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Chinese Concepts of Soul before
Buddhism and Taoism
In this study, the indigenous Chinese
conceptions of the afterlife in the period before the arrival of
Buddhism in China is investigated. Since high antiquity, there
existed a ritual of fu
 "Summons" or "Recall" as the point of
departure that was the crystallization of a variety of ideas about
human survival after death. After a reconstruction of the ritual
of fu, the article proceeds to inquire into the origin and
development of the notions of hun
 and p'o
 , two
pivotal concepts that have been, and remain today, the key to
understanding Chinese views of the human soul and the afterlife.
Finally, we examine the changing conceptions of the two
afterworlds before Buddhism transformed them into "heaven" and
"hell."
A study of this kind must be based on every type of evidence now
available - historical as well as archaeological, written as well
as pictorial. The central purpose is to identify a common core of
beliefs in Han China that were shared across popular cultures. In
this particular area of Han thought, the boundaries between
Confucian ideology and popular Taoist religion, which was a
syncretism of all the indigenous religions beliefs and practices
at the popular level, are blurred and often impossible to
distinguish. For example, views about the hun-soul and
p'o-soul found in the Han Confucian classic Li Chi
 bear
a strong resemblance to those found in the Ho-Shang Commentary
on the Lao Tzu
 , a popular Taoist text of Han origin. For the
same reason, the T'ai-p'ing ching
 is also an indispensable
source for the study of popular beliefs concerning the afterlife
at the end of the Han period. Portions of this text are clearly
traceable to the Han times and can throw important new light on
the subject, especially when they are used with caution and in
combination with other newly discovered documents of proven Han
date.
The Ancient Ritual called "Fu" for Summon Souls
In Han China there was an important death ritual called fu,
"The Summons of the Soul." It was the first of a series of rituals
to be performed to the newly dead. Although this fu ritual,
as variously reported in the Chou-li
 , I-li
 , and
Li-chi is a highly complex one, it may nevertheless be briefly
described. As soon as a person dies, a "summoner" (fu-che ), normally a
member of the family climbs from the east eaves to the top of the
roof with a set of cloths belonging to the deceased, and calls him
by name aloud - "O! Thou so-and-so, come back!" After the call has
been repeated three times, the summoner throws down the cloths,
which are received by another person on the ground. The receiver
then spreads the cloths over the body of the dead. Afterwards, the
summoner descends from the west eaves. Thus the ritual of fu is
completed.
According to the Han commentator Cheng Hsuan
 (127-200) the purpose
of the fu ritual is "to summon the hun-soul of the
dead back to reunite with its p'o soul" (chao-hun-fu-p'o
 ).
In fact, the ritual is predicated on the belief that when the
hun separates from the p'o and leaves the human body,
life comes to an end. However, at the moment when death first
occurs, the living cannot bear to believe that their beloved one
has really left them for good. The living must first assume that
the departure of the hun-soul is only temporary. It is
possible, then, that if the departed soul can be summoned back the
dead may be brought back to life. A person can be pronounced dead
only when the fu ritual has failed to achieve its purpose,
after which the body of the dead will be placed on the bed in his
or her own chamber and covered with a burial shroud called hu
or fu
 .
Figure 1: Sketch of T-shaped silk painting from Ma-wang-tui
tomb no. 1.
Funerary banner, Painting on silk. About eight feet high. From Ma-wang-tui,
tomb No. 1, Ch'ang-sha, Hunan province. Western Han, about 170 BC.
This is a completely preserved painting probably the same type of
work from which the earlier slide no. 4 was taken. Called in the
inventory of the tomb, a flying garment, the painting was draped
over the corpse in side the coffin. It shows the journey of the
departed s soul into the afterlife. The work is rich in religious
and mythological material and shows the deceased, the elderly
woman with a cane in the center of the painting. The swirling,
florid representation and ornament is characteristic of the Ch'u
culture and stands in stark contrast both to earlier Shang and
later Chinese preference for simple, open design.
 
Location of the Ma Wang Tui tomb in
mainland China
Archaeological Evidences Found
Remarkably, this Han ritual practice has been confirmed by recent
archaeological discoveries. In 1972-74, three Han tombs were
excavated at Ma-wang-tui, in Ch'ang-sha, Hunan. At
the time of its excavation, tomb no. 1 aroused worldwide attention
primarily because of the well-preserved body of its occupant, the
wife of Li-ts'ang
 , also known as the Countess of Tai , who
probably died in 175 B.C. In tomb no. 3, dated 168 B.C. and
belonging to Li-ts'ang's son, a large quantity of silk
manuscripts of lost ancient writings were found. Since their
discovery the scholarly literature on these two tombs and their
unusually rich contents has been been enormous. Our discussion
below will be confined to the light that this spectacular
discovery sheds on the fu ritual. For this purpose, the
focus is on the two T-shaped polychrome paintings on silk from
tombs no. 1 and no.3 respectively. In addition to these two,
similar paintings have also been found in other Han tombs. A
Chinese archaeologist has recently summarized the contents of the
Han paintings as follows:
They are all of silk and are painted
with fine colored pictures. The picture is divided into three
sections, depicting, from top to bottom, heaven, man's world, and
the underworld. Both heaven and the underworld are represented by
mythological images and creatures; the heaven picture has sun,
moon, and sometimes stars, and the sun has a golden crow and the
moon has a toad and a white rabbit, and sometimes a picture of
Chang Er, the Goddess of the moon. The underworld picture shows
various aquatic animals, representing an aquatic palace at the
bottom of the sea. As for man's world, the picture depicts scenes
from daily life and also a portrait of the master of the tomb.
(Wang Zhongshu 1982).
Scholars are generally agreed that
the central theme of the painting is the "Summons of the Soul."
According to Yu Wei-ch'ao
 (1972), the two male figures above the
aged woman, who can be clearly identified as the Countess of Tai,
are most likely the "summoners" (Fig. 1, c). Judging by the
position they occupy and the robes and hats they wear, these two
men are represented as calling the departed soul back from a
rooftop. Moreover, the lady below the moon (Fig. 1, b(, instead of
being the goddess of the moon, Chang Er, may well have been a
presentation of the departed soul of the Countess of Tai herself.
A comparison with the T-shaped silk painting from tomb no. 3 shows
that the most noticeable difference between the two heavenly
scenes lies in the absence of the so-called Chang Er
 . Another scholar has also made an interesting suggestion
that the beautiful woman's figure ending in a serpentine tail at
the central apex of the painting (Fig. 1, a) may not be intended
to represent any of the mythological figures that scholars have
put forth. Instead it may have been the artist's intention to
represent the final stage of the countess' journey to heaven when
she has reached her destination. In other words, one of the two
figures must be a representation of the countess' hun-soul.
It is important to note that in the round central space of the
second painting, the female figure is replaced by a male figure.
This difference of gender makes better sense when we take into
consideration the gender of its occupant. It is quite reasonable
to assume that the male figure in this case is also a
representation of the soul of the countess' son in heaven.
