Allan, Sarah - Sons of Suns - Myth and Totemism in Early China (OCR)

Sons of Suns: Myth and Totemism in Early China Author(s): Sarah Allan Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. 44, No. 2 (1981), pp. 290-326 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of School of Oriental and African Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/616397 Accessed: 22/03/2009 23:43 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cup. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. School of Oriental and African Studies and Cambridge University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. http://www.jstor.org SONS OF SUNS: MYTH AND TOTEMISM IN EARLY CHINA The problem of myth is one that has concerned Western philosophers from the time of Plato and the Sophists. David Bidney, 'Myth symbolism and truth' 1 By SARAH ALLAN The 'problem of myth' for Western philosophers is a problem of inter- preting the meaning of myths and explaining the phenomenon of myth- making. The ' problem of myth ' for the sinologist is one of finding any myths to interpret and explaining why there are so few-for myth-making is generally assumed to be a universal faculty of mankind. One explanation for the paucity of myth in the traditional sense of stories of the supernatural in ancient Chinese texts is the nature of Chinese religion. In China, gods, as well as ancestors and ghosts, were believed to be dead men, spirits who had lived in this world at a certain place and time and continued to need sustenance from the living and to exert influence over them. They related primarily to those who gave them ritual offerings and little thought was given to any possible interaction between them.2 Chinese religion stressed ritual, but the ritual was pragmatic-offerings given in exchange for benevolence or at least lack of malevolence. Thus although stories of ghosts (the wronged or hungry dead who interfered with the living) and supernatural omens do occur in the texts, there are very few myths in which the gods interact with one another in a world of their own distinct from the human one or before the beginning of chronological time. Instead, there are stories about the lives of gods when they were still human beings. These stories may have mythical import. They may function as myth in the sense that Claude Levi-Strauss used the term-to mediate inherent social conflict-but they appear in the texts as history or historical legend, as human beings interacting with one another at a certain place within a chronological time scale.3 Another explanation which has been given for the paucity of myth in ancient Chinese texts is that myths of an earlier era were historicized by the literati who recorded them in the Zhou and Han Dynasties. Although the 1 In Thomas A. Sebeck (ed.), Myth: a symposium, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1974, 3. 2 For a more extensive development of this thesis, see my article, 'Shang foundations of modern Chinese folk religion', in S. Allan and Alvin P. Cohen (ed.), Legend, lore and religion in China: essays in honor of Wolfram Eberhard on his seventieth birthday, San Francisco, C.M.C., 1979, 1-21. 3 See Sarah Allan, The heir and the sage: a structural analysis of ancient Chinese dynastic legends, San Francisco, C.M.C. (in press). SONS OF SUNS: MYTH AND TOTEMISM IN EARLY CHINA texts do not contain mythical narratives, some of the stories recorded in them have an aura of myth disguised as history. In the past sixty years many attempts have been made to extract these from the texts and to demonstrate that accounts which are associated with ancient kings and appear as history in some texts have supernatural elements in others. Particularly important are the works of Gu Jiegang and his associates in the Gu shi bian volumes and Henri Maspero's ' Lgendes mythologiques dans le Chou King' which traces the supernatural elements in the first chapters of the Book of documents.4 But was there a mythology in ancient China, a structure or system of beliefs and stories concerning the supernatural which has been reinterpreted by later historians ? And if so, what is the nature of this system ? For myths are not isolated phenomena. They exist within a social and intellectual structure, outside which they appear as irrational or incomprehensible. Elements may be introduced from one system to another, but if the assumptions of the systems differ, they will be transformed accordingly. Many of the myths recorded in Zhou and Han texts have been shown to have local associations.5 These may represent local traditions which were reinterpreted because their assumptions