The Chu Silk Manuscript (), also known as the Chu Silk Manuscript from Zidanku in Changsha (), is a Chinese astrological and astronomical text. It was discovered in a (c. 300 BCE)

Warring States period The Warring States period in history of China, Chinese history (221 BC) comprises the final two and a half centuries of the Zhou dynasty (256 BC), which were characterized by frequent warfare, bureaucratic and military reforms, and ...

tomb from the southern Chinese state of Chu.

History

The

provenance Provenance () is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art, but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, p ...

of the Chu Silk Manuscript is uncertain, like many illicit antiquities. Sometime between 1934 and 1942, grave robbers discovered it in a tomb near Zidanku (literally "bullet storehouse"), east of

Changsha Changsha is the capital of Hunan, China. It is the 15th most populous city in China with a population of 10,513,100, the Central China#Cities with urban area over one million in population, third-most populous city in Central China, and the ...

Hunan Hunan is an inland Provinces of China, province in Central China. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the Administrative divisions of China, province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangxi to the east, Gu ...

. Archaeologists later found the original tomb and dated it to around 300 BCE. In 1946, the art collector Cai Jixiang () owned the manuscript. John Hadley Cox then transported it to the United States. How John Hadley Cox acquired the manuscript from Cai Jixiang remains a controversy: Cai claimed that Cox had been asked to help scan the manuscript only; Cai's efforts to have the manuscript returned had persisted till the late 1970s but failed.文物专家解密长沙子弹库楚墓出土缯书被骗流散美国
," '' Rednet'', 12 March 2009 The philanthropist Arthur M. Sackler purchased the ancient manuscript in 1965, and it is preserved in the

Arthur M. Sackler Gallery The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., focusing on Culture of Asia, Asian art. The Sackler Gallery and the Freer Gallery of Art together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the Uni ...

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

Papers related to the manuscript can be found at the

Freer Gallery of Art The Freer Gallery of Art is an art museum of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. focusing on Asian art. The Freer and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery together form the National Museum of Asian Art in the United States. The Freer and ...

and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives. Recent excavations of Chu-period tombs have discovered historically comparable manuscripts written on fragile

bamboo slips Bamboo and wooden strips ( zh, s=简牍, t=簡牘, first=t, p=jiǎndú) are long, narrow strips of wood or bamboo, each typically holding a single column of several dozen brush-written characters. They were the main media for writing documents ...

and

silk Silk is a natural fiber, natural protein fiber, some forms of which can be weaving, woven into textiles. The protein fiber of silk is composed mainly of fibroin and is most commonly produced by certain insect larvae to form cocoon (silk), c ...

– the Chinese word ''zhubo'' (竹帛 literally "bamboo and silk") means "bamboo slips and silk (for writing); ancient books". The Chu Silk Manuscript was roughly contemporaneous with the (c. 305 BCE)

Tsinghua Bamboo Slips The Tsinghua Bamboo Strips () are a collection of Chinese texts dating to the Warring States period and written in ink on strips of bamboo, that were acquired in 2008 by Tsinghua University, China. The texts were obtained by illegal excavation, ...

and (c. 300 BCE)

Guodian Chu Slips The Guodian Chu Slips () were unearthed in October 1993 in Tomb no. 1 of the Guodian tombs in Jingmen, Hubei Province and dated to the latter half of the Warring States period. Scott Cook completed a study and translation of all the manuscript of ...

, and it preceded the (168 BCE) Mawangdui Silk Texts. Its subject matter predates the (c. 168 BCE) Han Dynasty silk '' Divination by Astrological and Meteorological Phenomena''.

Content

The Chu Silk Manuscript is 47 cm long and 38 cm wide, with worn edges and folds. Exposure to light has made some portions dark and unreadable, but

infrared photography In infrared photography, the photographic film or image sensor used is sensitive to infrared light. The part of the spectrum used is referred to as near-infrared to distinguish it from far-infrared, which is the domain of thermal imaging. Wav ...

helped to decipher some illegible portions. This silken document contains 926 ancient characters in three sections, each of which involves some aspect of the

lunisolar A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, that combines monthly lunar cycles with the solar year. As with all calendars which divide the year into months, there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months ...