 
1. Han Dynasty. 2nd c. B.C. Silk
banner. L:207cm, Top W:97cm, Bottom W:47 cm;
2. Han Dynasty. 2nd c. B.C. Banner Silk detail; 3. Palatial Tomb
Chamber; 4. Wood Sarcophagus excavated from Tomb
 
1. Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Coffin
(2nd layer) painted with Black Lacquer. L:256 x W:118cm, H:89cm
2. Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Coffin (2nd layer) painted with Black
Lacquer. detail
3. Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Coffin (3rd layer) red lacquer;
4. Coffin (3rd layer) red lacquer. detail of the head board.
motif- fairy mountain and deer
 
1. Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Silk
Garment
2. Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Funeral Figurines
3. East Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Sculpture Kneeling Lady in a Gesture
of Greeting
3. East Han Dynasty. 2nd B.C. Sculpture Two Dancing Figures
The establishment of the central theme of the T-shaped paintings
as the summons of the soul also helps to identify the function of
the silk painting. While the suggestion that the painting was a
banner used in funeral processions cannot be completely ruled out,
it is more likely that it was burial shroud, hu, frequently
referred to in Han texts in connection with the fu ritual.
In the Han inventories of funeral furnishings found in both tombs
there is an item listed as "fei-i, 12 feet long," which has
been identified with the T-shaped silk painting. The
identification seems firmly grounded. Fei-i
 means
"mantle," "shroud," or "cover." Moreover, in ancient ritual texts,
fei and hu are interchangeable in meaning. According
to Han commentators, a hu was a cloth painted red used to
cover the corpse of the newly dead, later, the coffin. This
description agrees perfectly with the silk-painting. The current
view that it was a ming-ching
 or "funerary banner," is
therefore questionable, to say the least. For, literally,
ming-ching means "inscribed funerary banner." The basic
purpose of a ming-ching was "to identify the departed
han-soul" by means of a name inscribed on a banner. The use of
the ming-ching, widespread at the time of Hsun-tzu (3rd
century B.C.), continued throughout the Han period. In fact, none
of the ming-ching excavated from Han tombs in recent
decades lacks such an inscription. Since the names of either the
mother or her son are not inscribed on the T-shaped paintings,
they must not be ming-ching.
To conclude this section, it seems reasonable to assert that the
T-shaped painting not only take the ritual of fu as their
main theme, but their function is also closely related to that
same ritual. We may say that these paintings provide
archaeological confirmation of the ritual of fu as recorded
in the various Han writings on ritual.
 
Artist impression of Hun and Po
that make up our souls
We all Have Dualistic Hun
and P'o
Souls?
The ritual of fu, as pointed out earlier, is based on the
belief of chao-hun fu-p'o, to summon the hun-soul to
reunite with the p'o soul. In order to grasp the full
meaning of this ritual practice, we must proceed to trace the
evolution of the Chinese concept of soul from antiquity of the Han
times.
Before the dualistic conception of hun and p'o began
to gain currency in the middle of the 6th century B.C., p'o
alone seems to have been used to denote the human soul. The
character p'o
(or its variant pa
 ) means "white,"
"bright," or "bright light," deriving originally from the growing
light of the new moon. The earliest form of the character has
recently been found on a Chou oracle bone inscription datable to
the 11th century B.C. It is used in the term chi-p'o
 which,
according to Wang Kuo-wei, stood for the period from 8th or 9th to
the 14th or 15th of the lunar month. The term chi-suu-p'o
may also be found on another piece of oracle bone indicating the
period from the 23rd or 24th to the end of the month. These two
terms were later used repeatedly in early Chou historical
documents as well as bronze inscriptions in the standard forms of
chi-sheng pa
 and chi-ssu-pa
 which may be translated,
respectively, as "after the birth of the crescent" and "after the
death of the crescent."
Since the ancient Chinese took the changing phases of the moon as
periodic birth and death of its p'o, its "white light" or
soul, by analogy they eventuall came to associate, by the early
6th century B.C. if not earlier, the life or death of a man with
the presence or absence of his p'o. (Hu 1945; Nagasawa
1964).
Two examples from the Tso chuan
 , the chronicle of the state
of Lu compiled probably in the 4th century B.C., will serve to
illustrate the point. In 593 B.C. a man named Chao T'ung
 behaved
erratically at the court of Chou. One official made the following
prediction: "In less than 10 years Chao T'ung will be sure to meet
with great calamity. Heaven has taken his p'o from him." Fifty
years later, in 543 B.C., a nobleman named Po-yu in the state of
Cheng (in central Honan) had shown a marked decline in reasoning
power and judgment, which also led a contemporary to remark:
"Heaven is destroying Po-yu
 and has taken away his p'o." In both
cases, the p'o is identified as the soul of the man,
something that when taken way, by heaven, causes the man to lose
his intelligence. Clearly p'o must have been conceived as a
separate entity which joins the body from outside.
But toward the end of the 6th century B.C. the concept of hun
as a soul had also become widespread. In 516 B.C. Yueh Ch'i
 ,
an official at the court of the state of Sung (in eastern Honan)
had the following to say about the Duke of Sung and a guest named
Shu-sun from Lu because both had wept during a supposedly joyful
gathering:
This year both our lord and Shu-sun
 are likely to die. I have heard that joy in the midst of grief and
grief in the midst of joy are signs of a loss of mind (or heart,
hsin). The essential vigor and brightness of the mind is
what we call the hun and the p'o. When these leave
it, how can the man continue long?
Here both the hun and the
p'o are regarded as the very essence of the mind, the source
of knowledge and intelligence. Death is thought to follow
inevitably when the hun and the p'o leave the body.
We have reason to believe that around this time the idea of hun
was still relatively new. To the mind of an ordinary Chinese, it
was probably not very clear in precisely what way the hun
and the p'o were related to each other. In 534 B.C. the
state of Cheng was deeply disturbed by a series of events
resulting, reportedly, from a nobleman's ghost having returned to
take revenge on his murderers. This nobleman was the
above-mentioned Po-yuwho had been not only expelled from Cheng
but also assassinated by his political enemies. As a result of the
loss of his hereditary office, his spirit was also deprived of
sacrifices. The disturbances supposedly caused by this avenging
ghost terrified the entire state. The wise statesman and
philosopher, Tzu-ch'an , therefore reinstated Po-yu's son in his
former office. Finally, as our story goes, the ghost was satisfied
and disappeared. Afterwards a friend asked Tzu-ch'an whether there
was any explanation of this strange phenomenon: what does a ghost
consist of? How is it possible for a ghost to disturb the human
world? The following answer given by Tsu-ch'an is of central
important to our study because it is the locus classicus on the
subject of the human soul in the Chinese tradition.
When man is born, that which is first created, is called the
p'o and, when the p'o has been formed, its positive
part (yang ) becomes hun or conscious spirit. In case a man is materially well and
abundantly supported, then this hun and p'o grow
very strong, and therefore produce spirituality and intelligence.
Even the hun and p'o of an ordinary man or woman,
having encountered violent death, can attach themselves to other
people to cause extraordinary troubles .. The stuff Po-yu was made
of was copious and rich, and his family great and powerful. Is it
not natural that, having met with a violent death, he should be
able to a become a ghost? (Tso Chuen, 1962).