were different from those of the people who recorded them. But was there an earlier stratum of thought which has been reinterpreted by the ancient historians ? If an earlier system of beliefs has been transformed in the accounts of ancient Chinese kings, we should expect to find it in the accounts of the pre- dynastic rulers, Yao, Shun, and Yu, as the studies of Maspero and Gu Jiegang indicate. Zhou texts consistently refer to Yao at the beginning of history (this is true even in texts such as the Zhuangzi which also include figures assigned to an even earlier age who do not enter the universally accepted chronology until late in the Warring States Period). The Xia Dynasty after its founder Yu, on the other hand, is usually assumed by modern scholars to have an historical basis like its successor, the Shang, although the archaeological evidence has yet to be matched to the historical records, and some scholars believe it over- lapped with the Shang.6 A problem in reconstruction is that few Chinese texts predate the fifth or sixth centuries B.C. Between this period and the end of the Shang Dynasty 4 Gu Jiegang X p Jl and Yang Xiangkui tg fip (ed.), San huang kao = ~, Yenching Journal of Chinese Studies, Monograph Series, no. 8, 1936; Gu Jiegang (ed.), Gu shi bian ~t j, ~, I, Peking, Pu She, 1926; H. Maspero, ' Legendes mythologiques dans le Chou King', Journal Asiatique, 204, jan.-mars 1934, 11-100. For a summary of the major early research into Chinese mythology, see D. Bodde, 'Myths of ancient China', in Samuel Kramer (ed.), Mythologies of the ancient world, New York, Anchor Books, 1961. 5 See, for example, Wolfram Eberhard, Lokalkulturen in alten China, I (supplement to T'oung Pao, xxxvII, Leiden, 1942) and H (Monumenta Serica, Monograph 3, Peking, 1942), translated and revised as Local cultures in South and East Asia, Leiden, 1968. 6 See K. C. Chang, Shang civilization, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1980, 342-55. 291 (c. 1050 B.C.) are some five centuries for which there are almost no contem- poraneous records except for a few bronze inscriptions and possibly some chapters of the Book of documents. The Shang Dynasty oracle bones are now increasingly accurately interpreted and provide much information about early Chinese thought which was not available to scholars seeking to interpret ancient Chinese mythology in the first part of the century,7 but because they are mainly ritual propositions-about food and other offerings to be made to ancestors and nature deities who in turn were benevolent or at least lacked malevolence-they do not include mythical narratives or, indeed, narratives of any other kind. Thus, although much information about the nature of Shang religion can be garnered from the inscriptions themselves, the names mentioned have no stories, the pattern of worship no explicit rationale. These must be interpreted in the light of later traditions. Another problem in reconstructions is that early Chinese texts do not normally recount myth, even euhemerized as history, except in very abbreviated references within the context of other discussion. These references must be pieced together to form an intelligible pattern of interlocking and concordant material, a 'tradition' as I will call it, of stories and beliefs which are con- sistent in more than one text. I assume that a textual tradition of this type reflected an oral tradition, but the period and region in which it was passed down can usually only be defined in general terms. There is a further problem in that names recorded from the oral tradition frequently differ, reflecting a lack of systemization and differences in the time and place at which they were recorded. In some cases, the names are simply ' variants', i.e. the characters are related phonologically or graphically and the figures have the same roles and relationships. Frequently, however, particularly when two traditions which may have a common source are compared, names which are graphically unrelated or only partially related appear to have a common role and have some common kinship relationships. I distinguish these from the above as ' equivalent' or ' structurally equivalent' when their role in two traditions is the same. In the following paper, I will explore the mythology and system of beliefs which surrounded the ten suns in Zhou and Shang texts and inscriptions. First, I will analyse the myth of ten suns rising from the Mulberry Tree as it appears in Zhou and Han texts, including the story of Archer Yi shooting nine of the suns. Secondly, I will analyse the tradition which includes the myth of the origin of the Shang people and the beginning of their dynasty and trace the relationship of this tradition with that of the Mulberry Tree. Thirdly, I will turn to the oracle bone inscriptions for evidence of an antecedent to these two traditions. Finally, I will examine the transformation of this mythology into the story of Shun's succession to Yao, with particular reference to the Yao dian chapter of the Book of documents. My hypothesis is that the Shang had a myth of ten suns and that the 7 David N. Keightley, Sources of Shang history: the oracle bone inscriptions of Bronze Age China, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1978 (see especially pp. 63, 154). 