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The Spirit Lord of Baishi Mountain: Feeding the Deities or Heeding the Yinyang*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

K.E. Brashier
K.E. Brashier*
Affiliation:
Dept. of Religion, Reed College, Portland, OR 97202
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Abstract

Overseen by hungry gods on the one hand or structured by impersonal cyclic forces on the other, the Eastern Han cosmos eluded a single consistent model accepted by everyone. Yet these cosmological perspectives were not competing arguments held by different people; they were inconsistent genres of discourse found within the same people and sometimes even within the same texts. Late Eastern Han mountain inscriptions may ritually appease sacrifice-eating gods with their hymns of praise, but they simultaneously describe the cosmos as a single pervasive system of qi-vapors, yinyang, and the five phases. How could these two models coexist?

Dated to 183 C.E., the “Stele to the Spirit Lord of Baishi Mountain” (baishi shenjun bei 白石神君碑) demonstrates how certain compromise positions existed between a universe overseen by external agencies and that consisting of resonating cycles. The inscription explains why this mountain deity merited sacrifice, describes the official process in which permission to sacrifice was secured, and identifies this hungry deity as one component within ritualized systems within spatial lineages and geographic bureaucracies and so he is not recognized as an entirely free agent. In addition, the inscription systematizes him by obligating him to participate in mechanical rituals of recompense and by reducing him to a ritualized Classicist stereotype, further diminishing his independence and individuality. The stele inscription s focus on ritual demonstrates how ritual lessens any perceived inconsistency between cosmic agencies and cosmic system.

This article first surveys the Han history of mountain sacrifices and mountain stelae, thereby placing the Spirit Lord of Baishi Mountain into historical context. The translation of the inscription dedicated to him follows, which for the purpose of analysis I divide into eight sections that address themes such as rituals of recompense, the generation of rain, and the transformation of the god into a Classicist hero. The conclusion summarizes how human structures such as lineage and bureaucracy fill in the gaps between these inconsistent genres of discourse human structures that result in impersonal qi-vapors becoming more human and personalized mountain deities becoming more structured.

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Articles
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Early China , Volume 26 , 2001 , pp. 159 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 2002

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Roel Sterckx, Donald Harper, Martin Kern, and an anonymous reviewer for Early China for their valuable assistance in producing this article.

References

1. For the purposes of this article, an “agent” is simply defined as an entity that causes change to things beyond itself, often implying that this agent has the authority to cause change.

2. For a recent discussion of how mechanized forces such as the five phases and yinyang are not moral but regular, see Schaberg, David, A Patterned Past: Form and Thought in Early Chinese Historiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 96–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Wang Aihe recently described the two factions within “the cosmological debate over emperorship” as follows:

Scholar-officials were the builders and living components of the imperial government; they were the ones who constructed the comprehensive cosmological system that sanctioned the emperor’s authority yet at the same time constrained his personal power. The emperor, while dependent on the scholar-officials’ system building for his authority and rule, sought to break away from the constraints of the system and increase his personal power. To do so, the emperor relied on religious specialists whom he personally hired—diviners, magic masters (fangshi 方士, recipe gentlemen), and shamans (wu 巫)—who served the emperor by helping him establish personal contact with the incalculable and infinite divine forces and deities.

See Wang, , Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Wang well argues the differences between these two perspectives, but I would only somewhat temper her tidy, “either/or” approach by allowing the two inconsistent perspectives to be held simultaneously, as will be evident below.

4. For example, Poo Mu-chou recognizes that elites may have practiced one set of beliefs at court and another at home, and he rightly concludes, “Thus, one cannot assume the existence of a ‘religion of the intellectuals’ and a ‘religion of the commoners’ without seriously oversimplifying the situation.” Even so, he lapses into the traditional class division elsewhere in his book. See Poo, , In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 3–5, 184Google Scholar.

5. This issue of simultaneously holding such inconsistent perspectives extends well beyond the mountain inscriptions and is characteristic of much Han religion. For example, charts excavated at Mawangdui organize gods in terms of the five phases, and in like fashion, Wang Mang slotted gods into directional groups around the capital. Benjamin Schwartz’s discussion entitled “Correlative Cosmology and the Realm of Religion” (The World of Thought in Ancient China [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985], 369–78Google Scholar) remains an excellent background summary to this “ongoing tension between the kind of religion which was compatible with correlative cosmology and the religious tendencies resistant to the subordination of the vast and incalculable realm of divine power to the constraints of the system” (p. 374). Its only shortcoming is that it does not handle particular texts in which this tension is manifested and so the mechanics and the language of the tension remain unexplored. It is hoped that this article is a concrete case study that bears out many of Schwartz’s generalizations but also expands upon them, adding nuances to his arguments and showing how the resolution of the tension was specifically realized and deemed acceptable.

6. For an argument that multiple inconsistent genres of discourse were more acceptable and legitimate in early China than in the modern West, see the introduction to Brashier, The Ancestral Cults in Early Imperial China (forthcoming).

7. Lun heng jiaoshi 論衡校釋, ed. Hui, Huang 黃暉 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1995), 470 (“Tan tian” 談天)Google Scholar.

8. For the most part, the sectioning of the inscription is thematically determined; sometimes these sections also reflect the inscription’s original language as in transitional phrases and rhyme changes.

9. Land of less than 500 meters in elevation also occupies only 25.2% of the current total land area, and of the twelve largest peaks in the world, seven of them are located in China. See Songqiao, Zhao, Physical Geography of China (Beijing: Science Press, 1986), 9Google Scholar.

10. For population distribution maps based on the Han census of 2 C.E., see Qiyun, Zhang 張其昀, Zhongguo lishi ditu 中國歷史地圖, vol. 2 (Taibei: Chinese Culture University Press, 1984), 59–60Google Scholar.

11. Hsu, Cho-yun, Han Agriculture: The Formation of Early Chinese Agrarian Economy (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980), 137Google Scholar.

12. Aat Vervoorn traces different types of eremeticism in early China, from immortality-seeking Daoists who indeed might go off into the mountains to philosophically minded Daoists for whom withdrawal was a state of mind, not location; from sincere Han Confucians who withdrew from the corrupt court in disgust to posturing Han Confucians who fashionably retired to gain prestige and even imperial attention. Some people may have fled to the mountains to escape danger, but Vervoorn argues at length that withdrawing from society is not inherently connected to living in the mountains. “A shaman may go to a mountain in order to draw spiritual power from it, and in retiring to such an isolated place provide a model for hermits who retire for other reasons, but for Zhuangzi’s sage, as we shall see, eremiticism is a state of mind, something which does not depend on physical location. The spirit man of Guye Mountain sees no point in becoming involved in the affairs of the world, but that is not the reason he lives on his mountain.” See Vervoorn, , Men of the Cliffs and Caves: The Development of the Chinese Eremitic Tradition to the End of the Han Dynasty (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1990), 61–62Google Scholar.

13. Hong Gua 洪适, Li shi 隸釋, in Shike shiliao xinbian 石刻史料新編 (Taibei: Xinwenfeng, 1982), ser. 1, vol. 9, 3.16b (“Sangong shan bei” 三公山碑).

14. Ikeda On 池田溫, “Chūgoku rekidai boken ryakkō” 中國歷代墓券略考, Tōyō bunka kenkyūjō kiyō 東洋文化研究所紀要 86 (1981), 223. The couplets are here translated in the volitive although they could also be merely descriptive. Why an Eastern Han document cites Chang’an and not Luoyang is unclear, although perhaps the phrase predates the change of capital and simply carries on unchanged as a rhymed pair.

15. Seidel, Anna, “Traces of Han Religion in Funeral Texts Found in Tombs,” Dōkyō to shūkyō bunka 道教と宗教文化, ed. Akizuki Kan’ei 秋月觀暎 (Tokyo: Hirakawa, 1987), 705Google Scholar.

16. Jiao Yanshou 焦延壽, Jiao shi Yi lin 焦氏易林 (Congshu jicheng ed.), 100 (“Bi: Kun” 賁: 坤). Other Yi lin verses describe the “mountain tomb mounds and hill graves” (shanling qiumu 山陵邱墓) where the dead remain and where the energies that once gave life to their bodies gradually dissipate; see Jiaoshi Yi lin, 13 (“Zhun: Jie” 屯: 解), 175 (“Jiaren: Lü” 家人: 旅), 203 (“Guai: Lü” 夬: 旅).

Notation for the Han rhyming finals in this article follows the system expounded in Luo Changpei 羅常培 and Zhou Zumo 周祖謨, Han Wei Jin Nanbei chao yun bu yanbian yanjiu 漢魏晉南北朝韻部演變研究, vol. 1 (Beijing: Kexue, 1958)Google Scholar; hereafter, Han yun bu. Most of the verses cited are included in their study. The first pair of lines in the Yi lin verse uses a combination of finals zhen 真 and yuan 元 in level tone (Han yun bu, 293), and the second pair uses final yu 魚 in level tone (Han yun bu, 275). Rhyming between finals is based on the evidence of the sound system of Han times (hence words in the final categories zhen 真 and yuan 元 were close in sound in the speech of many Han writers).

17. For the related terms shijie 尸解 and xingjie 形解 and their links to medicine and immortality cults, see Harper, Donald, “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought,” in The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., ed. Loewe, Michael and Shaughnessy, Edward L. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 882–83Google Scholar.

18. Zhang Qiao 章樵, Guwen yuan 古文苑 (Congshu jicheng ed.), 411 (“Jiuyi shan bei” 九疑山碑). For two examples of emperors sacrificing to Shun at Jiuyi Mountain, see Shi ji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua 1959)Google ScholarPubMed, 6.260, and Han shu 漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962), 99.4107.

19. Reading divinities into one’s experience with a mountaintop is of course not unique to early China. Anthony Ashley Cooper in the early eighteenth century vividly describes how humans project spirits onto the cloudy peaks:

Here space astonishes; silence itself seems pregnant, whilst unknown force works on the mind, and dubious objects move the wakeful sense. Mysterious voices are either heard or fancied, and various forms of deity seem to present themselves and appear more manifest in these sacred silvan scenes, such as of old gave rise to temples and favoured the religion of the ancient world. Even we ourselves, who in plain characters may read divinity from so many bright parts of the earth, choose rather these obscurer places to spell out that mysterious being, which to our weak eyes at best appears under a veil of cloud.