To begin with, it is important to
point out that the very fact that Tzu-ch'an found it necessary to
offer such a detailed explanation of the relationship between the
p'o and the hun indicates that the hun as a
concept of soul was not yet familiar to the Chinese mind. This
point can be further seen from the fact that he took the p'o
to be fundamental and the hun derivative. In his emphasis
on physical nourishment as the foundation of the soul, Tzu-ch'an's
analysis strongly suggests a materialistic point of view. On the
whole, I believe, this interpretation is best understood as
reflecting Tzu-ch'an's personal view of the subject rather than
being a common conception in 6th century B.C. China. It is true
that Tzu-ch'an's statement, as quoted above, later became, the
orthodox doctrine of hun and p'o in the Confucian
philosophical tradition. However, as we shall see later, it was
not the view to be accepted by the common man in China in
subsequent, especially Han, times.
We know relatively little about the origin of hun as a
concept of soul. It is quite possible that the concept was more
developed in the south and then spread to the north sometime
during the 6th century B.C. This possibility finds some support in
the textual evidence at our disposal.
According to the "T'an-kung"
 chapter of the Li-chi, generally
believed to be a pre-Han text, Prince Chi-cha
 of the southern
state of Wu (in Kiangsu) lost his son while traveling in the north
in 515 B.C. At the burial ceremony, he is reported to have
expressed the following view about the dead: "Destined it is that
his bones and flesh should return to the earth. As for his
soul-breath (hun-ch'i
 ), it goes everywhere, everywhere." It
is important to note that in this passage the idea of p'o
is conspicuously missing, which seems to indicate that it was not
as widespread a concept as in the north. For the "bones and flesh"
refers to the corpse, not the p'o-soul. At any rate there
can be little doubt that in the southern tradition the hun
was regarded as a more active and vital soul than the p'o.
This is clearly shown in the ancient anthology Ch'u Tz'u
 ("The
Elegies of Ch'u"). Two of the songs, datable to the early 3rd
century B.C., describe the shamanistic ritual of "soul summons."
The following lines appear repeatedly in these two songs:
O soul, come back! In the east you
can not abide. O soul, come back! In the south you cannot stay. O
soul, go not to the west! Oh soul, go not to the north! O soul,
come back! Climb not to heaven above. O soul, come back! Go not
down to the land of Darkness. (Hawkes 1962).
The "soul" in each and every case
refers invariably to the hun and therefore confirms
completely the belief of the southern prince Chi-cha that the
hun-soul indeed goes everywhere.
Probably as a result of the fusion of cultures, by the second
century B.C. at the latest, the Chinese dualistic conception of
soul had reached its definitive formulation. A most succinct
statement of this dualistic idea may be found in the Book of
Rites (Li-chi, "Chiao t'e sheng"
 chapter): "The
breath-soul (hun-ch'i
) returns to heaven; the bodily soul (hsing-p'o
 )
returns to earth. Therefore, in sacrificial-offering one should
seek the meaning in the yin-yang
 principle." It may be noted that
several duality of hun and p'o, we also see the
dualities of ch'i and hsing, heaven and earth, as
well as yang and yin.
Are these images of
extra-terrestrial creatures that came to China in ancient time?
 
1. Bronze mask with hooked-cloud
ornament H 85.4 (33 5/8). Late Shang Period (c. 1300-1100 BC?)
2. Bronze animal stand of the chime (13) H 67 cm, w 24.8 kilogram
The animal is a combination of many parts of different animals
into one:
dragon head with two horns, long crane neck, two spreading wings,
strong back and claw-feet.
3. Bronze human head with gold leaf, H 42.5 cm, Late Shang Period
(c. 1300-1100 B.C.)
4 & 5. Bronze human head with hair ornament. H 49.4 (19 3/8). Late
Shang Period (c. 1300-1100 BC?)
We are 3-in-1 : Earthly Body, Spirit
and
Soul
?
We shall explain the ideas of ch'i and hsing at a
later juncture. Briefly, the dualism may be understood in the
following way: Ancient Chinese generally believed that the
individual human life consists of a bodily part as well as a
spiritual part. The physical body relies for its existence on food
and drink produced by the earth. The spirit depends for its
existence on the invisible life force called ch'i, which
comes into the body from heaven. In other words, breathing and
eating are the two basic activities by which a man continually
maintains his life. But the body and the spirit are each governed
by a soul, namely, the p'o and the hun. It is for
this reason that they are referred to in the passage just quoted
above as the bodily-soul (hsing-p'o) and the breath-soul (hun-ch'i)
respectively.
The identification of the hun-p'o duality with the yang-yin
principle was a later development, resulting evidently from the
rise and popularity of the yin-yang cosmology in the late 4th and
early 3rd centuries B.C. Although in the above-quoted statement by
Tzu-ch'an the hun is defined as the yang or positive part
of the p'o, the p'o itself, or the remainder of it,
is not described as yin. The equation of the paired concept of
hun-p'o with that of yin-yang had yet to be developed. Now,
according to the yin-yang cosmology, there are two basic opposite
but complementary forces at work in the cosmos.
Yin is the supreme feminine force while yang is its
masculine counter-part. As two basic principles, the yin is
characterized, among other things, by passivity and negativity,
and the yang by activity and positivity. But life, whether
cosmic or individual, comes into being only when two forces begin
to interact with each other. Heaven and earth, for instance, being
the highest embodiment of yang and yin, operate in
response to each other to form cosmic life. It was, therefore,
quite natural for ancient Chinese to fit the hun-p'o
duality into this yin-yang framework. By Han times at the latest,
as the above-quoted passage from the Book of Rites shows, it
already became a generally accepted idea that the hun
belongs to the yang category and is hence and active and
heavenly substance and the p'o belongs to the yin
category and is hence a passive and earthly substance.
This identification led to a new conception of the relationship
between the hun and the p'o. During the Han dynasty,
there was a widely shared belief in both the elite culture and the
popular culture that in life the hun and the p'o
form a harmonious union within the human body and at death the two
souls separate and leave the body. This belief may have originated
in a much earlier period because we already find a clear
expression of the idea of "the separation of the hun from
the p'o" in The Elegies of Ch'u (Ch'u-tzu) of early third
century B.C.
However, when the hun and p'o separate, they also go
their separate or, more precisely, opposite ways. The hun-soul,
being a breath-like light substance, (hun-ch'i), has
a much greater freedom of movement. By contrast, the p'o
soul being associated with the physical body is conceived as a
heavier substance with only restricted mobility. Therefore, at
death the hun-soul goes swiftly upward to heaven whereas
the p'o soul moves downward to earth at a much slower pace.
This explains why, in the ritual of fu, it is the hun, but
not the p'o, that has to be recalled from the rooftop. For
the same reason, The Elegies of Ch'u speaks of "summoning the
hun-soul" but never "summoning the p'o soul."
What is Ch'i
 then?
In order to clarify the term hun-ch'i, a word may be said
about the complex and difficult concept of ch'i as the
"source of life." The concept has a board as well as narrow
meaning. In its broad sense, ch'i is a primal and
undifferentiated life force which permeates the entire cosmos.
However, when the ch'i becomes differentiated and
individuated to form all the things in the universe, it then
varies in purity. Thus, as succinctly summed up by D. C. Lau, "the
grosser ch'i, being heavy, settled to be become the earth,
while the refined ch'i, being light, rose to become the
sky. Man, being half-way between the two is a harmonious mixture
of the two kinds of ch'i." It is in this broad sense that a
Taoist philosophical treatise of the 2nd century B.C. says that
the hun is made up of the refined, heavenly ch'i and
the p'o the grosser, earthly ch'i. But in its narrow
sense, the ch'i refers specially to the heavenly ch'i.
