Ellipsis of Battle.pdf - University of Washington

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Know therefore that the weapon is an evil thing Which the sages use only when they must.16 The opposition to arms is unmistakably strong and extensive in Tao Te Ching. The weapon is on the extreme farthest from tao as the means on which one relies to assist his prince to become prosperous (XXX). In the same chapter, Laotzu predicts: "Where the troops dwell, brambles grow; following the war, there is bad harvest." As the weapon is an evil thing, one mourns over the men he slays in the battle (XXXI). Furthermore, Laotzu urges that one "observe a military victory with the rite equal to funeral" (XXXI). The basically Taoist comment on the evil of war is adopted indirectly by Chu Hsi,J an eminent neo-Confucian, in the twelfth century to interpret the anxiety of an officer-poet in one of the most famous ancient poems against the barbarians, Shih Ching 168.17 Chu notes that the poet is worried, and his groom weary; but the feeling of dejection at the outset of a military campaign is appropriate. "In the ancient times," Chu says, "one observed the start of a military expedition with the rite equivalent to funeral; when the call to arms came, all the warriors wept."18 The reluctance, however, is not generated by the Taoist philosophy of "non-action." Rather, it is determined by Chi- nese ethics in general that almost repudiates martial spirit from heroism. The display of martial power (wu)k is never as worthy as the exhibition of cultural eloquence (wen).1 In the sanctification of King Wu of Chou'sm military action against the Shang, Confucianism judges the conquest in- complete until the weapon is put away and the rite performed appropriately. The King Wu conquest (1111 B.c.) signifies the culmination of a great national "epic" of the Chou.l9 It is the most glorious military compaign most widely and profoundly documented in Chi- 16 Li T'ai-po ch'iian-chi chu (rpt. Taipei, 1962), 3.14a. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations from Chinese in this paper are mine. 17 The numbering of the Shih Ching poems follows the Concordance to Shih Ching, eds. Hung Yeh et al. (Peking, 1934). 18 Shih chi-chuan (rpt. Taipei, 1967), 9. 18b (p. 423). 19 For the dating see Tung Tso-pin, "Wu-wang fa Chou nien-yiieh-jih chin k'ao," Tung Tso-pin hsiieh-shu lun-chu (Taipei, 1962), pp. 869-904. Other assumptions include 1124, 1122, 1116, 1070, 1067, 1066, 1047, 1030, and 1027 B.C. WANG: Towards Defining a Chinese Heroism 27 nese history. The conquest is the climactic event in the collective experience of the Chou people in search of a land to build their nation. Even only in the verse of Shih Ching, the epical sequence contains a creation myth,20 and an account of exodus, wandering, combats, and periodic settle- ments of the people near to the barbarians in China's west where the Yellow River flowing east drastically turns north.21 Each poem in this group of Shih Ching poems is by itself a complete metrical and thematic achievement, sometimes in the form of panegyric but more often in that of an inclusive narrative. The poems illuminate a central figure in the epical experience of the Chou. The figure is King Wu's father, King Wenn, whose position in the sequence is so significant as a pivot that the epic, as it were, is the Weniad. In the Weniad, in which the cultivation of wen, or cultural elegance, is emphasized, the martial- heroic spirit is kept muted. King Wen, inheriting the legacy of Hou Chi,o or Lord Millet, maintains for the Chou an emphasis on agriculture and a belief in the power of meekness. Often in face of humiliation would King Wen, following his ancestors' virtuous practice, resort to humbleness to sublimate his image in the China about to be torn apart by the evil ruling of a tyrant.22 "Truly, it is the way of heaven to diminish the full and augment the humble." Han YingP quotes the words of Confucius: "It is the way of earth to 20 Shih Ching 245. For an excellent explication of the poem see Ts'en Chung-mien, "Chou ch'u sheng-min chih sheng-hua chieh-shih," Liang Chou wen shih lun ts'ung (Shanghai, 1958), pp. 1-17. The heroic life of Lord Millet conforms to most of the characteristics common with the pattern in world literature. For an array of the characteristics see Jan de Vries, Heroic Legend (London, 1963), pp. 210-26. 21 Shih Ching 250, 237, 241, and 236. Cf. Mencius I-B. 3; Shih Chi (Peking, 1959), 4. 112-16 (Les Mdmoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, 6 volumes, traduits et an- notes par JIdouard Chavannes [rpt. Leiden, 1967], I. 210- 16); and Han Shih wai-chuan, SPTK, 3. 18a (Han Shih Wai Chuan, trans. James Robert Hightower [Cambridge, Mass., 1952], p. 111). For modern commentaries on their historicity, see Ch'en Teng-yian, Kuo-shih chiu-wen (Peking, 1958), I. 3. 71-73; and Liu Chieh, Ku-shih k'ao ts'un (Hong Kong, 1963), pp. 266-67, 268-69, 272-73, 279-81, 288-90, 292-94. 22 Shih chi, 4. 116-19 (Chavannes, I. 216-21). Cf. Ku Yen-wu, Jih chih lu (rpt. Taipei, 1970), 2. 37; and Ch'en Teng-yiian, I. 3. 80-81.