See Nicolson, Marjorie, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory: The Development of the Aesthetics of the Infinite (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997), 290Google Scholar.

20. Lakoff, George and Johnson, Mark, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 25Google Scholar.

21. Mark Edward Lewis alludes to using mountains in this mental mapping of the world when describing the antecedents to the Han feng-sacrifices at Tai Mountain (to be briefly discussed below). He writes, “Mountain sacrifices—previously invoking powers of locality, fertility, and military force—were linked together in the schematic, geometrizing world models of the period to serve as ritual metonyms for the totality of the earth and its links to Heaven.” See Lewis, , “The Feng and Shan Sacrifices of Emperor Wu of the Han,” in State and Court Ritual in China, ed. McDermott, Joseph P. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 64Google Scholar.

22. In her studies of lineage sacrifice, Nancy Jay argues that rituals created tangible—albeit artificial—ties. She theorizes as follows:

Rights of membership in a matrilineage may be determined by birth alone, providing sure knowledge of maternity. Paternity never has the same natural certainty, and birth by itself cannot be the sole criterion for patrilineage membership…. When the crucial intergenerational link is between father and son, for which birth by itself cannot provide sure evidence, sacrificing may be considered essential for the continuity of the social order. What is needed to provide clear evidence of social and religious paternity is an act as definite and available to the senses as is birth. When membership in patrilineal descent groups is identified by rights of participation in blood sacrifice, evidence of “paternity” is created which is as certain as evidence of maternity, but far more flexible.

See Jay, , Throughout Your Generations Forever: Sacrifice, Religion, and Paternity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 36Google Scholar. In other words, rituals do not represent invisible ties but create the ties and are a kind of substitute evidence when the senses lack tangible proof of kinship. As will be seen below, this type of thinking may be useful in understanding mountain sacrifices and how mental maps are created and crystalized through the performance of rituals. Via sacrificial ritual, humans make visible the patterns and relationships that are in reality invisible but are perceived to be real.

23. For an example of an imperial entourage making sacrifices to the Northern Marchmount and stopping in Yuanshi as it returned to Luoyang, see Hou Han shu 後漢書 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1965), 3.155Google Scholar. Yuanshi is roughly 140 kilometers south of the Northern Marchmount.

24. Bujard, , “Célébration et Promotion des Cultes Locaux: Six Stèles des Han Orientaux,” Bulletin de l’École Française d’Extrême-Orient 87 (2000), 262–63Google Scholar.

25. The inscribed record begins in the voice of the grand master of ceremonies who only identifies himself as “your servant Dan” (chen Dan 臣耽 ), but Hou Han shu, 8.346, indicates that Chen Dan served as grand master of ceremonies until the winter of 181 C.E. when this inscription was made.

26. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.18b–22b (“Wuji shan bei” 無極山碑). This document is instrumental for understanding Han bureaucratic procedures. For a similar text in which documents are passed along to different levels of government, see Shi ji, 60.2105–6.

27. For yiqian 義錢 meaning a donation of cash, see Hou Han shu, 58.1872.

28. For a review of their opinions, see Weichun, Yuan 袁維春, Qin Han bei shu 秦漢碑述 (Beijing: Beijing gongyi meishu, 1990), 522–23Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei” 白石神君碑).

29. Hidemasa, Nagata 永田英正, Kan dai sekkoku shūsei 漢代石刻集成 (Kyōto: Dōhōsha, 1994)Google Scholar, Honbun hen 本文編, 251 (“Baishi shenjun bei” 白石神君碑), relying upon Sanguo zhi 三國志 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 8.263. For libationers and masters of records in the Celestial Masters movement, see Robinet, Isabelle, Taoism: Growth of a Religion (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 57Google Scholar.

A third title on the back of the stele is “chief investigator” or “capital investigator” (dudu 都督). This title, sometimes loosely rendered as “military governor,” does not appear in Han descriptions of bureaucratic structure although it does appear in a text dated 151 C.E. inscribed in a Shandong tomb that describes the tomb’s pictorial program. There the dudu leads a retinue of carriages on tour—a common motif in Eastern Han stone reliefs—whereas an official watching out for thieves follows it. See Falin, Li 李發林, Shandong Han huaxiangshi yanjiu 山東漢畫像石研究 (Ji’nan: Qi Lu, 1982), 71Google Scholar; and Hung, Wu, Monumentality in Early Chinese Art and Architecture (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 243, 322Google Scholar.

30. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.25a (“Baishi shenjun bei” 白石神君碑); Kinseki takuhon kenkyūkai, Kan hi shūsei 漢碑集成 (Kyoto: Dōbōseki, 1994), 336; Zhenfang, Yang 楊震方, Beitie xulu 碑帖敘錄 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1984), 48Google Scholar; Ziyun, Ma 馬子云 and Anchang, Shi 施安昌, Beitie jianding 碑帖鑒定 (Guilin: Guangxi shifan daxue, 1993), 68Google Scholar; Wen, Gao 高文, Han bei jishi 漢碑集釋 (Kaifeng: Henan daxue, 1997), 457Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei” 白石神君碑); Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han bei shu, 509–10Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei”); Hidemasa, Nagata, Kan dai sekkoku shūsei, Honbun hen, 246Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei”); Bujard, “Célébration et Promotion des Cultes Locaux,” 251.

31. Han shu 漢書, 28.1543–44, 1547, 1550, 1560, 1569, 1576, 1581, 1582, 1583, 1585, 1586, 1591, 1611, 1617, 1635 (“Dili zhi” 地理志).

32. For examples, see Shui jingzhu beilu 水經注碑錄, ed. Zhicun, Shi 施蟄存 (Tianjin: Tianjin guji, 1987), 19Google Scholar (“Han Liyang shan bei” 漢黎陽山碑), 135 (“Han Dashi ling bei” 漢大石嶺碑 ), 167 (“Han Wubu shen miaobei” 漢五部神廟碑 ), 357 (“Han Peng shan bei” 漢彭山碑 ).

33. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.15b (“Sangong shan bei”).

34. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.17a (“Sangong shan bei”). For a similar example, the Yi lin likewise states, “As for the precipitous and lofty Northern Marchmount, the heavenly spirit is an honored guest” (cuiwei beiyue, tianshen guike 崔嵬北嶽, 天神貴客). See Jiao shi Yi lin, 13 (“Tun: Jiaren” 屯: 家人).

35. The better annotated transcriptions of the stele are Gao Wen, Han bei jishi, 457–67 (“Baishi shenjun bei”); Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han bei shu, 509–23Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei”); and Nagata Hidemasa, Kan dai sekkoku shūsei, Zuhan shakubun hen 圖版釋文編, 238–41, Honbun hen, 246–51(“Baishi shenjun bei”).

36. Citation of Li ji 禮記, “Ji tong” 祭統; see Xidan, Sun 孫希旦, Li ji jijie 禮記集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1989), 1236Google Scholar. The five constants are ji 吉, xiong 凶, bin 賓, jun 軍 and jia 嘉, or auspicious, joyful rituals such as at the lineage shrine; inauspicious, mourning rituals such as at the graveside; guest rituals; martial rituals; and respectful rituals such as capping and marriage. This five-fold division is employed to organize later treatises on ritual in the standard histories. Zheng Xuan’s 鄭玄 commentary correlates ji 吉 “auspicious” with ji 祭 “sacrifice.” See also, Zhou li zhushu 周禮注疏 (Shisan jing zhushu 十三經注疏 ed. [Yangzhou: Jiangsu Guangling guji, 1995]), 757 (“Da zong bo” 大宗伯), which states, “By means of the ji rituals, one serves the city’s ghosts, spirits, and earth deities” (yi jili shi bangguo zhi guishenqi 以吉禮事邦國之鬼神示).

37. The last section of the Li ji, “Jiao tesheng” 郊特牲 (Li ji jijie, 723), records that sacrifices have three purposes, namely to beseech, to recompense, and to avert calamity.

38. Ll. 9–12 are a close paraphrase of the Shang shu 尚書, “Yao dian” 堯典, where the six “revered ones” are variously glossed as six powers of nature such as heaven, earth, and the four seasons; or the sun, moon, stars, Tai Mountain, the Yellow River, and the sea. See Xingyan, Sun 孫星衍, Shang shu jinguwen zhushu 尚書今古文注疏 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1986), 38–41 (“Yao dian”)Google Scholar.

39. For “sacrificial plots” (zhaoyu 兆域), see Zhou li zhushu, 786 (“Chun guan: Zhongren” 春官: 冢人). Gao Wen, Han bei jishi, 461, explains ping 屏 “screen” based on a Zuo zhuan usage of the term pingshe 屏攝, defined by the exegete Du Yu 杜預 (222–284) as “a place of sacrifice” (jisi zhi wei 祭祀之位); see Bojun, Yang 楊伯峻, Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu 春秋左傳注 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981), 1396Google Scholar (Zhao 昭 18). Gao Wen further quotes Wei Zhao 韋昭 (d. 273 C.E.), who explains that the screen kept out the wind; see Shanghai Shifan daxue guji zhengli yanjiusuo, Guo yu 國語 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1995), 560–61 (“Chu yu” 楚語). This last source associates the erection of screens with sacrificial mounds.

40. Schaberg, , A Patterned Past, 209–10Google Scholar. Later (p. 214), Schaberg also writes that de 德 in the bao exchanges denotes the “material possession, the power to give, and the willingness to be recognized publicly as giver.” In 1. 7 of the Baishi inscription, bao likewise functions in tandem with de, with the former manifesting the latter.

41. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.21a (“Wuji shan bei”). The second and fourth lines use the entering-tone final of zhi 職 (Han yun bu, 221).

42. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.4b (“Xiyue Hua shan tingbei” 西嶽華山亭碑), and 2.7b (“Fan Yi xiu Hua yue bei” 樊毅脩華嶽碑), respectively.

43. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.21a (“Wuji shan bei”).

44. Gao Wen, Han bei jishi, 33 (“Si Sangong shan bei” 祀三公山碑).

45. Gao Wen, Han bei jishi, 270 (“Hua shan bei” 華山碑).

46. Schwartz, , The World of Thought in Ancient China, 372Google Scholar.

47. According to the Yuanshi district gazetteer, Baishi Mountain and Fenglong Mountain are indeed connected; see Dachang, Cheng 程大昌, Yong lu 雍錄, in Song Yuan difangzhi congshu 宋 元 地 方 志 叢 書, vol. 1 (Taibei: Zhongguo dizhi yanjiuhui, 1978), 228–29Google Scholar.

Lists of the Five Marchmounts (i.e. the principal mountains identified with each of the five directions) are not consistent in the received literature, although all lists identify the Northern Marchmount as Heng Mountain 恆山 in northern Shanxi Province. For discussions on marchmounts, see Wen, Gao, Han bei jishi, 271–72Google Scholar; and Kleeman, Terry F., “Mountain Deities in China: The Domestication of the Mountain God and the Subjugation of the Margins,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 114.2 (1994), 226–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

48. For “mysteriously assists” (youzan 幽贊), see the “Shuo gua” 說卦 (Explaining the trigrams) appendix of the Yi jing; Sun Xingyan 孫星衍, Zhou Yi jijie 周易集解 (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 1988), 685.

49. Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 201 (“Yu gong” 禹貢). For another inscription that explicitly cites this “Yu gong” statement along with Yu’s dredging the waterways, see Wen, Gao, Han bei jishi, 49Google Scholar (“Kai mu miao shique ming” 開母廟石闕銘).

50. Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 183–85 (“Yu gong”); bracketed inclusion of the term jiushan 九山 is based on Shi ji, 2.67.

51. Here I offer an alternative interpretation to commentators such as Nagata, Kan dai sekkoku shūsei, Honbun hen, 247, who rely on diverse lists of nine named mountains in the Lü shi chunqiu 呂氏春秋, in the Huainanzi 淮南子, and in commentaries to the Shi ji. Not only does the grammar of this passage distinguish the nine mountain sets, the same passage is also used to distinguish the “three ranges” immediately below.

52. For an attempt to identify these mountains, see Changfu, Li 李長傅, Yu gong shi di 禹貢釋地 (Yucheng: Zhongzhou shuhua, 1982), 95–104Google Scholar.

53. Han shu, 28.1545, 1566.

54. Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 183 (“Yu gong”).

55. Cited in Shang shu zhengyi 尚書正義 (Shisan jing zhushu ed.), 151 (“Yu gong”).

56. For other examples, see Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 404Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming” 西嶽華山堂闕碑銘), and Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.14a (“Yao keng junshen cibei” 殽阬君神祠碑), both of which locate their positions relative to the “middle range.”

57. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 253Google Scholar (“Fenglong shan song” 封龍山頌).

58. The term bieshen is relatively rare in the received literature. A passage in the Baihu tong 白虎通 justifies reverential sacrifices to the spirits of the she-mound because “the she-mound is a collateral spirit of earth” (she, di bieshen ye 社, 地別神也). See Baihu tong shuzheng 白虎通疏證, ed. Li, Chen 陳立 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994), 273Google Scholar (“Zaibian” 災變).

59. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 103Google Scholar (“Si Sangong shan bei”). Ebrey, Patricia, Chinese Civilization: A Sourcebook (New York: Free Press, 1993), 81Google Scholar, translates this inscription but renders santiao as the name of an individual mountain.

60. Xun, Ouyang 歐陽詢, Yiwen leiju 藝文類聚, ed. Shaoying, Wang 汪紹楹 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1985), 46.820Google Scholar. Hong Gua, Li shi 11.1b (“Taiwei Liu Kuan bei” 太尉劉寬碑), reads dan 誕 as tuo 託 and regards the character ti 體 as indecipherable, although in general, the reception of the body from one’s immediate parents is attested elsewhere in Han sources. For example, the Xiao jing孝經 begins by stating that the body comes from one’s parent; hence protecting it is the beginning of filial piety. See Shoukuan, Wang 汪受寬, Xiao jing yizhu 孝經譯注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1998), 2Google Scholar.

61. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 402 (“Xiyue Hua shan tingbei”)Google Scholar.

62. Shao, Ying 應劭, Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi 風俗通義校釋, ed. Shuping, Wu 吳樹平 (Tianjin: Tianjin renmin, 1980), 366Google Scholar (“Shanze: Wuyue” 山澤: 五嶽). The Fengsu tongyi’s bias toward Tai Mountain is not surprising because Ying Shao (ca. 140–before 204) grew up in eastern China and was in fact appointed governor of Tai Mountain Commandery in 189 C.E. several years before he composed the work.

63. Shi ji, 12.474; Han shu, 25.1249. Wu Hung in the early 1990s traced the competition between Tai and Song mountains in a conference paper entitled “The Competing Yue: Sacred Mountains as Historical and Political Monuments” (here cited with his permission).

64. Yixing, Hao 郝懿行, Shanhai jing jianshu 山海經箋疏 (Taibei: Zhonghua, 1982)Google Scholar, tuzan 圖讚, 17a. The second, fourth and sixth lines use final geng 耕 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 191).

65. Xunzi jijie 荀子集解, ed. Xianqian, Wang 王先謙 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988), 349Google Scholar (“Li lun” 禮論), the bracketed insertion in the translation being Wang Xianqian’s interpretation.

66. Shi ji, 28.1401. For other prescriptive cases of associating the clan progenitor with heaven or god, see Li ji jijie, 843 (“Mingtang wei” 明堂位), 866 (“Sangfu xiaoji” 喪服小記).

67. Zhou Yi jijie, 685–90 (“Shuo gua” 說卦).

68. Paraphrase of the Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳 to be discussed below; see Weiti, Wang 王維堤 and Shuwen, Tang 唐書文, Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan shizhu 春秋公羊傳釋注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1997), 250 (Xi 僖 31)Google Scholar. A couplet in the poem “Didong” 螮蝀 of the Shi jing states, “In the morning, [a rainbow] is climbing upward in the west, and during the morning there is rain” (zhao ji yu xi, chongzhao qi yu 朝隮于西, 崇朝其雨); Zheng Xuan specifies “morning” as the time between dawn and breakfast. See Mao Shi zhengyi 毛詩正義 (Shisan jing zhushu ed.), 318. Ll. 26 and 28 use the entering-tone final ji 緝 (Han yun bu, 240).

69. Chunqiu fanlu yizheng 春秋繁露義證, ed. Yu, Su 蘇輿 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), 423–24Google Scholar (“Shanchuan song” 山川頌); also translated in Holzman, Donald, Landscape Appreciation in Ancient and Early Medieval China: The Birth of Landscape Poetry (Hsin-chu, Republic of China: National Tsing-Hua University, 1996), 34–39Google Scholar.

70. The phrase zhongnan dunwu 終南惇物 occurs in the Shang shu, “Yu gong,” in Yongzhou 雍州 and is usually interpreted as two mountain names; see Shang shu jin guwen zhushu, 179. However, Hong Gua notes that in the Wuji Mountain inscription the compound dunwu 敦物 should be parallel to the pines, lacquer trees, and bamboo produced by other regions in the following lines, hence my translation as “accumulated products” rather than as the name of a mountain. Cheng Dachang, the author of an early gazetteer for this region, also understands 惇物 as “accumulated products.” See Dachang, Cheng, Yong lu, 228–29Google Scholar. (L. 70 of the Baishi Mountain inscription below is another example of a canonical citation in which a proper name is changed into an ordinary phrase.)

71. See Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 153 (“Yu gong”). Daichong 岱崇 is a variant for Daizong 岱宗, another name for Tai Mountain. The addition of appropriate radicals, in this case adding the mountain radical to zong 宗, is a typical technique for converting early Chinese words into certain ritualized written forms such as occur in “poetic expositions” (fu 賦). This lexicographical practice may also explain in part the origin of the character dai 岱. Thus “Daichong” may have been regarded as a written, ritualized name for Tai Mountain. (My thanks to Martin Kern for pointing this out to me.)

72. Tiaodang 條蕩 is a variant for xiaodang 篠簜 “short and tall bamboos.” All surviving transcriptions of the text have yang 楊, which is also a recognized variant for yang 揚 as in Yangzhou 揚州. According to the “Yu gong” (Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 160–61), Yangzhou produces short and tall bamboos. Yangyue is an abbreviation of Yangzhou Nanyue 南越 and can refer to the south in general; see Shi ji, 113.2967. The more general term is preferred here because in the “Yu gong,” varnish trees come from Jingzhou 荊州 (Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 166), the southern region west of Yangzhou.

73. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.20b (“Wuji shan bei”). The hymn that concludes this inscription also refers to the plentiful animals and grasses to be found on the mountain.

74. For examples of such restrictions in the received literature, see Xunzi jijie, 160, 165, 168 (“Wang zhi” 王制 ); and Feibai, Ma 馬非百 , Guanzi qingzhong pian xinquan 管子輕重篇新詮 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988), 402, 411Google Scholar (“Di shu” 地數 ). In the latter example, the ruler is advised to erect sacrificial altars to beneficial mountains, altars that would also mark the mountain as off limits to everyone else. If a person’s foot should stray across the demarcated boundary, that foot was to be chopped off.

75. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.16a (“Sangong shan bei”). The second and fourth lines use final yu 魚 in the rising tone (Han yun bu, 143).

The pairing of the dragon and tiger is the symbol of yang and yin intermingling and hence an image of fertility, although normally the dragon is blue (qing 青).

76. Wen xuan 文選 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986), 48.2143, reads fei wei bian zhi wo 非惟遍之我, which alters the meter. Han shu, 57.2607, reads fei wei pian wo 匪唯偏我.