It is in this narrow sense that the hun-ch'i or the
breath-soul is distinguished from the hsing-p'o or bodily
soul.
We have seen that it was a general belief in Han China that the
hun owes its existence to the refined ch'i from heaven
while the p'o, being always associated with the body, is
composed of the coarse ch'i from earth. But how are the two
souls, hun and p'o, distinguished from each other in
terms of specific functions? According to Cheng Hsuan (127-200),
ch'i or hun-soul forms the basis of a man's spirit
and intelligence whereas the function of the p'o soul is
specially defined as "hearing distinctly and seeing clearly." In
other words, the hun governs man's spirit (shen
including hsin, mind or heart) and the p'o governs
his body (including the senses.) It is interesting to point out
that a similar distinction between the hun and the p'o
governs his body (including the sense.)
It is interesting to point out that a familiar distinction between
the hun and p'o can also be found in Han Taoist literature.
According to the Ho-shang Commentary on the Lao Tzu,
heaven feeds man with five kinds of ch'i, which enters his body
from the nostrils and are stored in his heart (or mind). The five
kinds of ch'i are pure and subtle and therefore go to form man's
spirit, senses, voice etc. Thus a man has a soul called hun. The
hun is masculine; it goes out and comes in through the nostrils
and communicates with heaven. Earth feeds man with five tastes
which enter his body from the mouth and are stored in the stomach.
The five tastes are impure and therefore go to form a man's body,
bones and flesh, blood and veins, as well as six emotions. Thus a
man has a soul called p'o. The p'o is feminine; it goes out and
comes in through the mouth and communicates with earth. Although
there are differences between the Confucian and the Taoist
versions with regard to the respective functions of the hun and
the p'o, the basic structural similarity is nevertheless
unmistakable. This similarity testifies fully to the universality
of the distinction between the hun the p'o in Han China, the
former being a "spiritual" soul and the latter a "bodily" soul.
Ancient Chinese Ritual Items
 
1. Bronze. Chou Dynasty Fang-ting.
Ritual Tetra-pod Cauldron. Early West Chou Inscription
2. Bronze. Chou Dynasty Fang-ting. Ritual Tetra-pod Cauldron.
Early West Chou Radiograph of vessel body
3. Bronze. Zhou Dynasty Fanghu. E. Zhou. rectangular wine water
container w/crane on cover H:48"x21-1/4"Spring and Autumn period
4. Bronze. Chou Dynasty Ritual Altar Set. Early W. Chou. Yu.
Ritual Wine Container w/Lid in 11th B.C.
5. East Zhou Zoomorphic ritual wine vessel - image of a mythical
beast with a human head inside - ancient spacecraft?
 
1. Bronze. Chou Dynasty Ritual
Altar Set. Early W. Chou. Excavated in 1901 at Tou-chi-t'ao, Pao-chi
hsien,Shensi in 11th c B.C.
2. Ivory goblet inlaid with turquoise. Late Shang Yinxu Period II
(c. 1200 BC).
From Xiaotun Locus North (Fuhao tomb), at Yinxu, Anyang, Henan
Province. Excavated in 1976
3. Yongzhong with high bosses (back view) The tone on this side is
C. The inscription is notes of music.
4. Bronze knight figure support on the stand. Height 116 cm,
weight 315 kilogram. The knight¡¦s clothes have black paint
He stands on a half sphere decorated with 16 high-relief dragons,
each interlaced with smaller dragons.
5. Jade pendant with 4 sections, L 9.5 cm, w 7.2 cm, thickness 0.4
cm
White jade, carved from one piece of jade into 4 sections, all
movable, connected with three rings
Designs include dragons, phoenixes, and 4 snakes. Craftsmanship is
exceedingly fine and rare.
 
1. Bronze fang-yi. Ritual wine
container with lid. 12th century BC. H 25.4 cm; W 14.6 cm. Henan.
2. Bronze zhi. Ritual wine cup with lid. 13th century BC. H 17.5 cm.
3. Bronze guang. Spouted ritual wine vessel, early Anyang period, 13
th century BC.
H 8 7/8¡¨, L 13¡¨, W 5¡¨. Reportedly found at Anyang, Henan.
4. Bronze zun wine jar. Early Anyang period. 13th century BC. H 39.7
cm, Diam. 35.6 cm; Henan.
5. Gu. Ritual Wine Jar. late 14th c. central band of decoration
Chinese Belief in Afterlife
The above discussion of the changing Chinese conception of soul
from antiquity to the Han period naturally leads to the problem of
afterlife. Does the departed soul continue to possess knowledge
and feelings? Can the soul exist as an independent entity forever?
Where does the soul go after its separation from the body?
Admittedly, there are not easy questions to answers owing to the
paucity of the sources on the subject. However, thanks to the
recent archaeological discoveries, it is now possible to attempt a
reconstruction of a general picture.
Long before the rise of the dualistic conception of the soul,
there had already been a common Chinese belief in an afterlife.
The notion that the departed soul is as conscious as the living is
already implied in Shang-Chou sacrifices. Shang people generally
took sacrifice to be an actual feeding of the dead. According to a
Chou bronze inscription, the kinds of animals offered
sacrificially to ancestral spirits were identical with those
presented to the reigning king as food. As far as daily needs were
concerned, no sharp distinction was drawn between the departed
soul and the living. In fact, ancient Chinese were extremely
hunger-conscious about their ancestors in the afterworld. In 604
B.C. a nobleman from the house of Jo-ao, apprehending the
forthcoming disaster of extermination of his whole clan, wept and
said: "The spirits of the dead are also in need of food.
(Hungry Ghosts?) But I am
afraid those of our Jo-ao
 clan will be sure to suffer starvation."
What he meant is that when the entire clan is wiped out, there
will be no one left to offer regular sacrifices to the ancestral
spirits. His concern lies at the very cornerstone of Chinese
ancestor-worship, for the Chinese have believed until recent
decades - indeed some may still continue to believe today - that a
spirit cannot as a rule enjoy the sacrifices offered by some one
other than his own flesh and blood, namely, his male descendant,
owing to the incommunicability between different kinds of the
individuated ch'i. Apparently, it was believed that without
sacrificial food, the hungry ancestral spirits would disintegrate
more quickly.
The original Chinese term for "the spirits of the dead" in the
above passage is kuei
 . As clearly shown in oracle
inscriptions, the character kuei had already acquired the
meaning of "the soul of the dead" as early as the Shang period.
The p'o or the hun, on the other hand, was
distinguished from kuei by being a name for "the soul of
the living."
Food for Kuei
-
The Soul of The Living
The belief that the departed soul actually enjoys the sacrificial
food offered by the living was widely held in the popular culture
of Han China. As vividly described by the critical philosopher
Wang Ch'ung
 (A.C. 27-100?) from Kuei-chi (in Chekiang): "People
never desist from urging the necessity of making offerings,
maintaining that the departed are conscious, and that ghosts and
spirits eat and drink like so many guests invited to dinner." This
description has been archaeologically confirmed by the large
quantities of food and food vessels found in Han tombs excavated
in the past three decades. (Ying-shih Yu 1977).
On the other hand, the idea that the individual soul can survive
death indefinitely seems to have been alien to the Chinese mind.