28 Journal of the American Oriental Society 95.1 (1975) overthrow the full and bless the humble, Spiritual Beings inflict calamity on the full and bless the humble. It is the way of man to hate the full and love the humble."23 The wrath of Achilles that leads to heroic action finds no equivalent in the Weniad. King Wen, nevertheless, practically took over China in the twelfth century B.C. by his virtue. Confucius specifies his virtue: Possessing two of the three parts of China and with them serving the Yin; the virtue of the Chou can indeed be called the ultimate virtue! (Analects VIII 20) The heroism of King Wen is in the governance by virtue, by meekness; providing the people with clearings for the growth of food;24 and standing in awe of his ancestors. He is pious: It is clear and all the more splendid, The ordinance of King Wen: He established the sacrifices That in the end brought us victory. It is the auspice of the Chou I (Shih Ching 268) When King Wen died at the age of ninety-seven, his son succeeded him and is called King Wu. After many delays, the heavenly mandate ordered King Wu to carry out the conquest.25 On a winter day at dawn, he held his court in the old capital Feng,q sacrificed, and led his army comprised of approximately fifty thousand men east to assume the punitive campaign against the Shang. The expedition was ritualistically performed, and a great number of the feudal princes all over China came voluntarily to his help.26 They assembled at Meng-chin,r sacrificed again, and crossed the river to confront the Shang army ten times of their number at Mu-yeh.s The Shang tyrant was defeated, when his own army turned against him. He ascended a tower, donned precious garments, set the tower on fire by his own hand, and burned himself to death. King Wu cut his head in a 23 Han Shih wai-chuan, 8. 17a (Hightower, p. 285). 24 See, for example, the liturgical song dedicated to him, Shih Ching 270. 25 Shih chi, 4. 120-21 (Chavannes, I. 222-27). 26 Shih Ching 236. For a detailed description of the ritualistic march, see the "Wu ch'eng" chapter of Shang Shu cheng-i (rpt. Taipei, 1963), 11.5b; Han Shih wai- chuan, 3. 7a-8b (Hightower, pp. 89-91); and I Chou shu, SPPY, 4. lb-4a, 4.9b-12b. Cf. also, Shih chi, 4. 121-25 (Chavannes, I. 227-35). ritualistic manner; the military action was then over. That was the victory of the Chou, signifying the climax in the Weniad; the heroism of cultural elegance was defined. For King Wu never neg- lected to refer to himself as "the son." The martial force that takes the Shang capital is en- dowed with a power of cultural heroism; "Such is the action of humbled virtue."27 According to Mencius, it is the wrath of King Wu, a continu- ation of the valor of King Wen, which gives repose to all the people under the heaven (Mencius I-b3). There is wrath indeed in the kings, as Mencius observes. The wrath of King Wen is soft, which deprives the Shang of two-thirds of China; and the wrath of King Wu is hard, which finally prompts the king to overthrow the Shang once and for all. In the first stage, the wrath is sub- sumed into cultural elegance (wen); in the second, it engenders the surge of martial power (wu), as in the case of the Iliad. The weapon, a cursed thing, is used, because it is now necessary. How- ever, the weapon is not to be celebrated or sung of. Whereas Virgil sings of arms and the hero in the founding of Rome, the Chinese avoid arms, and instead, sing of the martial King Wu as a pious, filial executor of cultural elegance in the second phase of his people's effort to seek a nation of their own. Indeed, the first man who insists on concealing the weapon, attributing the virtue of wen as the moral force to founding the empire of Chou, is the conqueror himself. Upon the conquest, in the spring when he returned to the old capital, King Wu ordered that arms be wrapt and stored upside down, and battle horses and oxen be let loose and sent back to the wilderness-to show the world the determination that he would not use them any more. The King ordered his subjects to suppress martial spirit and to cultivate cultural subjects, namely rites and music. He offered sacrifices to heaven, ancestors, and mountains and rivers; and solemnly announced that the conquest was done.28 Later, when a eulogistic poem for the king was composed, the concealing of arms was specified to be the primary aspect of his heroism, and the king was nonetheless martial. Timely he travels his lands, High Heaven takes him as a son. 27 Han Shih wai-chuan, 8. 17a (Hightower, p. 285). 28 See "Wu ch'eng." Also, Shih Chi, 4. 129 (Chavannes, I. 243). Ezra Pound records the story in his Canto LIII.
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