfrom:ShanghaiJiaoTongUniversityPress. ©ShanghaiJiaoTongUniversityPress2020 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublishers,whetherthewholeorpart of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission orinformationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodologynowknownorhereafterdeveloped. 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The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore Foreword Mythology: Source Code of the Chinese Culture Theconceptof“mythology”wasneverseeninChineseacademicparlance,norwas it an academic discipline in any form until scholars who studied in Japan such as LiangQichaoandJiangGuanyunimportedintomodernChineseinearlytwentieth century.Overthecourseofmorethanacentury,Chinesemythologyhasmadegreat achievements, as well as showing clear limitations. Initially, a group of scholars, many of whom were literati, such as Lu Xun, Zhou Zuoren, Mao Dun, Zheng Zhenduo, and Xie Liuyi, developed an interest in introducing and studying mythologies.ThisisthereasonwhyeventodaytheteachingofmythologyinChina is still restricted to the folk literature of the Chinese department curriculum in universities. Thus, any school that does not include folk literature in their course arrangementwouldnotteachanyprofessionalknowledgeofmythology.Compared with major progress accomplished in mythology research worldwide since the twentieth century, China shows obvious limitations in isolating the subject in disciplineclassification.Forinstance,inTheoriesofMyth,thesixvolumesauthored and published by globally authoritative mythology scholar Robert A. Segal, mythologystudyregardingliteratureonlyoccupiesonevolumeoutofsix,asinless than 20% of the mythology research, while the remainder consists of philosophy, history, archaeology, religion, psychology, anthropology, and mythology research from the perspectives of other disciplines. In light of the status quo of mythology research in China, literature-oriented viewpoint of mythology has emerged as a bottleneck that hampers the development of humanities study in China. Many tasks need to be accomplished to serve as a critical and indispensable theoretical foundation for the improvement of China’s mythology research and humanities research in general. These tasks include the effective summary of the feats and research experience of Chinese mythology study over the last century, reflections on the restraints, obstructions and hindrances of the analytical tools employed by Chinese scholars, proposal of corresponding academic measures to breakfreefromshacklesandbottlenecks,renewaloftheperspectivesonmythsand v vi Foreword knowledge system of mythology research, staying abreast of and responding to internationalacademicdevelopmenttrends,andselectiveandrationallearningfrom academic innovations. Past experience indicates that if restrictions of literature-oriented mythology researchinChinaweretobemitigated,itisadvisabletofullyharnesstheadvantage of mythology concepts in consolidating cross-disciplinary knowledge including literature, history, philosophy, religion, and psychology. This breakthrough would offer a new perspective to humanities scholars and stimulate them to delve into cross-disciplinary contemplations, discover, propose, and solve new problems, especially the vital issue of how to connect and reconfigure research mindsets and focal points of literature, history, and philosophy studies. Chinese mythology research in the past century mainly emphasized the search forstoriesakintoGreekmythologyfromancienttexts,butneglectedafundamental question: why was mythology not studied by the ancient Chinese? In other words, whyistheterm“mythology”absentfromtheancientChineselanguage?Sincesuch a fundamental cultural question was not identified at an earlier stage, thoughts or discussions of any depth were not common among scholars. The most prominent feature of Chinese culture and tradition is the holistic and pervasive quality of myths. The countless number of Confucian temples and God of Wealth shrines scattering across the country silently manifest the tremendous deity-making power ofthismultiethnicnation.Evenasubstantialportionoffundamentalcontentsbeing considered as part of “Chinese philosophy,” “Chinese history,” or “Chinese sci- ence” by modern scholars, as in those who came after the permeation of western educationand thoughts in China beginningfrom theend oftheMing Dynasty, are largely founded upon mythology. Rarely do visitors of the Forbidden City understand why the palace’s Chinese name, Zijin Cheng (“Forbidden