Chinese calendar The traditional Chinese calendar, dating back to the Han dynasty, is a lunisolar calendar that blends solar, lunar, and other cycles for social and agricultural purposes. While modern China primarily uses the Gregorian calendar for officia ...

. Li and Cook (1999) call them the "Year (Inner Long Text)", "Seasons (Inner Short Text)", and "Months (Surrounding Text)". The Inner Long and Short Text are alternate blocks, respectively with thirteen lines of text upright and with eight lines inverted (cf. Greek

Boustrophedon Boustrophedon () is a style of writing in which alternate lines of writing are reversed, with letters also written in reverse, mirror-style. This is in contrast to modern European languages, where lines always begin on the same side, usually the l ...

). Jao Tsung-I (Lawton 1991:178) proposes the former section is written right side up because it discusses the

creation myth A creation myth or cosmogonic myth is a type of cosmogony, a symbolic narrative of how the world began and how people first came to inhabit it., "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the universe and its inhabitants came to be. Cre ...

s of the Chu people, and the latter is upside down because it describes events when heaven is in disarray. The Surrounding Text in the four margins pictures a color-symbolic tree in each corner plus twelve masked zoomorphic figures with short descriptions. Scholars associate the twelve pictures with the Chu gods for the months and the four trees with the mythic pillars holding up the heavens. The Inner Short Text describes Gong Gong knocking down one heavenly pillar and causing the earth to tilt. Although these twelve figures have no certain interpretation, Loewe (1978:105) reasons, "it seems likely that they may represent twelve guardian gods or holy spirits, severally invested with powers of action for each of the twelve months. Alternatively they may represent twelve shamans or intermediaries, wearing masks and capable of communicating with such deities." Li Xueqin (1987) identified these twelve gods with the ancient names for the months given in the '' Erya'' (8/15, Chu 陬, Ru 如, Bing 寎, ...). The manuscript's sides represent the four directions and seasons. In traditional Chinese terms, the Four Symbols are the Azure Dragon of the East (), Vermillion Bird of the South (), White Tiger of the West (), and Black Tortoise of the North (). Each direction is divided into seven sectors, constituting the

Twenty-Eight Mansions The Twenty-Eight Mansions (), also called or , are part of the Chinese constellations system. They can be considered as the equivalent to the Zodiac, zodiacal constellations in Western astronomy, though the Twenty-eight Mansions reflect the move ...

() of the

lunar month In lunar calendars, a lunar month is the time between two successive syzygies of the same type: new moons or full moons. The precise definition varies, especially for the beginning of the month. Variations In Shona, Middle Eastern, and Euro ...

. The Chu Silk Manuscript concerns

Chinese astronomy Astronomy in China has a long history stretching from the Shang dynasty, being refined over a period of more than 3,000 years. The Ancient China, ancient Chinese people have identified stars from 1300 BCE, as Chinese star names later categori ...

and

Chinese astrology Chinese astrology is based on traditional Chinese astronomy and the Chinese calendar. Chinese astrology flourished during the Han dynasty (2nd century BC to 2nd century AD). Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy (theor ...

, describes the

s of

Fuxi Fuxi or Fu Hsi ( zh, c=伏羲) is a culture hero in Chinese mythology, credited along with his sister and wife Nüwa with creating humanity and the invention of music, hunting, fishing, domestication, and cooking, as well as the Cangjie syste ...

and Nuwa, and reveals ancient religious perspectives and

cosmogony Cosmogony is any model concerning the origin of the cosmos or the universe. Overview Scientific theories In astronomy, cosmogony is the study of the origin of particular astrophysical objects or systems, and is most commonly used in ref ...

. Li and Cook (1999:172) conclude that, "Generally, the writer of the manuscript was concerned that the calendar be used with proper respect and knowledge. Otherwise, the text threatens, cosmic collapse and evil catastrophic events would occur." Li and Cook identify the design with the ''shitu'' (式圖 "cosmic model diagram").