292 SARA4H ALLAN SONS OF SUNS: MYTH AND TOTEMISM IN EARLY CHINA Shang ruling group was organized in a totemic relationship to these suns.8 This myth was specific to the Shang and integrally associated with their rule. When the Zhou, who believed in one sun, conquered the Shang, the myth lost its earlier meaning, and the system its integrity, but the motifs were trans- formed and continued to occur in other contexts. At the popular level, people continued to believe in ten suns which rose in sequence from the branches of the Mulberry Tree in outlying regions. In the central states, this tradition was known but the ten suns were confined to the mythical past by the story that one day all of them came out at once and nine were shot by Archer Yi. The Shang continued to be associated with many of the motifs of this tradition and the myth of the origin of their tribe from the egg of a black bird is a transformation of the myth of the birth of the ten suns which rose from the Mulberry Tree, but the belief in ten suns had been lost. At the level of official history, the story of Yao's appointment of Shun includes another transforma- tion of the Shang cosmogonic sun myth. The Mulberry Tree tradition In the Zhou Dynasty, the tradition that there was only one sun was so widely accepted that Mencius quoted Confucius as saying, 'Heaven does not have two suns; the people do not have two kings '.9 This tradition was so prevalent from the Zhou Dynasty on that studies of the history of Chinese astronomy, such as those by Maspero, De Saussure and, more recently, Joseph Needham, begin with the assumption that the Chinese believed in one sun, although Maspero also discussed the belief in ten alternating suns in his study of ' legendes mythologiques '.10 Myth though it was and although it did not leave any trace on the history of Chinese astronomy, the belief in ten alternating suns was a strongly competing tradition in ancient China. Wang Chong's spirited denial in the Lun heng - fUj that it is possible for ten suns to perch on the branches of a tree indicates that the belief was widely accepted in the first century A.D.ll Wang Chong's account draws upon two earlier texts, the Shan hai jing ill * 9 (a corpus of geographic and myth 8 Other scholars who have related the Shang to a ten-sun myth include Akatsuka Kiyoshi ,; , ~, Chigoku kodai no shukyo to bunka: in ocho no saishi 4 r -gi t - CO - -- L {fC : PA 3' )ji CD j IE, Tokyo, Kadokawa Shoten, 1977 (see especially pp. 260, 443 ff.), and Chang Tsung-tung, Di Kult der Shang-Dynastie im Spiegel der Orakelinschriften: eine paldographische Studie zur Religion im archaischen China, Wiesbaden, Otto Harrassowitz, 1970, 131-2, 202-3. 9 Mengzi 9/7a (5A.4). Also in the Li ji (Zuantu huzhu li ji 6/4b, 15/13a, 20/16a). For ease of reference citations will be given in this fashion, referring to the juan/page number of the Si Bu Cong Kan [3 S a flI editions published in Shanghai, whenever possible. Other editions have, of course, been consulted and will be cited where there are textual problems. 10 L. De Saussure, Les origines de l'astronomie chinoise, Paris, Maisonneuve, 1930; Henri Maspero,' L'astronomie chinoise avant les Han ', T'oung Pao, xxvI, 1929, 267; Joseph Needham, Science and civilisation in China, IIn, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1959. 1 Lun heng jiaoshi -a |f t - , Huang Hui : W (ed.), Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1964, juan 11, p. 512. 