77. Both Wen xuan, 48.2143, and Han shu, 57.2607, read fan bu hu zhi 氾布護之.

78. Han shu, 57.2607, reads huai er mu zhi 懷而慕之.

79. Shi ji, 117.3070. The standard rhyming is in even lines as transcribed. In the first half, the second, fourth, sixth, and eighth lines use final you 幽 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 133); in the second half, the tenth, twelfth, fourteenth, sixteenth, and eighteenth lines use final zhi 之 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 126).

The speaker in the hymn is often regarded as the emperor, although the identification is uncertain. It may be a generic voice of the people, or because the closing lines quoted here anthropomorphize the mountain, it could be Tai Mountain itself speaking.

80. For examples, see Eno, Robert, “Deities and Ancestors in Early Oracle Inscriptions,” in Religions of China in Practice, ed. Lopez, Donald S. Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 49Google Scholar; and Keightley, David N., The Ancestral Landscape: Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200–1045 B.C.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 113–14Google Scholar.

81. Xunzi jijie, 7 (“Quanxue” 勸學).

82. Li ji jijie, 1194 (“Jifa” 祭法).

83. Chunqiu Gongyang zhuan shizhu, 250 (Xi 31). He Xiu 何休 explains that the measure cun 寸 is a finger width and the measure fu 膚 is a palm width (i.e. four finger widths). Chong 崇 is taken for zhong 終 by most commentators, and a few later citations of this passage replace chong with zhong. Besides the mountain inscriptions, this passage is frequently quoted in later received texts such as the Huainanzi; see Huainan honglie jijie 淮南鴻烈集解, ed. Wendian, Liu 劉文典 (Taibei: Wenshizhe, 1992), 460Google Scholar (“Fan lun” 氾論).

84. Chen Shouqi 陳壽祺, Shang shu dazhuan 尚書大傳 (Congshu jicheng ed.), 38.

85. Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi, 366 (“Shanze: Wuyue”). A variant for dai 岱 is tai 胎 (“womb”), adding to the image of sexual reproduction with the intermingling of the yin and yang; for a similar statement, see Baihu tong shuzheng, 278 (“Fengshan” 封禪). The explication of this ritual name for Tai Mountain is unclear. While zong can mean “elder,” there is little evidence that dai meant anything other than a name for this mountain. The phonetic element of dai is dai 代, meaning “to substitute” or “to alternate,” thus fitting the rest of the Fengsu tongyi’s explanation in which yin and yang in their intercourse exchange places. In other words, this passage is attempting to reveal how dai and ultimately tai is linked to the image of fertility and generation.

Another passage in Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi, 55 (“Zhengshi pian” 正失) states:

所以必於岱宗者, 長萬物之宗, 陰陽交代, 觸石而出, 膚寸而合, 不崇朝遍雨天下, 唯泰山乎。

The reason why (the fengshan sacrifice) must be carried out at Daizong is because it shows respect for the ancestor of the myriad things. Yin and yang in their intercourse exchange places, strike against the rocks and emerge, enclosing every inch of space. Only Tai Mountain can spread rain all over the world before the morning is even finished.

Based on the passage in “Shanze: Wuyue,” Wu Shuping believes that the above passage must be garbled; but the Chunqiu yuanming bao states, “When yin and yang join, they become clouds” (yinyang ju wei yun 陰陽聚為雲); see Jian, Xu 徐堅, Chuxue ji 初學記 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1980), 14Google Scholar. For a third Fengsu tongyi citation of the passage about Tai Mountain and rain, see Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi, 305 (“Sidian: Yu shi” 祀典: 雨師).

Yin and yang are further associated with mountains because mountains are fixed points with a shady yin side to the north and a sunny yang side to the south.

86. Yiwen leiju, 121 (“Shan” 山). The Chunqiu fanlu provides a second example that states “The earth produces clouds that become rain and gives rise to qi-vapors that become the wind” (di chu yun wei yu, qi qi wei feng 地出雲為雨, 起氣為風). In this example, it is significant that clouds and qi-vapors are regarded as separate, parallel substances. See Chunqiu fanlu yizheng, 316 (“Wuxing dui” 五行對).

For further discussion of many of these extracts on the nature of rain and clouds, see Sennosuke, Tamura 田村專之助, Chūgoku kishōgakushi kenkyū 中國氣象學史研究 (Mishima: Chūgoku kishōgakushi kenkyū kankōkai, 1977), vol.3, 55–91, 135–53Google Scholar.

87. A fragment from the Chunqiu shuoti ci 春秋說題辭 (Yiwen leiju, 121 [“Shan”]) accords with the Chunqiu yuanming bao, stating:

山之為言宣也。含澤布氣, 調五神也。

“Mountain” as a word refers to “propagation.” It contains dampness and spreads forth qi-vapors, harmonizing the five spirits.

Again the qi-vapors are contained in the mountains. The “five spirits” are presumably those of the five directions. In the Kong congzi 孔叢子, mountains “spew forth” (tu 吐) the wind and clouds; see Fu, Kong 孔鮒, Kong congzi (Han Wei congshu 漢魏叢書 ed. [Changchun: Jilin daxue, 1992]), 332 (“Lun shu” 論書)Google Scholar.

88. Han shu, 72.3075.

89. Hou Han shu, 6.256.

90. Lun heng jiaoshi, 515–16 (“Shuo ri” 說日).

91. In like manner, clouds have also been described as the “tool” (ju 具) of rain; see Hou Han shu, 30.1055.

92. Lun heng jiaoshi, 299 (“Leixu” 雷虛); 392 (“Yizeng” 藝增).

93. Shandong Zhongyi xueyuan and Hebei yi xueyuan, Huangdi neijing suwen jiaoshi 黃帝內經素問校釋 (Beijing: Renmin weisheng, 1995), 65 (“Yinyang yingxiang dalun” 陰陽應象大論).

94. Needham, Joseph, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 468–69Google Scholar.

95. Ke, Yuan 袁珂, Shanhai jing jiaozhu 山海經校注 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1986), 54Google Scholar (“Xishan jing” 西山經).

96. Wen xuan, 1.42 (“Baoding shi”). The couplet’s rhyme uses final zhen 真 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 201).

97. Huainan honglie jijie, 220–21 (“Jingshen” 精神).

98. For example, Xiao Ji 蕭吉 (d. 614) explicitly made this association; see Ji, Xiao, Wuxing dayi jiaozhu 五行大義校註, ed. Shōhachi, Nakamura 中村璋八 (Taibei: Wuling, 1986), 49 (“Lun xiangsheng” 論相生)Google Scholar.

99. Beijing tushuguan jinshi zu, Beijing tushuguan cang Zhongguo lidai shike taben huibian 北京圖書館藏中國歷代石刻拓本匯編 (Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou guji, 1989), 21 (“Nianchan xian Ping shan shenci bei” 黏蟬縣平山神祠碑). Nianchan district is in north-western Korea.

100. Wen, Gao, Han bei jishi, 243Google Scholar (“Fenglong shan song” 封龍山頌).

101. For another example of the Gongyang zhuan citation being altered to fit a poetic meter, in this case in a divination guide, see Jiao shi Yi lin, 161 (“Dazhuang: dui” 大狀: 兌). There the Gongyang zhuan passage is being applied to both Song Mountain and Tai Mountain, perhaps symptomatic of the competition between them noted above (pp. 180–81).

102. Wen, Gao, Han bei jishi, 270Google Scholar (“Hua shan bei”). The second and fourth lines use final yang 陽 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 187).

103. See Shi ji, 27.1291 (main text and commentary), where the Dipper’s handle is also associated with Hua Mountain. Huainan honglie jijie, 253 (“Benjing” 本經), similarly states, “Yaoguang is the provisioner of the myriad things” (yaoguang zhe, ziliang wanwu zhe ye 瑤光者, 資糧萬物者也).

104. Lun heng jiaoshi, 668 (“Ming yu” 明雩).

105. Li ji jijie, 1278 (“Kongzi xianju” 孔子閒居). For discussion of the passage, see p. 204 below. For a second example using shen in a mountain’s rainmaking capacity, see Jiao shi Yi lin, 161 (“Dazhuang: dui”), which cites the Gongyang zhuan locus classicus and ascribes this ability to Song Mountain and Tai Mountain, commenting that “their peaks are upright and spiritual” (jun zhi qie shen 峻直且神).

106. Wen xuan, 19.875–76 (“Gaotang fu”). This legend even includes some of the sexual undertones of yinyang in their intercourse-generating rain at Tai Mountain, as seen above in the Fengsu tongyi. For translations of many of the rain goddess poems, see Owen, Stephen, An Anthology of Chinese Literature: Beginnings to 1911 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1996), 189–203Google Scholar.

107. The mountain inscriptions also include cases of anthropomorphizing the rainmaking process. For example, in 176 C.E. a drought crippled the empire when the official Su Teng 蘇騰 dreamed he had ascended Shouyang Mountain 首陽山 and met with spirit officials in human form. The emperor then ordered rain requests to be made there, and the rains finally came. See Cai Zhonglang waiji 蔡中郎外集 (Sibu beiyao ed.), 1.1a. Several provinces claim to possess the Shouyang Mountain where Boyi 伯夷 and Shuqi 叔齊 starved themselves to death rather than serve the new Zhou Dynasty, but this inscription, according to Shi Zhicun (Shui jingzhu beilu, 17), was located in the district of Yanshi 偃師, Henan.

Hou Han shu, 8.337–38, confirms that a major rain sacrifice was indeed carried out in this year. Chonggao Mountain 崇高山 had its name changed back to Songgao Mountain 嵩高山 as part of the search for rain. For other Eastern Han imperial edicts ordering sacrifices to mountains “capable of causing clouds to arise and rains to come” (neng xingyun zhiyu 能興雲致雨), see Hou Han shu, 2.123, 2.139, 6.259, and 6.278.

108. The kingdom is Changshan, and the district is Yuanshi.

109. I follow Nagata’s punctuation that differs from Gao Wen and Yuan Weichun, who place qu 去 at the end of the previous phrase. Their reading may imply the spirits of the mountains come to receive the sacrifice and then “withdraw.” Nagata’s punctuation simply renders the qu as an indication of past action. “Formal” (fa 法) is here used in the sense of “formulaic.” According to Shi ji, 99.2723, and Han shu, 43.2128, when Shusun Tong 叔孫通 (fl. early second century B.C.E.) orchestrated the first ritual reverence of the Han emperor, the ceremony ended with the fajiu 法酒 or “formal drinking of alcohol” in which everyone came forward in order of rank, bowed his head to the floor and toasted Gaozu 高祖. Nagata believes that the term fashi 法食 is akin to fajiu.