In this regard, once more, we may take the Chou sacrificial system
as an illustration. Perhaps partly as a result of the shift from
the predominantly lateral succession of the Shang period to the
lineal succession, the Chou system set a limit to the number of
generations in ancestor-worship according to social status. The
royal house, for example, would offer sacrifices to no more than
seven generations of ancestors while the common people to only two
generations, that is, their dead parents and grandparents.
Therefore every new generation would have to suspend sacrifices to
the uppermost generation previously sacrificed to. An exception
was made for the founding ancestor, who had to remain as a symbol
of the collective identity of the lineage. The system was
apparently predicated on the assumption that after a certain
period of time the spirits of the dead gradually dissolve into the
primal ch'i and lose their individual identities. As for
the differences in number of generations for different social
groups, the justification was probably based on a materialistic
interpretation of the relationship between the body and the soul.
As Tzu-ch'an's remark, quoted earlier, makes abundantly clear, the
soul of a nobleman is stronger than that of an ordinary man or
woman because, being from a great and powerful family, his
physical body is much better nourished than a common person's. As
a result, his departed soul disintegrates more slowly.
The idea that the departed soul gradually shrinks with the passing
of time is well attested to by the ancient saying that "the spirit
of a newly dead is large and that of an old one is small"
 . The
same idea was later expressed in a slight different way. In a
literary work of the early fourth century A.D., the soul of a
newly dead is described as much heavier than that of an old one
(by Kan Pao, Sou-shen chi, pp.28). This materialistic conception
of the soul explains the great importance ancient Chinese had
attached to the body of the dead. As recent archaeology has shown,
people in the Han period often went to all lengths to preserve the
body of the dead. Evidently, ancient Chinese, just like ancient
Egyptians, believed that the soul could not survive much longer
unless the body itself were preserved. (Loraine 1956).
1 & 2. Blueprint and ceramic mould
sections for casting a bronze ding. 13th ¡V11th century BC. 3. Diagram
of taotie mask
4. Conjectural reconstruction of the edifice above tomb 5 (the tomb of
Fuhao) of Xiaotun, Anyang, Henan Province.
The Afterworld: Separate Abodes For the Hun and the
P'o
Finally, to answer the question of where the soul goes after its
separation from the body we must take a closer look at the
conception of the afterworld. Before we proceed, however, we must
correct a deep-rooted misconception about the origin of the
Chinese belief in an afterworld. Early in the 17th century, Ku
Yen-wu
 , based on a preliminary historical investigation, came to
the conclusion that the Chinese did not have a clear notion of an
afterworld until the end of the Han dynasty when Buddhism arrived
on the scene. (Ku 1965). In modern times, this thesis has received
further support from Hu Shih's study of the history of Chinese
Buddhism. He emphatically maintained that it was Buddhism which
gave the Chinese the idea of tens of heavens and many hells. (Hu
Shih 1937). More recently, Joseph Needham, taking issue with the
distinction between "this-worldly" and "other-worldly" hsien
 immortality has said:
If one bears in mind the conceptions
of different peoples (Indo-Iranian, Christian, Islamic, etc.)
there was no such thing as an "other world" in ancient Chinese
thought at all - no heaven or hell, no creator God, and no
expected end of the universe once it had emerged from primeval
chaos. All was natural, and within Nature. Of course, after the
permeation of Buddhism, "the case was altered." (Needham 1974).
Indeed, it is true that in ancient
Chinese thought the contrast between "this world" and "other
world" was not as sharp as in other cultures. One may also
legitimately argue that, put in a comparative perspective, the
early Chinese idea of an "other world" appears to be "refreshing"
because it is rather differently conceived. But to say that there
was no such thing as an "other world" and no heave or hell at all
is obviously an exaggeration and a positioning that is
contradicted by known historical and archaeological facts.
We have noted that as early as the Shang period there had already
arisen the idea of a "heavenly court" which, however, may have
been reserved only for the long-lasting, if not immortal, souls of
the kings and lords as a depository of social authority. (Choron
1963). From about 8th century B.C. on, the term Yellow Springs (huang
ch'uan
 ) began to be used in historical and literary writings
to denote the home of the dead. The Yellow Springs was imagined to
be located beneath the earth, a place conceived of as dark and
miserable. But the idea is on the whole a vague one and very
little detail about it exists in the written record. As we have
seen, in the "Summons of the Soul," one of the Elegies of Ch'u,
the soul is advised "not to climb heaven above" or "go not down to
the Land of Darkness" (yu-tu
 ). Thus, for the first time, we
encounter both "heaven" and "hell" in the same poem. However,
Chinese imagination of the afterlife did not become fully
developed until the Han period. With the tremendous progress of
Han archaeology in recent decades, we are now able to reconstruct
in its general form the early Chinese conception of afterlife,
including the related beliefs of heaven and hell.
As noted earlier, the two T-shaped silk paintings from Ma-wang-tui
clearly reveal the belief that at death the hun-souls
immediately "return to heaven," just as the above-quoted Li-chi
passage says. Although we are in no position, given our present
state of knowledge, to identify each and every one of the
mythological elements in these paintings, the two paintings do
provide us with concrete evidence that by the 2nd century B.C. the
Chinese already had a vivid conception of a heavenly world above
and an underworld below.
Concepts of Heaven in Chinese Thought
The notion of a government in heaven overseeing human activities
was developed later in Han popular culture. In the earliest Taoist
canon T'ai-p'ing ching
, datable to the second century A.D.,
that is before appreciable Buddhist influence on Chinese life and
thought, we find at least four ts'ao
 or "departments" in
the celestial government. They are the ming-ts'ao
 ("Department of Fate"), shou-ts'ao
 ("Department of
Longevity"), shan-ts'ao
 ("Department of Good Deeds") and
o-ts'ao
 ("Department of Evil Deeds"). The term ts'ao,
it may be noted, is a direct borrowing from the Han governmental
organization. There were, for instance, four ts'ao in the
office of the shang-shu
 ("Masters of Documents") which,
since the time of Emperor Wu, had become "the key organ of the
state." This also explains why in the Hsiang-erch Commentary on
the Lao-tzu
 , the celestial government is also referred to as
the tien-ts'ao
 ("Heavenly Departments"), an idea which has
been perpetuated in Chinese popular culture ever since. The
T'ai-p'ing ching also reveals something about how the various
departments conduct their business. Each department keeps detailed
personal dossiers on all living persons. When a person has
accumulated enough merits, for instance, his dossier, after
evaluation, may be transferred to the Department of Longevity. On
the other hand, there is also the possibility that a person
formerly of good conduct may eventually end up in the Department
of Evil Deeds, if he is later found to have committed many sins.
Thus, not only are the personal records of all living beings
updated on a daily basis, these records are also constantly
subject to transfer from one department to another. Indeed,
activities of this kind constitute a major function of celestial
bureaucracy.
 
1. Portrait of the poet Li Po;
2. Woman with dragons and phoenix. Painting on silk. Late Waning
States period, about 300 BC. Excavated at Ch'ang-sha, Hunan province
in southern China. This fragment of a larger work by an unknown artist
is the earliest, surviving Chinese painting. Part of the distinctive
Ch'u culture native to southern China at this time, the painting is
probably part of a religious scene. The dragon and phoenix were motifs
central to Chinese mythology. The painting is a good example of early
Chinese attempts to depict three-dimensional objects (the woman) on a
two-dimensional surface (the silk). From a Western point of view, the
attempt is largely unsuccessful, and results in a flat painting,
lacking in Western notions of depth and perspective. The
representation of the human figure in silhouette (facing to the side,
not front) would remain characteristic of Chinese figure painting
until the late Han (about 200 AD).
