Chu Silk Manuscript


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 Warring States period tomb from the southern Chinese state of Chu.

History

The provenance 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, east of Changsha, Hunan. 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. The philanthropist Arthur M. Sackler purchased the ancient manuscript in 1965, and it is preserved in the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C. Papers related to the manuscript can be found at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives.
Recent excavations of Chu-period tombs have discovered historically comparable manuscripts written on fragile bamboo slips and silk – the Chinese word zhubo means "bamboo slips and silk ; ancient books". The Chu Silk Manuscript was roughly contemporaneous with the Tsinghua Bamboo Slips and Guodian Chu Slips, and it preceded the Mawangdui Silk Texts. Its subject matter predates the 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 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 Chinese calendar. Li and Cook call them the "Year ", "Seasons ", and "Months ".
The Inner Long and Short Text are alternate blocks, respectively with thirteen lines of text upright and with eight lines inverted. Jao Tsung-I proposes the former section is written right side up because it discusses the creation myths 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 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 identified these twelve gods with the ancient names for the months given in the Erya. 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 of the lunar month.
The Chu Silk Manuscript concerns Chinese astronomy and Chinese astrology, describes the creation myths of Fuxi and Nuwa, and reveals ancient religious perspectives and cosmogony. Li and Cook 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.
The Chu Silk Manuscript consists of both illustrations and texts; it is designed to resemble a divination board, 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.

This shi or shipan was the precursor for the luopan or "feng shui compass".

Translations

Interpreting the Chu Silk Manuscript's brush-written Chinese characters is especially difficult. Some of these ancient logograms are illegible and some are missing in lacuna. Others are what Barnard calls "descendantless graphs" unidentified with standard characters, which "may reflect something of the Ch'u "dialect" rather than more general characteristics of pre-Han character structures."
Barnard provided the first English translation of the manuscript, followed by Li and Cook. To illustrate the subject matter, the translated beginning of each section is quoted below. Note that the ellipsis "" marks obliterated or untranslatable characters.
"Year " 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 " 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. Yu was the legendary founder of the Xia dynasty who controlled the Great Flood's waters and regulated the four seasons.
"Months " in the margins has twelve subsections that picture the monthly gods and list their calendrical rules.

Textual genre

Several Chinese classics are comparable with the Chu Silk Manuscript. For instance, Major says it "anticipates later ritual and astrological calendars, such as the "Yueling" 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 compares the manuscript with both the Tianguan shu in the Records of the Grand Historian and the bamboo Rishu from the Chu burials at Yunmeng and the Qin burials at Tianshui.
Within traditional terms for Chinese schools of thought, Li Ling classifies the manuscript as the oldest example of shushu. "Shushu not only includes astronomy and the calendrical and mathematical sciences, but also the various related areas in divination and physiognomy." Shushu contrasted with fangji, which included Traditional Chinese medicine, neidan, Dao yin, etc., and both specialties were associated with fangshi "diviners; magicians". "Shushu is primarily related to the universal order, while fangji is primarily related to the human order." Li concludes the Chu Silk Manuscript's cosmic model was based on liuren or Da Liu Ren calendrical astrology.