110. Gai Gao also appears in the Wuji Mountain inscription (Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.20a [“Wuji shan bei”]) where his title is suozi danan 所子大男 and he is there likewise associated with Sangong Mountain. The title “Maintainer of the People” is unclear, and Gai Gao does not appear in the standard histories.

111. According to Chen Yixi, Jinshi yiwen lu 金石遺文錄 (as cited in Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 515Google Scholar), xiangxian 相縣 refers to Changshan’s chancellor and Yuanshi’s prefect, namely Feng Xun and Wang Yi 王翊 respectively. (Both names appear on the stone in the inscribed line of “credits” which follow the hymn.)

112. When office-holders presented a request in later times, their drawing upon past cases was called a “precedent” (li 例). Han court discourse also employed precedents but called them bi or bilei 比類. See Yu Yue 俞樾, Du Han bei 讀漢碑 (in Shike shiliao xinbian, vol. 3.2, 593), 25.10a.

113. As Nagata notes, jingyong 經用 means “regular expenses” in other Han texts such as Han shu, 24.1159. As the imperial court sanctioned the sacrifice, this statement may mean that the district merely oversaw the distribution of funds.

114. In addition to food offerings, gifts of jade tablets and disks are most frequently mentioned in the mountain inscriptions and elsewhere. The inscriptions refer to jade sacrifices on par with those of Tai Mountain, to jade being buried, and to jade being presented to either the mountain itself or the “thearchs on high” (shangdi 上帝). See Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han bei shu, 284Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan miaobei” 西嶽華山廟碑), 255 (“Fenglong shan song”); Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.12b (“Tongbo Huai yuan miaobei” 桐柏淮源廟碑); Han shu, 6.204. According to the Huainanzi, offering jade coincides with land fertility, fertility that would presumably include timely rains; so as not to damage the qi-vapors of growth, the offering of jade was substituted for the killing of animals. See Huainan honglie jijie, 162–63 (“Shi ze” 時則).

Jade of course originates in the mountains, so sacrificing jade could be regarded as an exchange. Sometimes the exchange is even nullified. Two Hua Mountain inscriptions draw upon the famous case in which the mountain actually returned the jade, refusing to recognize Qin Emperor Shihuang 秦始皇帝 as a legitimate sovereign any longer. See Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 398Google Scholar (“Xiu xiyue miaoji” 脩西嶽廟記), 404 (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming”); Shi ji, 6.259.

115. Ll. 46 and 48 use final yang 陽 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 187); ll. 50 and 52 use final geng 耕 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 195).

116. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han bei shu, 280–81Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan miaobei”). The three structures are also listed in the “Poetic Exposition on Immortals” (“Xian fu” 仙賦) by Huan Tan 桓譚 (ca. 43 B.C.E.–28 C.E.); see Zhen’gang, Fei 費振剛, Shuangbao, Hu 胡雙寶 and Minghua, Zong 宗明華, Quan Han fu全漢賦 (Beijing: Beijing daxue, 1993), 248Google Scholar.

As the Yi lin states, “As for the mountain top of Hua’s summit, it is where the path of the immortals traverses (Hua shou shantou, xiandao suoyou 華首山頭, 仙道所游); see Jiao shi Yi lin, 70 (“Qian: jing” 謙: 井).

117. The Shanhai jing also lists two places where shamans ascend and descend, namely the kingdom of Wuxian (巫咸) and Ling Mountain (“Ling shan” 靈山). See Shanhai jing jiaozhu, 219 (“Haiwai xi jing” 海外西經), 396 (“Dahuang xi jing” 大荒西經).

118. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 405–6Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming”). Han mirror inscriptions also depict the ascent of Hua and Tai mountains, the subsequent meeting with immortals, and the possibility of ascending into heaven itself. For six examples, see Karlgren, Bernhard, “Early Chinese Mirror Inscriptions,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 6 (1934), 29–30Google Scholar.

119. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 408Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming”), in turn citing Mao Shi zhengyi, 469 (“Chu ci” 楚茨).

120. Although the inscriptions typically vilify Wang Mang as a ruler who destroyed the rituals, the historical records tell a different tale. When the treatise on ritual in the Hou Han shu describes ceremonies such as announcements made to heaven, suburban sacrifices, and welcoming the seasonal qi-vapors, it repeatedly states they accorded with “the former affairs in the Yuanshi reign period” (yi Yuanshi zhong gushi 以元始中故事). That reign period from 1 to 6 C.E. was in fact Wang Mang’s own regency. For examples, see Hou Han shu, zhi 志, 9.3157, 3181 (twice), 3184, 3194. B.J. Mansvelt Beck concluded that, “the influence of Wang Mang on Later Han sacrifices is so deep that it would seem better to group him with the latter dynasty, instead of regarding his reign as the last phase of Earlier Han.” See Beck, Mansvelt, The Treatises of Later Han: Their Author, Sources, Contents and Place in Chinese Historiography (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1990), 105Google Scholar. Furthermore, Guangwu’s 光武 list of prophetic omens inscribed on the side of Tai Mountain—omens indicating his rise to power—echoes Wang Mang’s own list of omens that he himself published upon becoming emperor. It was also Wang Mang who began the practice of recognizing multiple zu 祖-ancestors or progenitors within the same lineage, a practice continued in the Eastern Han. Although Eastern Han scholars, court officials, and mountain inscribers could not bring themselves to credit him, they clearly continued significant portions of his ritual program. Like the Qin, the Xin was a brief dynasty with a long-lasting impact.

121. General Duan Wei 段煨 is listed in this inscription as marquis of Minxiang 閺鄉, a title that he did not receive until 198 C.E., according to Hou Han shu, 72.2342–43. Thus this inscription is relatively late in the overall Eastern Han inscription corpus, a corpus that predominantly consists of grave stelae and in which mountain inscriptions only figure as a significant minority. Few inscriptions are dated beyond the end of the second century.

122. “Tripled” gate pillars perhaps suggests the style of three-tiered pillars, the highest tier being closest to the spirit road.

123. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 407Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming”), comments that this is where the path enters the shrine itself.

124. According to the Li ji, shrine rituals may be suspended in case of fire in the shrine, an eclipse, or a downpour that soaks one’s clothing. See Li ji jijie, 528 (“Zengze wen” 曾子問).

125. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 407–8Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming”).

126. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 409Google Scholar (“Tongbo miaobei” 桐柏廟碑).

127. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 106Google Scholar (“Si Sangong shan bei” 祀三公山碑). As most mountain shrines (including this one) seek rain, it may have faced east because east was the cosmological direction of fertility.

128. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.8b (“Fan Yi xiu Hua yue bei”).

129. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.6a (“Fan Yi fu Hua xiamin zutian kousuan bei” 樊毅復華下民租田口算碑).

130. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 282Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan miaobei”). The stele is dated 165 C.E., and its role as a replacement for the earlier, worn away stele further suggests a longer tradition of mountain inscriptions.

131. Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 42.

132. Shi ji, 28.1357; Li ji jijie, 347, 316 (“Wang zhi” 王制). In the Han, these Li ji passages were used to elucidate the “Yao dian” passage.

133. Shang shu dazhuan, 38.

134. Shi ji, 12.458, 28.1387. For lists of designated sacrificial mountains prior to Emperor Wu, see Shi ji, 28.1371–72, 1393.

135. Shen jian (Han Wei congshu ed.), 555 (“Shi shi” 時事). The Shen jian’s contention that districts carried out the wang-sacrifice is further demonstrated in Hua Mountain inscriptions that request tax relief for the districts carrying out the expensive sacrifices.

136. Fengsu tongyi jiaoshi, 365 (“Shan ze”), quoting a lost commentary to the Xiao jing. For a similar statement, see Shang shu dazhuan, 38.

137. Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 823 (Cheng 成 5); 1636 (Ai 哀 6).

138. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.7b (“Fan Yi xiu Hua yue bei”). The “three excellencies” in the Eastern Han were the grand commandant, the grand minister over the masses and the grand minister of works.

139. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.12a–b (“Tongbo Huai yuan miaobei”). Tongbo Mountain is one of the twenty-six mountains listed in the “Yu gong” above.

140. For a brief but excellent general discussion on slotting cosmic forces into a bureaucratic structure, see Schwartz, , The World of Thought in Ancient China, 372–74Google Scholar. Yet as previously noted, because Schwartz does not deal with specific texts, the mechanics of the bureaucratic structure are not fully developed. In essence, the mountain bureaucratic structure was not simply a handy paradigm that reconciled two extreme perspectives. It also functioned like a bureaucracy, hearing pleas (i.e. prayers) and issuing disbursements (i.e. rain). In terms of the mountain lineage discussed in section II, the physical pattern of greater and lesser mountain ranges indeed resembled an actual family tree. In other words, there were concrete circumstances that made the resolution of systems more palatable and ensured each paradigm’s survival. These necessary concrete circumstances that gave the paradigms their staying power are only evident when looking at specific cases and texts.

141. For a thorough study on how the Yuanshi mountains secured official recognition through a process of submitted request, official inquiry, and then imperial decree, see Bujard, , “Célébration et Promotion des Cultes Locaux,” 247–66Google Scholar. Bujard describes how local cults and administrative officials interacted, even to the point that officials may have endeavored to associate themselves with the up-and-coming cults. The merged influence of canonically trained officials and mountain deity cults is evident in the stele rhetoric.

142. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 520Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei”). Nagata, , Kan dai sekkoku shūsei, Honbun hen, 246Google Scholar, wrongly transcribes jiangjun 將軍 as shenjun 神君 but later gives the correct transcription in his commentary (248n8).