3. The Buddha incarnate in a golden gazelle. Wall painting at
Tun-huang, western China. Cave 257, Northern Wei, about 450 AD. A fine
example of early Buddhist wall painting at Tun-huang, the famous
Buddhist cultural complex on the Silk Road between China and the West.
The slide represents a story of how the Buddha, here represented in an
earlier reincarnation as a gazelle saves a drowning man by allowing
the man to ride across the river on his back (lower left). Having
crossed to the other side, the man bows down to thank the
Buddha/gazelle (center). This painting, like many at Tun-huang, shows
how the painter struggled to represent a narrative story in visual
images. In short, the artist chooses particular scenes from the text
and depicts these one after another without break in a continuous
visual narrative, extending in the case from left to right. In this
painting, the Indian attention to mass and color have eclipsed the
native Chinese attention to brushwork (see No. 7), but as the years
passed at Tun-huang, the art of the caves would develop more
traditional Chinese lines (see No. 12). The saw-tooth hills at top
center later became a standard way to portray mountains in T'ang art.
4. The Buddha preaching the law. Wall painting at Tun-huang, western
China. Cave 249, Northern Wei, about 450 AD. Another important subject
matter at Tun-huang, perhaps the most important, were large devotional
scenes showing the Buddha preaching to large crowds of the assembled
faithful. These often, as here, showed lesser divinities surrounding
the Buddha; they could also, especially later, include a portrait of
the cave patron, the one who gave money for the construction and
upkeep of the cave. The "blue" style of his cave is characteristic of
fifth century work at Tun-huang.
Concepts of Underworld in Chinese Thought
Now, let us turn to the idea of "underworld" in Han times. On this
subject, fortunately, very interesting evidence has also been
found in the Ma-wang-tui tomb no. 3. A wooden document from this
tomb reads as follows:
On the 24th day, 2nd month, the 12th
year [of Emperor Wen's reign, 168 B.C.] Household Assistant Fen to
the lang-chung
 in charge of the dead: A list of mortuary
objects is herewith forwarded to you. Upon receiving this
document, please memorialize without delay to the Lord of the
Grave (chu-tsang chun
 ).
This document reveals two interesting
points about Han beliefs of an underworld. First, since the silk
painting from the same tomb shows that the hun-soul of the
dead goes to heaven, the present document makes sense only if
understood as dealing with the journey of his p'o soul to the
underworld. Second, the bureaucratic structure of the underworld
is, like that of the heavenly world, modeled on that of the human
world. It is interesting to note that before 104 B.C. there was an
office of lang-chung-ling
 ("Supervisor of Attendants")
whose function it was to render personal services to the emperor.
Thus the analogy between the status of Household Assistant Fen in
the marquisate of Tai and the lang-chung in the underworld
is unmistakable. In other words, Family Assistant Fen was
notifying his counterpart in the court of the Underworld Lord of
the arrival of the newly dead, in this case, the sone of Marquis
of Tai. This practice is also confirmed by two similar wooden
documents found in the Han tombs at Feng-huang Shan , (in
Chiang-ling , Hupei) in 1975. The first one from tomb no. 168,
dated 167 B.C., was issued in the name of the Assistant Magistrate
of Chiang-ling and sent to the Underworld Assistant Magistrate.
The former informed the latter of the immigration of a newly dead
under his jurisdiction to the underworld and requested the case be
reported to the Underworld Lord. The second one, dated 153 B.C.,
is found in Tomb no. 10. In this case, the document was submitted
to the Underworld Lord (ti-hsia chu
 ) directly in the name
of the dead, Chang Yen
 , himself. Unlike the Ma-wang-tui case, the
two occupants of the Feng-huang Shan tombs were neither noblemen
nor officials, but common people of some means, a fact that
testifies fully to the universality of this belief.
Since the p'o soul is closely associated with the body,
therefore, at death it returns to earth when the body is buried.
However, it seems to have been a widespread idea in Han times that
the life of the p'o soul in the underworld depends very
much on the condition of the body. If the body was well-preserved
and properly buried, then the p'o soul would not only rest
in peace and remain close to the body but probably also last
longer. Lavish interment and body preservation thus are quite
characteristic of Han tombs belonging to families of some means.
Needless to say, not every family could afford the Ma-wang-tui
type of burial. But the simplest way to preserve the body was,
according to Han death ritual, to put a piece of jade into the
mouth of the dead. This ritual practice has been amply confirmed
by recent archaeology. It was generally believed in ancient China
that jade can prevent the body from decay. The world-renowned
"jade shrouds," discovered in the tomb of an early Han prince at
Man-Ch'eng, Hopei, in 1968, were obviously intended to have this
effect.
Summary
To sum up: the combination of textual and archaeological evidence
suggests that pre-Buddhist Chinese beliefs about a heavenly world
above and an underworld below were closely related to the
dualistic conception of soul, the hun and p'o. At
death the hun and the p'o were thought to go
separate ways, the former returning to heaven and the latter to
earth. The idea of heaven and hell as opposing sites as reward and
punishment in the afterlife was not fully developed in Chinese
thought until the coming of Buddhism.
The Rise of Hsien Immortality and The Restructuring of
the Afterworld
A historical account of the Chinese conception of afterlife,
however, would remain incomplete without a brief discussion of the
fundamental transformation it underwent during the reign of
Emperor Wu of Han (140-87 B.C). By this transformation we refer to
the development of the cult of hsien
immortality.
Hsien was a unique idea in ancient Chinese thought and
probably began as a romantic conception of total spiritual
freedom. A prototype of hsien immortal may be found in the
beginning chapter of the Chuang Tzu
 where a Divine Man is
described as follows:
There is a Divine Man living on
faraway Kuyeh Mountain, with skin like ice or snow, and gentle and
shy like a young girl. He doesn't eat the five grains, but sucks
the wind and drinks the dew, climbs up on clouds and mists, rides
a flying dragon and wanders beyond the four seas. (Watson 1968).
The important thing to note here is
that the Divine Man does not eat anything earthly such as the five
grains but only "sucks the wind and drinks the dew," phenomena
that come from heaven. Elsewhere the Chuang Tzu also mentions the
method of regulating or manipulating the ch'i or breath (tao-yin
 ) as
a way of cultivating long life. It seems then that the idea of the
hsien was originally conceived in terms of the hun-soul
which being made up entirely of the heavenly ch'i, is able
to ascent to heaven.
The only difference between the hun and the hsien is
that while the former leaves the body at death the latter obtains
its total freedom by transforming the body into something purely
ethereal, that is, the heavenly ch'i
. Thus regulation of
ch'i or breath and "abstention from grains" were widely
believed to be the two most important means of achieving hsien
immortality. The "Far-off Journey"
 in the Elegies of Ch'u
describes a scene of some ancient hsien immortals'
ascension to heaven in the following lines:
With the ether's (i.e. ch'i's)
transformations they rose upwards, with godlike swiftness
miraculously moving. Leaving the dust behind, shedding their
impurities - never to return again to their old homes. (Hawkes
1962).