City”), evidently derives from myth! In antiquity, peopleweresurethattheimperialpalaceonearthcorrespondedtotheZiweiPalace that housed the Celestial Emperor up in heaven as described in myths. It was the symbol of governance of the Celestial Emperor at the nexus of heaven, thus cre- ating the name Zijin Cheng for the imperial palace in human realm. It is common knowledge that “human beings are an integral part of nature” is one of the main features of Chinese culture, yet people often forget that this concept is founded upon a mythological concept or directly derived from a mythological mindset, which acts like a cultural gene for Chinese traditions. Even Confucius, who pro- claimed he “does not speak about mythical powers or mythological beings,” was actually an ardent believer in “destiny,” and devoted particular attention to the mythological and symbolic meanings behind supernatural creatures like the kylin (Chinese unicorn) and phoenix. A maniac from the State of Chu even directly referred to Confucius himself as a “phoenix.” People of today only see mythology presentedinitstextualformofnarration;thus,mythologyiscategorizedasapartof literatureinitsmodernsense.However,inculturaltradition,thereareconsiderable quantity of graphical or physical forms of narrations and representations of mythology, for instance, a myriad of imperial structures from the Ming and Qing Dynasties such as the aforesaid Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Temple of Foreword vii Earth, Temple of the Sun, and Temple of the Moon, not to mention the long-standing system of “emperor’s governance from the Hall of Distinction, a venuewithsignificantpoliticalandreligiousfunctions.”Ifmyth-basedthoughtsand principles were to be disregarded in common idioms and sayings of ancient times such as “emperor as the son of the Loong” and “prosperity brought by the Loong and the phoenix,” and idioms and sayings of today such as “Chinese as the descendants of the Loong” and “great Loong ascends into the sky” (to symbolize China’srisetoprosperityandpower),Chineseculturewouldbesodisfiguredthatit would resemble nothing like the one as we know today. Takeanotherexample,areferencebook,andhowmythologywassopenetrating and pervasive in Chinese culture. Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters is widely believed as the first ancient Chinese dictionary. The book is organized by radicals or “section heads,” and upon a closer look at the Chinese characters under the most important radicals in the opening chapter, one would notice that thisreferencebookiswellstructured,withover9000charactersarrangedfrom“yi” (一, beginning of all things) to “hai” (亥, the last of the twelve earthly branches), taking clear cues from the order of space and time from the mythological world- view. As to why the characters under the radicals “yi,” “er,” “shi,” “san,” “wang,” and “yu” were placed at the beginning of the dictionary, the profound reasoning may only be clarified if one were to investigate the spiritual basis, and mythology foundationinChinesetradition,andsimplyjudgingbythenumberofstrokesinthe characters would not suffice for an explanation. Han Dynasty scholar Xu Shen compiled the book, and the way he described many Chinese characters was filled withmythologyconcepts,eventhoughtheterm“mythology”didnotyetexistinhis times.Fromthecognitiveanthropologyangle,contentaboutmythologyandbeliefs expressed in Explaining Graphs and Analyzing Characters without the use of mythology terminology are vividly indicative of the mythological disposition in Chinese cultural tradition. As in the Su Dongpo’s poem, “the true face of Mount Lu I cannot tell, only because I am in the midst of it,” the ancient Chinese did not need to use the term “myth” because their worldview and behaviors were shaped and dominated by mythology! From this perspective, pictograph, as a coding for- mat of culture, in itself represents the source code of the myth concept, which is exactlythereasonwhycontemporaryscholarsmayre-understandChinesetradition from the consolidating perspective of mythology study. This is also the original intention behind the composition of the Mythistory Series: How to genuinely unleash mythology currently bound within literature classes, and transform it back into an effective conceptual tool that connects literature, history, and philosophy andshedslightonChineseculturalresearch,whichinturnwouldenablescholarsto overcome the prejudice of tradition and the boundaries of modern academic discipline structure, and re-study Chinese ideological traditions