143. A few epigraphers maintain that the addition is not graffiti but was added to the stone when the whole stele was recarved in 354 C.E. For the conflicting opinions, see Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 520–21Google Scholar (“Baishi shenjun bei”). If it has been recarved, the transmitted doctrine might be the stele text itself. Recarving Han stelae is not unknown and is even depicted in Qing woodblocks; see Cao Jiang xiaonu miaozhi 曹江孝女廟志, in Fang Jun 方駿 and Shang Ke 尚可, Zhongguo gudai chatu jingxuan 中國古代插圖精選 (Nanjing: Jiangsu renmin, 1992), 89.

144. Citation of Shi jing, “Fuyi” 鳧鷖, describing proper sacrifices that satisfy the spirits; see Mao shi zhengyi, 538.

145. Possible paraphrase or alternative version of Shi jing, “Yun Han” 雲漢; see Mao shi zhengyi, 562. The inscription has si 祀 for the Shi jing’s shen 神. This alternative wording appears in other stelae (e.g. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 202Google Scholar [“Lu xiang Yi Ying qing zhi baishi zushi bei” 魯相乙瑛請置百石卒史碑]) as well as in Tang exegesis (e.g. Wen xuan, 24.1148 [“Da Zhang Shiran”答張士然]), thus suggesting a Shi jing version other than the Mao tradition. Citing this line is appropriate for a mountain where rain sacrifices were conducted as the poem concerns praying to end droughts and to exorcise the drought demon.

146. Possible paraphrase or alternative version of Shi jing “Feng nian” 豐年; see Mao shi zhengyi, 594. The inscription has yin 殷 for the Shi jing’s jie 皆.

147. L1.57–62 appear in the Guo yu, although the Guo yu adds a pair of lines on spirits lacking licentious behavior that might be inappropriate in this inscription; see Guo yu, 104 (“Zhou yu” 周語). For this inscription’s xian 鮮 “arousing,” the Guo yu has san 散 “scattering.”

148. This line is also similar to a statement in the Guo yu; see Guo yu, 559 (“Chu yu”).

149. While the average price of grain is difficult to determine, it seems to have hovered at 100 cash per shi 石 (approximately twenty liters) during the middle years of the Han Dynasty, although it dramatically fell to five cash per shi in prosperous years such as those during the reign of Emperor Xuan 宣 (74–49 B.C.E.). See Sadao, Nishijima, “The Economic and Social History of Former Han,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, ed. Loewe, Michael and Twitchett, Denis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 590Google Scholar. Eastern Han grain prices seem to have been somewhat lower, estimated at sixty to seventy cash per shi. See Hsu, Cho-yun, Han Agriculture, 71–72Google Scholar.

Several commentators debate whether sheng 升 (a measure one-hundredth of a shi) should be read as dou 斗 (a measure one-tenth of a shi) in this and another similar mountain inscription. If the character were left as sheng, this inscription would be praising a far-too-high price of five hundred cash per shi in a year when the grain supply was high and the price thus low. If the character were read as dou, the resulting price of fifty cash per shi would be lower than average Eastern Han grain prices but not significantly so. Yet if sheng is to be read as a different character similar in appearance, then perhaps it should instead be read as zhi 至 “to reach to.” This reading may be justified by the Fenglong Mountain inscription that states su zhi san qian 粟至三錢 “the grain reached a price of three cash,” the implied measure being the standard shi. This grain price would equal the low prices of prosperous years in the Western Han, and it would fit the boastful tone of this and other mountain inscriptions.

150. Ll. 54 and 56 use the final zhen 真 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 203); ll. 62, 65, 67 and 69 use the final geng 耕 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 196); ll. 63 and 64 probably use the final yang 陽 or a combination of finals yang 陽 and dong 東 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 189).

151. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.8a (“Fan Yi xiu Hua yue bei”).

152. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.13a (“Tongbo Huai yuan miaobei”).

153. Xunzi jijie, 316 (“Tian lun” 天論).

154. Lun heng jiaoshi, 664–81 (“Ming yu”).

155. Lun heng jiaoshi, 693–706 (“Luan long” 亂龍).

156. The last stanza of the last Shi jing ode begins with the ascent of a mountain to get materials to construct a temple: zhi bi jing shan 陟彼景山 “ascend that Jing Mountain” (Mao shi zhengyi, 628 [“Yin wu” 殷武]). There jing shan refers to Jing Mountain in Henan where the Shang capital was located. The citation in the Baishi Mountain inscription evokes the brightness of the mountain praised in ll. 63–65 and 77, while associating its ascent with a canonical precedent.

157. Ll. 71 and 73 use the final geng 耕 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 196). It conceivably continues the rhyme from the inscription’s previous couplets, but unlike Luo Changpei and Zhou Zumo, I treat it as separate because of the inclusion of a transitional phrase, the change in meter, and the change in theme.

158. In the section of the Mu tianzi zhuan dated to ca. 350 B.C.E., King Mu “inscribes his vestiges” (mingji 銘跡) for later generations on the mountain of Xianpu or Xuanpu 縣圃; see Cheng Rong 程榮, Mu tianzi zhuan 穆天子傳 (Han Wei congshu ed.), 295.

159. In a humorous passage from Han Feizi (ca. 280–ca. 233 B.C.E.), Zhu Fu 主父 of Zhao 趙 ordered that impressions (literally “vestiges”) be carved on a local mountain called Bowu 播吾, and these one-meter-long footprints were inscribed, “Zhu Fu constantly travelled here” (Zhu Fu chang you yu ci 主父常遊於此). Commentators read chang 常 as chang 嘗 “once.” The next story in the Han Feizi tells of King Zhao 昭 of the Qin ordering giant game pieces to be made on Hua Mountain along with an inscription that read, “King Zhao once played the bo-game with the spirits of heaven here” (Zhao wang chang yu tianshen bo yu ci yi 昭王嘗與天神博於此矣). In both Han Feizi stories, these places were only accessible via scaling ladders, thus raising a question about the intended audience. See Han Feizi xin jiaozhu 韓非子新校注, ed. Qiyou, Chen 陳奇猷 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 2000), 688–89Google Scholar (“Wai chu shuo zuo shang” 外儲說左上).

160. While Qin Emperor Shihuang’s inscriptions, written between 219 and 210 B.C.E., survive in Shi ji, 6.242–262, little remains of the physical inscriptions themselves (the Tai Mountain inscription is reduced to ten legible characters of the original 222, and is now poorly displayed in the Dai shrine 岱廟 in Taian. Copies were made of some through the centuries. There also exist early descriptions of the physical stones, such as that of Li Qi 李跂 in the Song Dynasty. See Sili, Wang 王思禮 and Fei, Lai 賴非, “Han bei yuanliu, fenqi he beixing shiyi” 漢碑源流分期和碑形釋義, in Han bei yanjiu 漢碑研究, ed. Zhongguo shufajia xiehui Shandong fenhui (Jinan: Qi Lu, 1990), 27Google Scholar; and Bangjin, Fan 范邦瑾, “Dong Han mu bei suyuan” 東漢墓碑溯源, in Han bei yanjiu, 56–57Google Scholar.

The Qin Emperor Shihuang’s inscriptions record the merits of China’s unifier. Written in tetrasyllabic verse, they serve as Classicist-influenced banners of imperial merit, not only praising territorial unity but also enhancing it by their very presence on the eastern mountains, far from the western capital of Xianyang. For example in 212 B.C.E. when the emperor erected a stone at the edge of the Eastern Sea, “he regarded it as the eastern gate of the Qin” (yiwei Qin dongmen 以為秦東門); see Shi ji 6.256. While it is unknown whether he inscribed that stone, three years earlier he inscribed another “gate” at Jieshi 碣石 that was also located along the sea; see Shi ji, 6.251. The erected stones seem to mark out the edges of territoriality and may be akin to the territoriality expressed in the fengshan sacrifices and inscriptions at Tai Mountain.

For a recent study on the Qin inscriptions, see Kern, Martin, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang: Text and Ritual in Early Chinese Imperial Representation (New Haven: American Oriental Society, 2000)Google Scholar.

161. Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 51 (“Yao dian”; despite Han perceptions of its early date, this chapter may only date to the end of the Zhou Dynasty or even to the Qin.) According to the Zhou li (Zhou li zhushu, 769 [“Chun guan: Si shi” 春官: 肆師]), feng-mounds were erected to announce territorial military victories and were associated with sacrifices at mountains and rivers.

162. Shi ji, 110.2911, 111.2936.

163. Han shu, 6.178.

164. Hou Han shu, 23.814–17. This couplet uses the combination of finals ji 祭 and yue 月 (Han yun bu, 172). The inscription was written by Ban Gu, and the commentators read jie 嵑 as jie 碣. Rubbings of the inscription (Kinseki takuhon kenkyūkai, Kan hi shūsei, 83 [“Yanran shan ming” 燕然山銘]) reveal only slight differences from the text as recorded in the Hou Han shu.

165. Shang shu jinguwen zhushu, 61 (“Yao dian”).

166. The most thorough study on the elements and interpretations of the Western Han feng-sacrifice is that of Lewis, Mark Edward, “The Feng and Shan Sacrifices of Emperor Wu of the Han,” 50–80Google Scholar. More recently, see Puett, Michael J., The Ambivalence of Creation: Debates Concerning Innovation and Artifice in Early China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001), 170–75, 202–6Google Scholar. Among the Han interpretations, the feng 封 “enfeoffment” may have been a cosmological enfeoffment process as the sacrificing emperor “obtains” (de 得) the feng “fief.” See Shi ji, 28.1367. At least in terms of the Qin sacrifice, Kern, The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang, 112n126, likewise suggests interpreting the feng sacrifice as the reception of a fief from heaven. The fengshan rituals were based on sacrifices to the Earth Lord, and officials in the secondary ceremony of “handing over” (shan 禪) sometimes sacrificed directly to the five directional emperors. It was generally carried out in times of strong territorial unification and specifically on imperial inspection tours. As noted above, the feng-mounds were also erected to mark new lands seized during Han campaigns.