In view of the fact that both the
Chuang Tzu and the Elegies of Ch'u are products of the Ch'u
culture in the south, the family resemblance between the idea of
hsien and of hun can hardly be a matter of
historical coincidence.
As we have seen, in early philosophical and literary imagination a
hsien immortal is someone who rejects this human world. He
must "leave the dust behind" and "never return home again."
However, as soon as the idea of hsien immortality attracted
the attention of the worldly rulers, such as princes of the
Warring-states period and emperors of the Ch'in and Han dynasties,
it began to develop into a cult of a this-worldly character.
Princes and emperors were not interested in transforming
themselves into hsien immortals because they had suddenly
developed a renunciatory attitude toward the honors and pleasures
they enjoyed in this world. One the contrary, they were motivated
by a strong desire to prolong their worldly pleasures forever.
This worldly cult of hsien immortality had already gained
considerable popularity among the princes of various states before
the unification of China in 221 B.C. But it reached its zenith in
the time of Emperor Wu of Han. Emperor Wu was led to believe, by a
number of professional "necromancers," that a meeting could be
arranged between him and some hsien immortals on the top of
Mount T'ai
 , the sacred mountain in ancient China, as a preparation
for this final ascension to heaven. At this time a story had been
fabricated that the legendary Yellow Emperor did not really die
but flew to heave on a dragon's back together with his court
assistants and palace ladies after having performed imperial
sacrifices to Heave and Earth at the central peak of Mount T'ai.
Taken in by this story, Emperor Wu made his imperial pilgrimage to
Mount T'ai in 110 B.C. and carried out all the religious rituals
supposedly in the tradition of the Yellow Emperor. He returned to
the capital assured that he would eventually join the Yellow
Emperor in heaven as a hsien immortal. By the turn of the
first century A.D., at the latest, the cult of hsien
immortality had already spread from royal and aristocratic circles
to the common people. A Han stone inscription relates that, in
A.D. 7, a yamen underling in the local government of Han-chung
 (in
modern Shensi) named T'ang Kung-fang
 succeeded not only with his
whole family but also his house and domestic animals.
 
 
 
The mythical creature called
"Dragon" or "Lun" has been debunked as an extraterrestrial
spacecraft in the movie Wisely
Underworld is in Mount T'ai
?
The great popularity of this cult transformed the Han conception
of the afterlife in a fundamental way. According to the T'ai-p'ing
ching, only the hsien immortals who had embodied the great
Tao were admitted to heaven. Since the immortal hsien and
the dissolvable hun were conceived as belonging to two
completely different categories of beings, they were not supposed
to mix in the same heaven. As a result, a new abode had to be
found to accommodate the hun souls. Thus, the governmental
structure of the underworld was expanded. Based on a variety of
historical and archaeological evidence, this new conception of the
underworld may be briefly reconstructed as follows: First, from
around the end of the first century B.C. a belief gradually arose
that there was a supreme ruler called Lord of Mount T'ai (T'ai-shan
fu-chun ) whose capital was located in a place named Liang-fu, a
small hill near Mount T'ai. Liang-fu , it may be noted, was
traditionally the place at which imperial sacrifices had been made
to the supreme earthly deity, the Lord of Earth (Ti chu
 ). It
was indeed only a small step to transform the Lord of Earth into
the Lord of the Underworld (ti-hsia chu
). The title Lord of Mount
T'ai - T'ai-shan fu-chun - also requires a word of explanation.
The term fu-chu must not be taken to mean "lord" in a general
sense. In fact, it was a popular name referring specifically to
provincial governors in Han times. Nor should "T'ai-shan" in this
case be understood as the sacred mountain itself. Instead it was a
reference to the province named after the sacred mountain in which
Liang-fu was also located. In other words, calling the supreme
ruler of the underworld T'ai-shan fu-chun was to indicate both the
location of his residence and the bureaucratic rank of his office.
Since he was in charge of the dead, he was therefore assigned an
official position lower than the supreme ruler of the human world,
the emperor, by one rank. This fits perfectly well with some other
popular names by which he was also known. For example, stone
inscriptions found in Han tombs often refer to him either as "Lord
of Mount T'ai" or as "the provincial governor in the underworld."
Moreover, a popular Han religious tract says that he is the
"grandson of the Heavenly God." The last instance is particularly
revealing. Clearly, the idea of "grandson of the Heavenly God" was
derived analogously from that of the "Son of Heaven," that is, the
emperor.
Second, like the supreme ruler of the human world, it was believed
that the Lord of Mount T'ai also had a bureaucracy to assist him
in governing the dead. Judging by the various official titles
found in Han tombs and other texts, the bureaucratic structure of
the underworld was closely modeled on the administrative system of
the Han empire. The first thing the newly dead had to do was to go
to the capital of the underworld to register. There is further
evidence suggesting that the underworld government could send for
the souls of those who alloted span on earth, according to the
Register of Death, was up. As time wore on, the idea of
post-mortem punishment also found its way into the Han belief
about the afterlife. The T'ai-p'ing ching of the second century
A.D. has the following vivid description fo the administration of
justice in the underworld.
If a man commits evils unceasingly,
his name will then be entered into the Register of Death. He will
be summoned to the Underworld Government (t'u-fu
 ) where his body
is to be kept. Alas! When can he ever get out? His soul will be
imprisoned and his doings in life will be questioned. If his words
are found to be inconsistent, he will be subject to further
imprisonment and torture. His soul is surely going to suffer a
great deal. But who is to blame? (c.f. Dodds 1951)
This new conception of the underworld
may well have been a faithful reflection of the cruel realities of
interrogation and torture in the imperial and provincial prisons,
especially during the 2nd A.D.
Third, we have reason to believe that as the supreme ruler of the
underworld, the authority of the Lord of Mount T'ai was originally
conceived to be exercised over the hun-souls. Several
historical and literary sources specifically link the hun,
but not the p'o, to Mount T'ai, which itself calls to mind
the underworld in which the Lord of Mount T'ai reigns supreme. The
hun-soul is said to either "returning" or "belonging" to
Mount T'ai. It may be recalled that heaven was now populated by
the hsien immortals; it was no longer a place to which the
hun-souls could return. For the Han Chinese, therefore,
Mount T'ai was the highest place imaginable, second only to
heaven. Strictly speaking, however, the hun-souls could not
even ascend the central peak of that sacred mountain because it
had also been transformed into a meeting place between the emperor
and the hsien immortals. The hun-souls could only
travel to Liang-fun, the capital of the underworld in which the
Lord of Mount T'ai operated his central administration. It may be
further noted that in Han popular culture, Mount T'ai itself,
especially its peak, was a symbol of life and immortality whereas
Liang-fu was that of death. However, the simple fact that Liang-fu
was not only located in the vicinity of Mount T'ai but also fell
under the jurisdiction of the province bearing the name of the
holy mountain gradually gave rise to widespread confusion in Han
popular beliefs about the afterlife. With the province bearing the
name of Mount T'ai inextricably confused with the mountain itself,
texts from the 2nd A.D. on often speak of the departed hun-souls
as if they were to "return" to the holy mountain. But it is
important to point out that in all probability the original
conception was that the hun-soul of the newly dead would go
to the Liang-fu hill in T'ai-shan province, in order to register
its name with the underworld government.