The Chu Silk Manuscript consists of both illustrations and texts; it is designed to resemble a divination board (''shi''; also sometimes called a diviner's board or cosmograph), which is itself a model of the cosmos. This type of instrument, of which several have been found in Han tombs, consists of a round board symbolizing heaven that can rotate on a pivot on top of a square board representing the earth. (1999:172)

This ''shi'' (式, literally "model; standard; form; pattern") or ''shipan'' () was the precursor for the ''

luopan The luopan or geomantic compass is a Chinese magnetism, magnetic compass, also known as a feng shui compass. It is used by a feng shui practitioner to determine the precise direction of a structure, place or item. Luo Pan contains a lot of inform ...

'' () or "

feng shui Feng shui ( or ), sometimes called Chinese geomancy, is a traditional form of geomancy that originated in ancient China and claims to use energy forces to harmonize individuals with their surrounding environment. The term ''feng shui'' mean ...

compass".

Translations

Interpreting the Chu Silk Manuscript's brush-written

Chinese characters Chinese characters are logographs used Written Chinese, to write the Chinese languages and others from regions historically influenced by Chinese culture. Of the four independently invented writing systems accepted by scholars, they represe ...

is especially difficult. Some of these ancient

logogram In a written language, a logogram (from Ancient Greek 'word', and 'that which is drawn or written'), also logograph or lexigraph, is a written character that represents a semantic component of a language, such as a word or morpheme. Chine ...

s are illegible and some are missing in lacuna. Others are what Barnard (1981:181) calls "descendantless graphs" unidentified with standard characters, which "may reflect something of the Ch'u (written) "dialect" rather than more general characteristics of pre-Han character structures." Barnard (1973) provided the first English translation of the manuscript, followed by Li and Cook (1999). To illustrate the subject matter, the translated beginning of each section is quoted below. Note that the ellipsis " .. marks obliterated or untranslatable characters. "Year (Inner Long Text)" has three subsections; warning about unnatural events if the months are improperly calibrated, stressing the importance of a proper calendar for an auspicious year from the gods, and cautioning people to respectfully sacrifice to the gods. "Seasons (Inner Short Text)" also has three subsections; describing how the gods separated heaven and earth and determined the four seasons, Yandi and Zhu Rong supported the heavens with five pillars of different colors, and Gong Gong divided time into periods, days, months, and years. This "stepped" refers to ritual '' Yubu'' (禹步 "Steps of Yu", later known as '' bugang'' 步罡 "walking the guideline", Andersen 1989). Yu was the legendary founder of the

Xia dynasty The Xia dynasty (; ) is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese historiography. According to tradition, it was established by the legendary figure Yu the Great, after Emperor Shun, Shun, the last of the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors, Fiv ...

who controlled the Great Flood's waters and regulated the four seasons. "Months (Surrounding Text)" in the margins has twelve subsections that picture the monthly gods and list their calendrical rules.

Textual genre

Several

Chinese classics The Chinese classics or canonical texts are the works of Chinese literature authored prior to the establishment of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Prominent examples include the Four Books and Five Classics in the Neo-Confucian traditi ...

are comparable with the Chu Silk Manuscript. For instance, Major (1999:125) says it "anticipates later ritual and astrological calendars, such as the "Yueling" ��令 "Monthly Commands"of the ''Lüshi chunqiu'', in emphasizing the importance of performing certain actions and refraining from others in each month of the year in order to ensure safety and good fortune for the community as a whole." In addition, Jao (1985, Lawton 1991:176) compares the manuscript with both the ''Tianguan shu'' (天官書 "Essay on Astronomy") in the ''

Records of the Grand Historian The ''Shiji'', also known as ''Records of the Grand Historian'' or ''The Grand Scribe's Records'', is a Chinese historical text that is the first of the Twenty-Four Histories of imperial China. It was written during the late 2nd and early 1st ce ...