Adding to these studies that draw attention to the shared terminology as well as the shared territorial implications, one might note that the feng-mound sacrifice and the enfeoffment process both used the same specific symbols such as the usage of sacred soil. In the enfeoffment’s primary ceremony, the territorial recipient obtained one of five colors of soil appropriate to the direction of his fief. Thus if a new fief holder received his land in the east, he took blue soil, if his fief was in the south, he took red soil, and so forth. He then returned home and mixed it into his own “altar to the land” (she 社) in a secondary ceremony. For a blue-soil enfeoffment, a red-soil enfeoffment, and a case of mixing the soil into the home altar’s mound, see Shi ji, 60.2111–15. For a general description, see Baihu tong shuzheng, 91–92 (“Sheji” 社稷); and Cai zhonglang waiji, 4.23b–24a (“Du duan” 獨斷). See also Brashier, , “Breaking the Ties between Land and Religion in the Western Han (202 B.C.E.–9 C.E.),” Bulletin of the British Association for Chinese Studies 1996, 20–30Google Scholar. (As for the colors, it may not be a coincidence that the five soil colors are the three primary pigments and two neutral pigments from which all other colors are derived.) Similarly, after Emperor Wu carried out the primary ceremony atop Tai Mountain, he observed a secondary sacrifice below (i.e. the shan) in which “soil of the five colors was amply mixed into a feng-mound” (wuse tu yiza feng 五色土益雜封). See Shi ji, 28.1398. The mixing of the colored soils seems to imply the emperor had received the territory of all directions, not just one.

Other ritual similarities include annual timing. As several sources indicate, a feng-enfeoffment ideally took place at the beginning of summer when yang forces were waxing. See Li ji jijie, 442 (“Yue ling” 月令); Huainan honglie jijie, 167 (“Shi ze”); Baihu tong shuzheng, 144 (“Xia feng zhuhou” 夏封諸侯). All six of Emperor Wu’s feng sacrifices likewise occurred in either the last month of spring or the first month of summer. Thus the enfeoffment process and the Tai Mountain sacrifice share terminology, territorial implications, ritual symbols, and annual timing.

167. Kern, , The Stele Inscriptions of Ch’in Shih-huang, 111Google Scholar.

168. Shi ji, 117.3065. This description is similar to Qin Emperor Shihuang’s Langye Mountain 琅邪山 inscription (Shi ji, 6.245) in which the emperor’s virtue covered the regions of the five directional emperors like a canopy until his favor reached down to the land’s cattle and horses.

169. Sima Xiangru here identifies Tai Mountain as a “central marchmount” (zhongyue 中嶽), but he may be using a different order of magnitude than the system of Five Marchmounts within China proper. For example, contemporaneous sources such as the Huainanzi identify Tai Mountain as producing the “beauties of the middle” (zhongyang zhi mei 中央之美) when compared to the world mountains that mark the ends of the earth and serve as the “gates” (men 門) to the realm of light and dark beyond. See Huainan honglie jijie, 139 (“Di xing” 地形).

170. Shi ji, 117.3067. For yi zhang zhi zun 以彰至尊, Wen xuan, 48.2142, and Han shu, 57.2604, have yi zhang zhi zun 以章至尊. For yi jin li min ye 以浸黎民也, Wen xuan, 48.2142, has yi jin li yuan 以浸黎元.

At the beginning of the Wei Dynasty, Commissioner over the Army Jiang Ji 蔣濟 also emphasized the inscription by describing the feng sacrifice as “ascending Tai Mountain, inscribing an eternal name, and recording the meeting between heaven and humans” (deng Taishan, kan wujing zhi ming, ji tianren zhi ji 登泰山, 刊無竟之名, 紀天人之際); see Jin shu, 21.654.

171. Shi ji, 117.3064. For lun 綸, Han shu, 57.2600, has lun 輪. For wei 葳, Wen xuan, 48.2139, and Han shu, 57.2600, have wei 威. For yin 堙, Wen xuan, 48.2139, has yin 湮.

“Sunk away” (yinmie) is a term often used to describe someone lost in antiquity. For example, Sima Qian (Shi ji, 61.2127) lamented that the names of reclusive officials would “sink away” and never be spoken.

172. Baihu tong shuzheng, 279 (“Fengshan”). Baihu tong shuzheng, 282, also states that the inscription is the means to record oneself as numbering among the hundred kings, as if Tai Mountain were a type of cosmological register of empire ownership.

173. Shen, Xu 許慎, Shuowen jiezi zhu 說文解字注, ed. Yucai, Duan 段玉裁 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji, 1995), 754 (postface)Google Scholar. Guan Zhong 管仲 (d. 645 B.C.E.) lists the names of twelve performers of the feng sacrifice at Tai Mountain although he notes that a total of seventy-two past rulers are said have carried it out; see Shi ji, 28.1361. According to Kong congzi, 336 (“Xun shou” 巡狩), Zisi 子思, the grandson of Confucius, was able to ascend Tai Mountain and examine the stone inscriptions of ancient emperors. Cai Yong 蔡邕 writes in a stele dedicated to Li Xiu 李休 (d. 156 C.E.) that in Li’s youth he had “ascended the eastern peak (i.e. Tai Mountain) and gazed at the lasting influences of the hundred kings” (deng dongyue, guan baiwang yifeng 登東嶽, 觀百王遺風). See Cai zhonglang ji 蔡中郎集 (Sibu beiyao ed.), 2.16b (“Xuanwen xiansheng Li Zicai ming” 玄文先生李子材銘).

174. Lun heng jiaoshi, 177 (“Shu xu” 書虛). Later works acknowledge that less than ten of the inscribed posthumous names remain known; see Kong congzi, 346 (“Zhi jie” 執節). Jin shu, 21.655, records that by 280 C.E. seventy-four rulers had carried out the feng-sacrifice with fourteen posthumous names surviving.

175. The visit of Ma Dibo 馬第伯 in 56 C.E. is recorded in the Han guan 漢官 by Ying Shao. See the commentary to Hou Han shu, zhi 7.3166. For Ying Shao’s transcription of Emperor Wu’s inscription, see his commentary to Han shu, 6.191.

176. For example, one Hua Mountain inscription refers to both the “Yao dian” and Han Emperor Wu’s feng-sacrifice; see Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 278–80Google Scholar (“Xiyua Hua shan miaobei”).

177. Lunyu jishi 論語集釋, ed. Shuda, Cheng 程樹德 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), 175Google Scholar (“Ba yi” 八佾); Han shu, 73.3116–17.

178. Guo yu, 559–64 (“Chu yu”).

179. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.4a (“Xiyue Hua shan tingbei” 西嶽華山亭碑).

180. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.12b (“Tongbo Huai yuan miaobei”).

181. For an example in which permission not to bow down when receiving an imperial mandate was regarded as a special honor, see Hou Han shu, 9.390.

182. Given the name of the mountain, this couplet may be a subtle reference to Shi jing, “Yang zhi shui” 揚之水, which states, “Among the turbulent waters, the white rocks are so glistening” (yang zhi shui, baishi haohao 揚之水, 白石皓皓); see Mao Shi zhengyi, 362.

183. An allusion to Shi jing, “Songgao”; see Mao shi zhengyi, 565, to be discussed below.

184. These six couplets use the final geng 耕 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 196). Note the repetition of information in prose and then verse, a format common to both grave and mountain stele inscriptions. This feature may have been derived from the Indian gathas structure found in Buddhist sutras already circulating in the Han. One also finds this format in Han hagiographical texts such as the Lienü zhuan 列女傳.

185. Sarah A. Queen has described second-order liturgy as prescriptive whereas first-order liturgy played a direct role within worship, writing that “it may be read to or recited by a congregation, or its very presence may function as a powerful symbol of authority.” See Queen, , From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the Spring and Autumn, According to Tung Chung-shu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 182CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

186. A citation of the opening line of Shi jing, “Tian zuo” 天作; see Mao shi zhengyi, 585. For a recent discussion on the concept of zuo 作 with reference to this poem, see Puett, , The Ambivalence of Creation, 30–32Google Scholar.

187. In terms of mountain formation, other inscriptions cite the “Xici” 繫辭 and “Shuogua” of the Yi jing (Zhou yi jijie, 531, 690), that state mountains spread forth their qi-vapors once qian 乾 and kun 坤 settled their positions (e.g. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 278Google Scholar [“Xiyua Hua shan miaobei”]; Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.14a [“Yao keng junshen cibei”]). Other Han sources depict different origins. Ascribed to Lu Jia 陸賈 (ca. 228–ca. 140 B.C.E.), the Xin yu 新語 claims the earth was responsible for “mounding up” (feng 封) the Five Marchmounts; see Xin yu jiaozhu 新語校注, ed. Liqi, Wang 王利器 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1996), 6Google Scholar (“Dao ji” 道基). One Han hymn credits intentional, spiritual origins to the mountains, attributing to Confucius the statement, “Mountains and rivers are established by the spirits and earth spirits” (shanchuan shenqi li 山川神祇立); see Chunqiu fanlu yizheng, 423 (“Shanchuan song” 山川頌).

188. The character is most likely a variant of song 竦 ; see Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han bei shu, 257Google Scholar (“Fenglong shan song”).

189. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 257Google Scholar (“Fenglong shan song”). These four couplets use a combination of finals dong 東 and yang 陽 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 177, 181).

Concerning the last line, other mountain inscriptions depict mountains as congealed yang; see Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.9a (“Fan Yi xiu Hua yue bei”). One can perhaps imagine this congealed radiance as veins of quartz or even quartz crystals, like frozen beams of light.

190. Holzman, , Landscape Appreciation in Ancient and Early Medieval China, 46–47Google Scholar. Holzman attributes the change toward a positive view of mountains to a gradual turn away from classicist ritualism and court politics to “a new period of more disengaged thought, of the cultivation of personal morality outside of society” (p. 66).

191. Achu foguo jing” 阿閦佛國經, in Takakusu Junjirō 高楠順次郎 and Watanabe Kaikyoku 渡邊海旭, Taishō shinshū daizōkyō 大正新脩大藏經 (Tokyo: Issaikyō kankōkai, 1988), no.313. Erik Zürcher lists this sutra as a Buddhist text likely to be authentically Han; see Zürcher, , “A New Look at the Earliest Chinese Buddhist Texts,” From Benares to Beijing: Essays on Buddhism and Chinese Religion (Oakville: Mosaic Press, 1991), 298Google Scholar.