Finally, a word about the p'o soul is in order. Since the
hun-soul now went to the underworld instead of heaven, what
happened to the p'o? It is interesting to observe that the
p'o was under the care of a separate department of the
underworld government. According to Tung-fang Shuo, the court
jester of Emperor Wu's time, the office in charge of the dead is
called po. Clearly, p'o and po share the same
etymological root; the name po may well have been derived
from the belief that it is the abode of p'o souls.
Moreover, the same jester also defined po as "the court of
the ghosts" (kuei-t'ing
 ). (Han Shu 1962).
 
1. At the bottom of Tai Shan; 2. A
secluded temple in the mountain; 3. Steles with Buddhism doctrines
inscribed on them along the path
4. Carved calligraphy on all of the antique steles, that make them
look like tombstones
 
1. Pillars craved with dragon
motifs; 2. View of Mount Tai; 3. One of the 5 sacred Taoist mountains
4. Bixi (mythical tortoise-like animal) with stele on back; 5. Twisted
cypress by paranormal force?
This dualistic structure of the pre-Buddhist Chinese underworld
In Han times the term t'ing commonly designated the yamen of a
county magistrate, just as fu was the popular name of the office
of a provincial governor. This fits perfectly well with the
bureaucratic hierarchy of the Han underworld: the deity in charge
of the p'o souls was lower by one level in rank than the
deity in charge of the hun-souls, the Lord of Mount T'ai.
In approximately the middle of the 1st century B.C., the name Kao-li
 suddenly gained popularity as an abode for the dead.
Interestingly, it turns out that Kao-li was another place of deep
religious significance at the food of Mount T'ai, where Emperor Wu
performed the ritual of sacrifice to the Lord of Earth in 104 B.C.
Later in Han popular literature Kao-li also came to be identified
as the Lower Village (hsia-li
 ) or the Yellow Springs in
which the dead take their permanent residence. At first it seems
puzzling that there should be two different places in the Han
underworld for the departed souls. However, the puzzle disappears
as soon as we remember that each person was believed to be in
possession of two separate souls, the hun and the p'o.
There is clear evidence from inscriptions found in Later Han tombs
that both the hun and the p'o are subject to the
call of the underworld government. This suggests the good
possibility that the p'o soul of the newly dead would be
required to report to the underworld government in Kao-li in a way
similar to the hun-soul's journey to Liang-fu. As a response to
the rise of the popular cult of hsien immortality, which prevented
the hun-soul from returning to heaven, the Chinese underworld
seems to have been fundamentally restructured along a dualistic
line to accommodate the hun and the p'o respectively.
This dualistic structure of the pre-Buddhist Chinese underworld is
clearly reflected in the following four lines from a song about
Mount T'ai by the famous write Lu Chi
 (261-303):
On the hill of Liang-fu there are
hostels (kuan
 ),
In Kao-li there are also lodges (t'ing
 ) for the
travelers,
Along the dark path stretch ten thousand ghosts (kuei), one
following the footsteps of another,
In the spiritual houses (shen-fang
 ) are gathered hundreds
of spirits (ling
 ).
Here the poet is describing imagined
scenes of the trips of both the hun-souls and the p'o-souls
to their separate destinations - Liang-fu and Kao-li. In his
imagination the poet introduces the Han system of travelers' inns
(kuan and t'ing) into the underworld. There can be
no question that the term kuei ("ghosts") refers
specifically to the p'o-souls and the term ling ("spirits")
to the hun-souls. In a Confucian treatise on the "Meaning of
Sacrifice" ("Chi-i"
 ) of Han date, kuei and shen are
defined as the name of p'o and hun respectively when
the pair separate at death.
The identification of kuei as the name for p'o after
death is already confirmed by the saying of Tung-fang Shuo, quoted
above. The term ling in the poem can also be shown to be a variant
of hun or shen. For example, Lu Chi's brother, Lu
Yun
 (262-303), in his "Teng-hsia sung"
 uses ling-p'o
 instead of hun-p'o. It is therefore safe to conclude
that even as late as the 3rd century the Han dualistic conception
of afterlife was still very much alive in the Chinese mind,
namely, at death when the hun and the p'o part
company the former returns to Liang-fu and the latter to Kao-li.
However, it is important to note that neither the nature of the
two souls nor their relationship underwent any basic change as a
result of the restructuring of the underworld. The original idea
that the hun, being made of the heavenly ch'i and
light, moves upward and the p'o, being made of the earthly
ch'i and heavy, moves downward was retained without change.
For in this new conception the destination of the hun-soul
is located high on the Liang-fu hill whereas that of the p'o-soul
down in Kao-li, identified as the Lower Village (hsia-li) in
popular culture. This point is also further borne out by another
poem of the same writer in which it is explicitly stated that
after death the hun "flies" and the p'o "sinks."
In conclusion, it is important to point out that the popular
belief in Han China linking the underworld to Mount T'ai prepared
the ground for the Chinese people to adjust themselves to the much
more powerful Buddhist idea of "hells" in the centuries to come.
It is interesting that in some of the earliest Chinese
translations of Buddhist sutras attributed to the Parthian monk An
Shih-kao
 (2nd century) and the Sogdian monk K'ang Seng-hui
 (3rd
century), the term niraya ("hell") is often rendered as "the
underworld prison in Mount T'ai (T'ai-shan ti-yu
 ). One translated
text even says something to the effect that both the hun and p'o
souls are harshly tortured in the T'ai-shan ti-yu. This
description agress remarkably well with the indigenous Chinese
idea of post-mortem punishment as found in the T'ai-p'ing ching
quoted earlier. Needless to say, as Buddhism gradually gained
ground in China, Chinese conceptions of the soul and afterlife
were to be totally transformed. As a result, the pre-Buddhist
belief of a dualistic underworld was eventually replaced by the
Buddhist belief of "Ten Hells" each governed by a "King" (yama-raja).
But the Han tradition about the Lord of Mount T'ai in charge of
the dead survived this radical transformation. Instead of being
completely forgotten, the Lord of Mount T'ai secured a permanent
place in the Buddhist underworld as one of the Ten Kings - King of
Mount T'ai. It is a point worth stressing that popular Chinese
beliefs about the afterlife in their post-Han form, which
developed under the influence of Buddhism, cannot be fully
understood without knowledge of indigenous beliefs in pre-Buddhist
China.
References
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Acknowledgement
We respectfully thank Professor Anthony Yu from Princeton
University for the primary source of the paper for study.
Epilogue
Modern science and applied science despise such Chinese cultural
belief in general, challenging that to demonstrate the locations
of hun and p'o in the body (in particular, the brain.) Such
condemnation shows a short-slightness and the narrow-mindedness of
those so-called scientific inclined people. As a matter of facts,
neurobiologists, philosophers and psychologists are still looking
for answers towards the definition of 'consciousness' in the
human's mind. Humbly and slowly, we progress into research
scientific proofs of phenomena about the mind, the consciousness
and identity. We at the current stage of scientific
and knowledgeable advances are still very far from providing a complete answer.
Cultural beliefs should be taken as valuable clues in doing
research rather than branding as them as out-dated,
superstitions and nonsense. Things that have not yet been proven
does not mean they don't exist or false. Likewise such beliefs
cannot be proved true scientifically, they cannot be proven false. The journey of the quest
to knowledge is long, and we will never stop investigating - that
is why SPI exists. We welcome intellectual analysis from SPI
members for the following statements in the Answering Mysteries
below.
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