'' and the bamboo ''Rishu'' (日書 "Almanacs") from the Chu burials at

Yunmeng Yunmeng County () is a county in eastern Hubei province, People's Republic of China. It is administered by Xiaogan City and is located just outside Xiaogan's urban area. History During the Spring and Autumn period of Chinese history (770-476 B ...

and the Qin burials at Tianshui. Within traditional terms for Chinese schools of thought, Li Ling (1985, Lawton 1991:179) classifies the manuscript as the oldest example of ''shushu'' (數術 "numerals and skills"). "''Shushu'' not only includes astronomy and the calendrical and mathematical sciences, but also the various related areas in divination (based on deduction) and physiognomy (based on observation)." ''Shushu'' contrasted with ''fangji'' (方技 "prescriptions and techniques"), which included

traditional Chinese medicine Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medicine, alternative medical practice drawn from traditional medicine in China. A large share of its claims are pseudoscientific, with the majority of treatments having no robust evidence ...

, ''

neidan Neidan, or internal alchemy (), is an array of esoteric doctrines and physical, mental, and spiritual practices that Taoist initiates use to prolong life and create an immortal spiritual body that would survive after death. Also known as Jindan ...

'', ''

daoyin ''Daoyin'' is a series of cognitive body and mind unity exercises practiced as a form of Daoist ''neigong'', meditation and mindfulness to cultivate '' jing'' (essence) and direct and refine '' qi'', the internal energy of the body according t ...

'', etc., and both specialties were associated with '' fangshi'' "diviners; magicians". "''Shushu'' is primarily related to the universal order (hence, the cosmos), while ''fangji'' is primarily related to the human order (hence, the human body)." Li concludes the Chu Silk Manuscript's cosmic model was based on ''liuren'' () or '' Da Liu Ren'' () calendrical astrology.

References

Citations

Sources

*Andersen, Poul. 1989
"The Practice of Bugang"
''Cahiers d'Extrême- Asie'' 5.5:15-53. *Barnard, Noel. 1958. "A Preliminary Study of the Ch'u Silk Manuscript – A New Reconstruction of the Text", ''Monumenta Serica'' 17:1-11. *Barnard, Noel. 1972. ''Studies on the Ch'u Silk Manuscript''. Australian National University ''Monographs on Far Eastern History'' 4. *Barnard, Noel. 1973. ''The Ch’u Silk Manuscript. Translation and Commentary''. Australian National University Press. *Barnard, Noel. 1981. "The nature of the Ch'in "Reform of the Script" as reflected in archaeological documents excavated under conditions of control," i
''Science in Traditional China: a Comparative Perspective''
ed. by Joseph Needham, The Chinese University Press, 181-214. *Cook, Constance A. and John S. Major, eds. 1999
''Defining Chu: Image and Reality in Ancient China''
Hawaii University Press. * Jao Tsung-I. 1985. ''Chu boshu'' 楚帛書. Zhonghua shuju. *Jao Tsung-I. 1987. "The Calligraphic Art of the Chu Silk Manuscript," ''Orientations''. 18.9:79-84. *Lawton, Thomas, ed. 1991. ''New Perspectives on Chu Culture during the Eastern Zhou Period''. Princeton University Press. * Li Ling. 1985. ''Changsha Zidanku Zhanguo Chu boshu yanjiu'' 長沙子彈庫戰國楚帛書研究. Zhonghua shuju. *Li Ling and Constance A. Cook. 1999. "Translation of the Chu Silk Manuscript," in Cook and Major, 171-176. * Li Xueqin. 1987. "Zai lun boshu shi'er shen 再論帛書十二神", ''Hunan kaogu jikan'' 湖南考古季刊 4:110-114. * Loewe, Michael. 1978. "Man and Beast: The Hybrid in Early Chinese Art and Literature", ''Numen'' 25.2:97-117. *Major, John S. 1999. "Characteristics of Late Chu Religion," in Cook and Major, 121-144.

External links

Chu Silk Manuscript

John Hadley Cox Archaeological Study collection
Smithsonian Institution Libraries
Translation and Commentary of the Ch'u Silk Manuscript
Noel Barnard

''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

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