192. Drawing from the Vimalakīirtinirdeśa, Paul Williams notes that such earthly imperfections as mountains were regarded as mental imperfections, a concept that became crucial to East Asian Buddhism. He writes:

This impure Buddha Field is indeed the Pure Land. It only appears impure because of the minds of sentient beings dwelling in it. If there are mountains in this world, and all is flat in the Pure Land, that is because there are mountains in the mind!

See Williams, , Mahayana Buddhism: The Doctrinal Foundations (London: Routledge, 1999), 227Google Scholar.

193. Even from a more distant European perspective, this desire for perfect, mountain-free symmetry finds parallels in traditions that lamented the loss of God’s completely spherical, regular and solid earth that had existed prior to the Adamic Fall. In her study of changing aesthetic perspectives in the eighteenth century, Nicolson, Marjorie, Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, 62Google Scholar, summarizes this hostility as follows:

Mountains were warts, blisters, imposthumes, when they were not the rubbish of the earth, swept away by the careful housewife Nature—waste places of the world, with little meaning and less charm for men who crossed the Alps only to reach the plains.

The rise of mountains was variously attributed to the Adamic Fall, to Abel’s slaying of Cain, or to Noah’s flood. Mountains reflected human sin, and in the eyes of some theologians such as Luther, the earth was becoming more mountainous as humans were becoming more sinful. Compare the Fenglong hymn’s praise of heaven drawing up the mountains with the following extract from John Donne written in 1611 as discussed in Nicolson, , Mountain Gloom and Mountain Glory, 28, 76Google Scholar:

But keeps the earth her round proportion still?

Doth not a Tenarif, or higher Hill

Rise so high like a Rocke, that one might thinke

The floating Moone would shipwrack there, and sinke? …

Are these but warts, and pock-holes in the face

Of th’ earth? Thinke so: but yet confesse, in this

The worlds proportion disfigured is.

194 . Mao shi zhengyi, 565 (“Songgao” 嵩高).

195 . See n.69 above.

196 . Lunyu jishi, 408 (“Yong ye” 雍也). Confucius’s comment is further explained in the Han shi waizhuan 韓詩外傳; see Hightower, James Robert, Han Shih Wai Chuan: Han Ying’s Illustrations of the Didactic Application of the Classic of Songs (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952), 107–8 (3.26)Google Scholar.

197. For example, Huainan honglie jijie, 140 (“Di xing”), states that mountain qi-vapors produce more men than women, and that people born of the metal-phase-dominated western regions tend to be brave but not benevolent. Hou Han shu, 87.2869, also states that westerners by nature are stalwart and daring because of metal’s qi-vapors. When describing a mountainous region with towering, jagged peaks, the Shishuo xinyu 世說新語 states, “Its people are huge in stature [lit. like “piled-up rocks”], their heroes many” (qi ren leike er ying duo其人磊砢而英多). See Yiqing, Liu 劉義慶 , Shishuo xinyu jiaojian 世說新語校箋, ed. Zhen’e, Xu 徐震堮 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1994), 47Google Scholar (“Yanyu” 言語). For other general discussions linking geography with human types, see Shi ji, 129.3261–69; Li ji jijie, 358–59 (“Wang zhi”); Lü shi chunqiu jishi 呂氏春秋集釋, ed. Weiyu, Xu 許維遹 (Beijing: Beijing shi Zhongguo shudian, 1985)Google Scholar, 3.7b–8a (“Jinshu” 盡數).

198. Qiao, Zhang, Guwen yuan, 406Google Scholar (“Xiyue Hua shan tangque beiming”).

199. For example, see Wen xuan, 58.2506 (“Chen Taiqiu beiwen” 陳太丘碑文), including commentary that cites Han apocryphal works also denoting how mountains spew forth their essence to produce sages.

200. Hong Gua, Li shi, 3.16a (“Sangong shan bei”).

201. Li ji jijie, 1278 (“Kongzi xianju”). In Han texts, to say that the mind’s qi-vapors and fixations become “spirit-like” (rushen 如神) is to say that they exhibit an efficacy beyond the person. This efficacy extended to prodigies arising as the natural world resonated with the clear mind’s intense qi-vapors.

202. Weichun, Yuan, Qin Han beishu, 551Google Scholar (“Cao Quan bei” 曹全碑); Ebrey, Patricia, “Later Han Stone Inscriptions,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40 (1980), 342–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a similar case in the Yi Zhou shu 逸周書 in which Luoyang is ideally situated within sight of a marchmount, see Kleeman, , “Mountain Deities in China,” 227Google Scholar; Wenyu, Zhang 張聞玉, Yi Zhou shu quanyi 逸周書全譯 (Guiyang: Guizhou renmin, 2000), 175–81Google Scholar (“Duyi” 度邑).

203. Hong Gua, Li shi, 2.14b (“Yao keng junshen cibei”). The prefect’s name does not survive on the original inscription, but Li Daoyuan recorded it in his Shui jingzhu; see Shui jingzhu beilu, 167.

204. Citation of Shi jing, “Ding zhi fang zhong” 定之方中, in which a palace is built in Chu; see Mao shi zhengyi, 316.

205. Citation of Shi jing, “Jia le” 假樂, that praises a ruler’s proper government; see Mao shi zhengyi, 540.

206. Probable variant version of Shi jing, “Qing miao” 清廟, that praises the manner in which King Wen’s sacrifices were executed; see Mao shi zhengyi, 583. The inscription has yong 雍 for the Shi jing’s yong 雝.

207. Second citation of Shi jing, “Jia le”; see Mao shi zhengyi, 540.

208. Third citation of Shi jing, “Jia le”; see Mao shi zhengyi, 540.

209. Probably variant version of Shi jing, “Fu tian” 甫田, on the ideal life of a prosperous farm and the sacrifices employed there; see Mao shi zhengyi, 475. “Fu tian” is one of four consecutive sacrificial hymns in the received Mao order of the Shi jing. The inscription has liang 糧 for the Shi jing’s liang 粱.

210. While this is a common phrase, it also appears at the end of Shi jing, “Fu tian”; see Mao shi zhengyi, 475.

211. All eleven couplets use the final yang 陽 in the level tone (Han yun bu, 187).

212. Hutton, Patrick H., History as an Art of Memory, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1993), 7Google Scholar.

213. Mark Edward Lewis has studied this phenomenon in depth, in connection with texts such as the Zuo zhuan, the Lun yu, the Mencius, and the Xunzi. He writes as follows:

While this practice often distresses modern scholars—but not postmodern ones—who privilege original meanings and an author’s intent, the men of the Spring and Autumn and early Warring States period perhaps valued the ability to make the poem say something other than what had originally been intended. To repeat a poem was a simple-minded enterprise, but to actively adapt it to new circumstances required skill and perception. This use of the odes in the Spring and Autumn courts may have set a pattern for the Confucian ideal of adapting teaching—including the meaning given to key terms—to the circumstances and the interlocutor. It also anticipates the later philosophical and commentarial assumption that the Odes contain hidden meanings.

See Lewis, , Writing and Authority in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1999), 158Google Scholar.

214. Steven Van Zoeren distinguishes “between a ‘text in the weak sense’—a stable reiterable discourse, usually although by no means always written—and a ‘text in the strong sense’—a stable text that has become central to a doctrinal culture and thus the object of exegetical exposition and study.” See Van Zoeren, , Poetry and Personality: Reading, Exegesis, and Hermeneutics in Traditional China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 25Google Scholar. In the second and third chapters of his book, Van Zoeren traces how citation of the Songs Canon became more and more fixed, and less prone to out-of-context sampling, over the course of early Chinese history.

215. Kern, Martin, “Shi jing Songs as Performance Texts: A Case Study of ‘Chu ci’ (Thorny Caltrop),” Early China 25 (2000), 104CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Elsewhere (pp. 64–65), Kern also high-lights how in ritual acts and ritual speech “what counts is the role, not the individual.” That is, the distinctiveness of identity is subordinate to a person’s subsumed function within rigid ceremony.

216. Guthrie, , Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 33Google Scholar; Horton, , “A Definition of Religion, and Its Uses,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 90 (1960), 211Google Scholar. Horton adds a rider that this extension must involve a dependency relationship of the microcosm on the macrocosm so as “to exclude pets from the pantheon of gods.”

217. Bell, , Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 111Google Scholar.

218. Bodde, , Festivals in Classical China: New Year and Other Annual Observances During the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 220) (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 39Google Scholar.

219. One could argue, as did Han Classicism, that the bureaucracy and lineage structures were ultimately derived from the patterns of heaven and earth. Conversely, there is early evidence that the five phases were bureaucratized with anthropomorphic gods overseeing each category. For example, see Chunqiu Zuo zhuan zhu, 1502 (Zhao 昭 29). Despite links between purely cosmological forces and agencies, such links are not explicitly acknowledged in the mountain inscriptions.

220. How such anthropomorphized gods functioned in relation to the systems of yinyang and the five phases continues to be of growing interest in modern scholarship. For example, in his analysis of the “Jingshen” 精神 chapter in the Huainanzi, Michael Puett has recently tackled the question of the role of spirits in a self-generating and spontaneous universe. He concludes that the “Jingshen” spirits who aligned the cosmos in fact possessed no will and simply obeyed a normative plan. He writes:

Spirits, in short, have the power to do what should be done. They do not have the power to do what they wish: wind and rain, for example, are simply part of the spontaneous cosmos, not something controlled by the spirits.

See Puett, , To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 283Google Scholar. The narrow philosophy of the Huainanzi is clearly distant from the more general worldview espoused by the mountain inscriptions in which spirits affect rain and human sacrificers affect spirits.

For an example of an extended text from a century later in which a systematic cosmology and deified external agencies again interact with one another, see Brashier, , “’A Poetic Exposition on Heaven and Earth’ by Chenggong Sui (231–273),” Journal of Chinese Religions 24 (1996), 1–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.