A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (23 page)

As regards geography, Ssu-ma Ch'ien writes: "He began by classifying China s notable mountains, great rivers and connecting valleys; its birds and beasts; the productions of its waters and soils, and its rare products; and from this he extended his survey to what is beyond the seas, and which men are unable to see....He maintained that what scholars call the Middle Kingdom [i.e., China I holds a place in the whole world of but one part in eighty-one. He named China the Spiritual Continent of the Red Region.... Besides China [there are other continents] similar to the Spiritual Continent of the Red Region, making [with China] a total of nine continents....Around each of these is a small encircling sea, so that men and beasts cannot pass from one to another. These [nine continentsJ form one division.

There are nine divisions like this. Around their outer edge is a vast ocean which encompasses them at the point where heaven and earth meet.

As regards Tsou Yen s historical concepts, Ssu—ma Ch ien writes: He first spoke about modern times, and from this went back to the time of Huang Ti [the legendary Yellow Emperor], all of which has been recorded by scholars. Moreover, he followed the great events in the rise and fall of ages, recorded their omens and institutions, and extended his survey backward to the time when heaven and earth had not yet been born, to what was profound and abstruse and not to be examined....Starting from the time of the separation of heaven and earth and coming down, he made citations of the Il8 THE YIN-YANG SCHOOL AND EARLY CHINESE COSMOGONY

revolutions and transformations of the Five Powers, anrl the [ different ways of] government and different omens appropriate to eaeh of the Powers."

A Philosophy of History

The last few lines of the quotation show that Tsou Yen developed a new philosophy of history, according to which historical changes are interpreted in accordance with the revolutions and transformations of the Five Powers. The details of this theory are not reported by Ssu —ma Ch inn, but il is treated in one section of the Lit -shift Ch' un -ch' iu, even though in this section Tsou Yen s name is not explicitly mentioned. Thus this work stales (XIII, 2.):

Whenever an Emperor or King is about to arise, Heaven must first manifest some favorable omen to the common people. In the time of the Yellow Emperor, Heaven first made huge earthworms and mole crickets appear. The Yellow Emperor said: The force of Soil is in ascendancy. Therefore he assumed yellow as his color, and took Soil as ihe pattern for his affairs.

"in the time of Yil [founder of the Hsia dynasty] Heaven first made grass and trees appear which did not die in the autumn and winter. Yii said: The force of Wood is in ascendancy.' Therefore he assumed green as his color and took Wood as the pattern for his affairs.

In the time of T ang [ founder ol the Shang dynasty J Heaven made some knife blades appear in the water. T ang said: The force of Metal is in ascendancy. He therefore assumed white as his color and took Metal as the pattern for his affairs.

"In the time of King Wen [ founder of the Chou dynasty] Heaven made a flame appear, while a red bird, holding a red book in its mouth, alighted on the altar of soil of the House of Chou. King Wen said: 'The force of Fire is in ascendancy. Therefore he assumed red as his color, and took Fire as I he pattern of his affairs."

Water will inevitably be the next force that will succeed Fire. Heaven will first make the ascendancy of Water manifest. The force of Water being in ascendancy, black will be assumed as its color, and Water will be taken as the pattern for affairs....When the cycle is complete, the operation will revert once more to Soil.

The Yin—Yang school maintained that the Five Elements produce one another and also overcome one another in a fixed sequence. It also maintained that the sequence of the four seasons accords with this process of the mutual production of the Elements. Thus Wood, which dominates spring, produces Fire, which dominates summer. Fire in its turn produces Soil, which dominates the "center ; Soil again produces Metal, which dominates autumn; Metal produces Water, which dominates winter; and Water again produces

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Wood, which dominates spring.

According to the above quotation, the succession of dynasties likewise accords with the natural succession of the Elements. Thus Earth, under whose Power the Yellow Emperor ruled, was overcome by the Wood of the Hsia dynasty. The Wood of this dynasty was overcome by the Metal of the Shang dynasty, Metal was overcome by the Fire of the Chou dynasty, and Fire would in its turn be overcome by the Water of whatever dynasty was to follow the Chou. The Water of this dynasty would then again be overcome by the Soil of the dynasty following, thus completing the cycle.