293 SARAH ALLAN material of uncertain date and origin),12 and the Huainanzi af X^ - (compiled in the second century B.C.). This tradition is also prevalent throughout the Chu ci V g corpus, including its oldest section, the Tian wen X P, or 'Heavenly questions ' which may be as early as the fifth century B.C.13 The prevalence of this tradition in the Chu ci, and to a lesser extent in the Huainanzi, indicates an association with southern China and it could be argued that the tradition originated in the state of Chu in the Zhou Dynasty. However, an association between Shang and Chu culture has long been hypothesized14 and recent excavations of a middle-period Shang site at Panlongcheng c g ~ in the Huang Pi District of Hubei Province and sites south of the Yangtze River are proof that Shang culture extended well into the south early in the dynasty.15 Thus, the tradition may not have originated in the state of Chu in the Zhou Dynasty, but been retained in this semi- independent state after the Zhou tradition of one sun had replaced that of the Shang in the central plains. The Mulberry Tree tradition is best known to modern scholars from the myth that one day all ten suns rose at once and Archer Yi ) - shot down nine of them. This story may have been used to explain the discrepancy between the conflicting traditions of ten and one suns, but it assumes the essential motifs of the ten-sun tradition. These are: (a) the Fu Sang t A Tree at the foot of which is the Valley of the Sun which contains a pool of water; (b) ten as the original number of the suns; (c) the suns identified with birds; (d) Xihe i in as the mother of the suns. According to the Shuo wen & S3 the Fu Sang is a 'spirit tree, that from which the sun(s) go out .16 The sang or 'mulberry', with its red or white berries, depicted in oracle bone script as a tree with many mouths among its branches ', provides an apt metaphor for this tree on the branches of which many suns perched. Eu (*b'iwo) 17 #j or f{ is usually interpreted as the name of the mulberry tree and it is sometimes simply called the Fu Tree (fu mu j 7;c, *;). The character ; which is used in the Shuo wen for the sun tree 12 John Wm. Schiffeler, The legendary creatures of the Shan Hai Ching, Taipei, Orient Cultural Service, 1977, p. iii, considers that the work was begun in the third century B.c. Whatever its origin or origins, it was interpolated by Liu Xin and presented to Wang Mang (r. A.D. 9-23). 13 David Hawkes, Ch'u Tz'u: Songs of the South, New York, Beacon paperback, 1962, 45. 14 Yang Kuan j , ,' Zhongguo shanggu shi daolun' rp 4 _[ t t " , in Gu shi bian, vr, 151-3. See also David Hawkes, op. cit., 45. 15 K. C. Chang, Shang civilization, 59-60, notes 198-204, gives a list of references to the Chinese sources concerning sites excavated in the south. Chinese excavators date Panlongcheng to the Erligang Period, i.e. early or middle Shang, depending on the chronology adopted for the beginning of the dynasty. 16 Shuo wenjie zi gulin 72 3 T j $ f, Shanghai, Yi Xue Shu Ju, 1928, 2486. 17 The archaic reconstructions here and elsewhere in this paper are those of Bernhard Karlgren, Grammata serica recensa, Bulletin of the Mlluseum of Far Eastern Antiquities, xxix, 1957. 294 SONS OF SUNS: MYTH AND TOTE3MISM IN EARLY CHINA seems not to occur except with reference to this tree,l1 but even in this context the initial syllable fu is more commonly written with the homophone 4 'support'. Scholars have suggested various etymologies based on this character: among them, that the name refers to the support of the tree for the suns 19 and that two trees supported one another.20 However, *b'iwo was an initial syllable before many plant names in the Shi jing j E.21 This, together with the variation between the two characters in this instance, suggests that fu was originally an initial syllable which designated plants rather than the name of the tree. Thus, the Fu Sang Tree was originally simply the Mulberry Tree and the Fu Mu, the Tree. The references to the Mulberry Tree tradition in the Shan haijing, Huainanzi and Chu ci are generally in accordance, with only minor discrepancies. The most explicit descriptions of the tree are those in the Shan hai jing: Above the Tang Valley H 6 is the Fu Sang. [The Valley] is wherein the ten suns bathe. It is north of the Black Tooth Tribe. In the swirling water is a great tree. Nine suns dwell on its lower branches; one sun, on its uppermost branch. Shan hai jing (Hai wai dong jing) 9/97a-b. and: On the top of a mountain named Nie Yao Jun Di is the Fu Tree j ;. Although its trunk is three hundred li, its leaves are like those of mustard. The valley there is called the Warm Springs Valley Z . ~ (i.e. Tang Valley-Guo Pu). Above the Tang Valley a 4 is the Fu Tree. When one sun reaches it, another sun goes out; all of them carried by birds. Shan hai jing (Da huang dong jing) 14/65a-b. The name of the valley from which the suns rise is written in these passages as Tang (*t'ang) j, with a water radical-the same character which is used in Zhou texts for the name of the founder of the Shang Dynasty. It may also be written with one of three homop