CHINA ARQUEOLOGIA golden-age-chinese-archayeolog

Pan Cheng employed several turtle and milfoil
diviners, each of whom possessed his own divination
materials; for example, Gu Ding's turtle plastron
is called Long Treasure. The turtle diviner Fan
Huozhi is named in another divination-sacrifice
record from Wangshan Tomb i (also at Jiangling),
showing that diviners provided their services to
an array of clients in the region around the Chu
capital at Ying. 5
Excavated Chu divination-sacrifice records all
follow the same basic formula. The exact date is
first, with the year identified according to significant
Chu events for that year. In the translated
entry, the Gongsun Yang from Qin who pays his
respects to the King of Chu might be none other
than the famed Shang Yang, the Qin minister who
reorganized Qin government in the mid-fourth
century BCE. If this identification is accepted, the
date of the Tianxingguan tomb should be closer
to the middle than to the end of the century. The
divination itself proceeds in two stages (as numbered
in the translation). In the first stage, the subject
of divination is stated — the words in quotation
marks represent the statement uttered aloud at the
original event. The act of divination follows. When
the diviner uses milfoil stalks, hexagrams are written
in the text (the hexagrams in the excavated divination-sacrifice
records are written as numbers, not as
solid and broken lines). Then comes the diviner's
prediction based on examination of the turtle plastron
or hexagrams. And the prediction includes
the recommendation for a ritual expulsion to avert
any spiritual or demonic harm that might befall
Pan Cheng.
This leads to the second stage, which entails
a second divination to verify which spirits are to
receive what sacrifices. The statement concerning
sacrifices is followed by the diviner's prediction
(invariably, the proposed sacrifices are judged by
the spirits to be auspicious). The offering of sacrifices
is a two-part process. Initially, sacrifices are
"pledged" (dao) to the spirits pending positive signs
of spiritual assistance; subsequently, the sacrifices
are actually given, thus "requiting the pledge"
(sai dao). Any entry in the manuscript may include
a combination of new sacrificial pledges and requitals
of pledges made in previous divinations.
The excavated Chu divination-sacrifice records
bear witness to the vitality of religious belief and
practice among the Warring States elite. Contrary
to the conventional wisdom that a kind of intellectualized
humanism espoused by the philosophers
had supplanted their active belief in the world
of spirits and demons, the manuscript evidence
reveals the elite engaged in daily religious activity
and details the spirits worshiped by them. Manuscripts
such as these truly shed new light on early
Chinese civilization. DH
1 Excavated in 1978. An excavation report on Tianxingguan
Tomb i has been published by the jingzhou Prefecture
Museum: Hubei 1982, 71-116.
2 For further discussion of the excavated Warring States
divination-sacrifice records, see Harper 1998 and Li Ling
1990, 71-86. Much of our present knowledge of this type
of manuscript comes from the reproduction and transcription
of the divination-sacrifice record from Baoshan
Tomb 2 at Jingmen, Hubei province, published in Hubei
1991,1:364-369.
3 I must emphasize that this translation is tentative pending
the full publication of the Tianxingguan manuscripts. For
this translation, 1 have relied on the transcription of the
two slips, nos. 8 and 5, prepared for this exhibition by
Peng Hao of the Jingzhou Prefecture Museum, as well as
on a preliminary reconstructed facsimile prepared by
Wang 1989^ Peng Hao has noted that slip no. 8 was
originally broken, and it is not certain that the lower
section of slip no. 8 has been restored correctly. I enclose
this part of the translation in double brackets.
4 Li Ling 1995-1996, summarizes the archaeological and
textual data concerning the supreme deity Grand One
in popular religion of the Warring States, Qin, and Han
periods. Among the other spirits named, the Director
of the Life-mandate and the Lord of the Earth are wellknown
in received sources; Great Water may be a Yangzi
River spirit.
5 This section of the translation placed in double brackets
represents what is written on a third bamboo slip not
exhibited here; the translation is based on Wang Minqin's
facsimile and transcription and is tentative.
6 For the reproduction and transcription of the Wangshan
divination-sacrifice record, see Hubei i995b.
351 | TOMB 1 AT TIANXINGGUAN, JIANGLING