As described in the Lii-shih Ch'un-ch'iu, this is but a theory, but soon afterward it had its effect in practical politics. Thus in the year 221 B.C., the First Emperor of the Ch in dynasty, known as Ch in Shih—Huang—Ti (246— 210 B.C.), conquered all the rival feudal states and thus created a unified Chinese empire under the Ch'in. As the successor to the Chou dynasty, he actually believed that "the force of Water is in ascendancy," and so, according to Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Historical Records, "assumed black as his color" and "took Water as the pattern for affairs." "The name of ihe Yellow River," says the Historical Records, "was changed to that of Power Water, because it was supposed to mark the beginning of the Power of Water. With harshness and violence, and an extreme severity, everything was decided by the law. For by punishing and oppressing, by having neither human— heartedness nor kindness, but only conforming to strict justice, there would come an accord with [the transformations of] the Five Powers."

(Ch. 6.)

Because of its very harshness, the Ch in dynasty did not last long, and was soon succeeded by that of Han (206 B.C.-A.D. 22O). The Han Emperors also believed that they had become Emperors "by virtue of' one of the Five Powers, but there was considerable dispute as to which of the Powers it was. This was because some people maintained that the Han was the successor of the Ch in, and therefore ruled through Soil, whereas others maintained that the Ch in had been too harsh and short to be counted as a legitimate dynasty, so that the Han dynasty was actually the successor of the Chou. Support for both sides was found from many omens which were subject to varying interpretations. Finally, in 104 B.C., the Emperor Wu decided ajid formally announced that Soil was the Power for the Han. Even afterward, however, there were still differences of opinion.

Following the Han dynasty, people no longer paid very much attention to this question. Yet as late as 1911, when the last dynasty was brought to an end by the Chinese Republic, the official title of the Emperor was still "Emperor through Lthe Mandate ofj Heaven and in accordance with the Movements [of the Five Powers]."

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he Yin and Yang Principles As Described in the "Appendices" of the Book of Changes

The theory of the Five Elements interpreted the structure of the universe, but did not explain the origin of the world. This was provided by the theory of the Yin and Yang.

The word yang originally meant sunshine, or what pertains to sunshine and light; that of yin meant the absence of sunshine, i.e., shadow or darkness. In later development, the Yang and Yin came to be regarded as two cosmic principles or forces, respectively representing masculinity, activity, heat, brightness, dryness, hardness, etc., for the Yang, and femininity, passivity, cold, darkness, wetness, softness, etc., for the Yin. Through the interaction of these two primary principles, all phenomena of the universe are produced. This concept has remained dominant in Chinese cosmological speculation down to recent times. An early reference to it appears already in the Kuo Yu or Discussions of the States (which was itself compiled, however, probably only in the fourth or third century B.C.) This historical work records that when an earthquake occurred in the year 7&O B.C., a savant of the time explained: "When the Yang is concealed and cannot come forth, and when the Yin is repressed and cannot issue forth, then there are earthquakes." (Chou YU, I, 10.)

Later, the theory of the Yin and Yang came to be connected primarily with the Book of Changes. The original corpus of this book consists of what are known as the eight trigrams, each made up of combinations of three divided or undivided lines, as follows: EE, E£, ZE, EJE, ErE, rE, El, E E. By combining any two of these trigrams with one another into diagrams of six lines each, ^ j l,|j, etc., a total of sixty-four combinations is obtained which are known as the sixty—four hexagrams. The original text of the Book of Changes consists of these hexagrams, and of descriptions of their supposed symbolic meaning.

According to tradition, the eight trigrams were invented by Fu Hsi, China s first legendary ruler, antedating even the Yellow Emperor. According to some scholars, Fu Hsi himself combined the eight trigrams so as to obtain the sixty-four hexagrams; according to others, this was done by King Wen of the twelfth century B.C. The textual comments on the hexagrams as a whole and on their hsiao (the individual lines in each hexagram) were, according to some scholars, written by King Wen; according to others, the comments on the hexagrams were written by King Wen, while those on the hsiao were by the Duke of Chou, the illustrious son of King Wen. Whether right or wrong, these attributions attest the importance which the Chinese attached to the eight trigrams and sixty—four hexagrams.