and historical traditions. There are 20 volumes planned for the Mythistory Series, divided into the Chinese Mythistory series and World Mythistory series. The World Mythistory series will include Sumerian Mythistory, Greek Mythistory, Japanese Mythistory, andKoreanMythistory,amongothers,whichprovideinsightintoworldcivilization viii Foreword andEastAsiancivilizationandserveasabackdroptoexamineChineseMythistory. The Chinese Mythistory series consists of one overview volume and the various separate summary volumes. The summary volumes look into important classics in thepre-Qinera,QinDynastyandtwoHanDynastiesassubjects,includingthelikes oftheBookofDocuments,AnalectsofConfucius,SpringandAutumnAnnals,LiJi, Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial, Tale of King Mu, and Master Huainan, which delve into the mythistory and myth philosophy inherited in these classics, and showcase fresh analysis and interpretation of these writings. We hope that the various volumes could be combined into a mutually connected and corresponding academiccorpusasawholewhichcoulddeepenreader’scomprehensionaboutthe development of Chinese culture and its unique features. Bycontinuingtheauthor’sstyleandresearchmethodology(see“Anthropological DecodingofChineseCulture”collectionjointlycompiledbyShuxianYewithXiao Bing and Wang Jianhui in the 1990s), this series collectively exhibits the author’s cross-disciplinarycontemplationsduringrecentyearsandgathersagroupofyoung scholarswithsharpandinquisitivespiritofexploration(authorsofthisseriesareall humanitiesscholarswhoaspiretocarryoutcross-disciplinaryresearchandconduct studiesrevolvingaroundseveralacademicbodiesactiveinrelevantacademiccircles suchastheChineseLiteratureandAnthropologyResearchAssociationandChinese MythologyStudyAssociation).Theseriesattemptstodecipherthesourcecodesof Chinese culture via new perspectives offered by mythistory and put on display the latestmajorinnovationsandoutcomesinhumanitiesresearchandstudiesonChinese classics. The commencement of this project originally relied on the “mythology researchfortheexplorationoftheoriginoftheChinese civilization”majorproject oftheChineseAcademyofSocialSciences,butin2009itwasindependentlylistedas a Guangdong strong cultural province project, and thus received emphatic support andfundingassistancefromthePublicityDepartmentoftheGuangdongProvincial PartyCommitteeandthepublishingcompanyoftheNanfangDailyPress.In2010, the newly founded Research Center of Literature and Humanities at Shanghai Jiaotong University also provided extensive aids in human resources, material resources, and other aspects to this corpus. Here, sincere gratitude is extended to PublicityDepartmentoftheGuangdongProvincialPartyCommittee,thepublishing companyoftheNanfangDailyPress,ShanghaiJiaotongUniversityandtheLiterature ResearchInstituteoftheChineseAcademyofSocialSciences. Beijing Taiyanggong, China Shuxian Ye June 2010 Introduction Amidthetrendsofthesearchforsourcesandoriginsofcivilizations,whatkindof role does Li Ji (translated name is The Book of Rite, or Liki by Legge) play in the search for the source of ritual civilization? And amid the continual influx of new materials and new insights of present day, from which perspective should one unveilhowtheChineseritualsystemwasbuilt,standardized,andclassicizedunder the“greatunity”notioninherentintheChineselanguage,aswellastheunderlying mythology coding behind rites, so as to reconstruct the cultural origin of the ritual civilization behind Li Ji? Part One: Review and Introspection on the Research of Li Ji Therationale behindtheselectionofthissubjectmatterwasbasedonthreepoints. First point is two major research trends, i.e., the “Program of the Search for the OriginoftheChineseCivilization”bythecountryinearlytwenty-firstcentury,and the “cultural inheritance and historical memory” research by the academic circles. Li Ji, as literature critical to the study on ritual civilization, is invaluable to this “searchfortherootsandinquiryforthesources”typeofresearch.Thesecondpoint is revisits and renewed perceptions of the conventional research pathways and themesregardingLiJi.ThisbookattemptstorepositionLiJiwithinthreecontexts —the textual records (referring to the “ji,” meaning “record” or “book,” a part oftheChinesetitleLiji)containedinthebook,itsunderlyingritualcivilization,and researchhistoryofLiJi,andtriestoutilizethetextualnarrationofLiJitoenterinto theChinese ritual worldbehind the words andexpose thehidden cognitive coding principlescovereduporrewrittenbywritingandpower.Thirdlyandlastlyisatrial ix