Modern scholarship has advanced the theory that the trigrams and hexa-2.2-4 THE YIN-YANG SCHOOL AND EARLY CHINESE COSMOGONY

grams were invented early in the Chou dynasty as imitations of the cracks formed on a piece of tortoise shell or bone through the method of divination that was practiced under the Shang dynasty (1766?-nil'!

B.C.), the dynasty that preceded the Chou. This method has already been mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. It consisted of applying heat to a shell or bone, and then, according to the cracks that resulted, determining the answer to the subject of divination. Such cracks, however, might assume an indefinite number of varying configurations, and so it was difficult to interpret them according to any fixed formula. Hence during the early part of the Chou dynasty this kind of divination seems to have been supplemented by another method, in which the stalks of a certain plant, known as the milfoil, were shuffled together so as to get varying combinations yielding odd and even numbers. These combinations were limited in number and so could be interpreted according to fixed formulas. It is now believed that the undivided and divided (i.e., odd and even) lines of the trigrams and hexagrams were graphic representations of these combinations. Thus the diviners, by shuffling the stalks of the milfoil, could obtain a given line or set of lines, and then, by reading the comments on it contained in the Book of Changes, could give an answer to the question on which divination was made.

This, then, was the probable origin of the Book of Changes, and explains its title, which refers to the changing combinations of lines. Later, however, many supplementary interpretations were added to the Book of Changes, some moral, some metaphysical, and some cosmological. These were not composed until the latter part of the Chou dynasty, or even the earlier portion of the following Han dynasty, and are contained in a series of appendices known as the Ten Wings. In this chapter we shall discuss only the cosmological interpretations, leaving the remainder for chapter fifteen.

Besides the concept of Yin and Yang, another important idea in the "Appendices" is that of number.

Since divination was usually regarded by the ancients as a method for revealing the mystery of the universe, and since divination through the use of stalks of the milfoil plant was based on the combination of varying numbers, it is not surprising that the anonymous writers of the "Appendices"

tended to believe that the mystery of the universe is to be found in numbers. According to them, therefore, the numbers of the Yang are always odd, and those of the Yin are always even. Thus in "Appendix III" we read: "The number for Heaven [i.e., Yang] is one; that for Earth [i.e. Yin] is two; that for Heaven is three; that for Earth is four; that for Heaven is five; that for Earth is six; that for Heaven is seven; that for Earth is eight; that for Heaven is nine; that for Earth is ten. The numbers for Heaven and the numbers for Earth correspond with and complement one another. The numbers of Heaven [put together] are twenty-five; the num-

* See Cheng Hsiian's (A.D. 127-200} commentary to the "Monthly Commands" in the Book of Rites, eh. 4.

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bers of Earth Lput together] are thirty; the numbers of both Heaven and Earth [put together] are fifty—five. It is by these numbers that the evolutions and mystery of the universe are performed.

Later the Yin-Yang school tried to connect the Five Elements with the Yin and Yang by means of numbers. Thus it maintained that one, the number for Heaven, produces Water, and six, the number for Earth, completes it. Two, the number for Earth, produces Fire, and seven, the number for Heaven, completes it. Three, the number fnr Heaven, produces Wood, and eight, the number for Earth, completes it. Four, the number for Earth, produces Metal, and nine, the number for Heaven, completes it. Five, the number for Heaven, produces Soil, and ten, the number for Earth, completes it. Thus one, two, three, four and five are the numbers that produce the Five Elements; six, seven, eight, nine and ten are the numbers that complete them.* This is the theory, therefore, that was used to explain the statement just quoted above: "The numbers for Heaven and the numbers for Earth correspond with and complement one another." It is remarkably similar to the theory of the Pythagoreans in ancient Greece, as reported by Diogenes Laer-tius, according to which the four elements of Greek philosophy, namely Fire, Water, Earth and Air, are derived, though indirectly, from numbers.*