Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China (Sinica Leidensia)

Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China

Sinica Leidensia Edited by

Barend J. ter Haar In co-operation with

P.K. Bol, D.R. Knechtges, E.S.Rawski, W.L. Idema, E. Zürcher, H.T. Zurndorfer

VOLUME 79

Graphics and Text in the Production of Technical Knowledge in China The Warp and the Weft

Edited by

Francesca Bray Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann Georges Métailié

LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007

This book is printed on acid-free paper. On the cover: No. 9 of the “Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning (㎇䞯㕃☚; ᆣᖂԼቹ)” by Li Huang ‫ =( ✸ޕ‬Yi Hwang 㧊䢿, 1501–1570) [Yanji tu 3b, 13th century]; see Lackner, p. 368. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISSN: 0169-9563 ISBN: 978 90 04 16063 7 Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands

CONTENTS Acknowledgements…………………………………………… List of Contributors……………………………………………

ix xi

Introduction: The Powers of Tu……………………………… Francesca Bray (University of Edinburgh)

1

PART ONE: THE POWER OF ORDER – TU AS SYMBOLIC MEDIATION I. THE ORIGINS OF TU 1. La représentation visuelle dans les pratiques pyro-ostéomantiques dans la Chine archaïque……………………… Olivier Venture (EPHE, Paris)

83

2. Placed into the Right Position – Etymological Notes on Tu and Congeners…………………………………………… Wolfgang Behr (Ruhr-Unversity Bochum)

109

II. TU AS MAGICO-RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS 1. Time, Space and Orientation: Figurative Representations of the Sexagenary Cycle in Ancient and Medieval China…… Marc Kalinowski (EPHE, Paris)

137

2. Communication by Design: Two Silk Manuscripts of Diagrams (Tu) from Mawangdui Tomb Three……………… Donald Harper (University of Chicago)

169

3. Picturing or Diagramming the Universe………………… Wu Hung (University of Chicago)

191

vi

CONTENTS

III. TEXT AS TU: TEXTUAL DIAGRAMS 1. Mapless Mapping: Did the Maps of the Shan hai jing Ever Exist?……………………………………………………… Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (CNRS-EHESS, Paris)

217

2. The Tables (biao) in Sima Qian’s Shi ji: Rhetoric and Remembrance……………………………………………… Griet Vankeerberghen (McGill, Montréal)

295

3. The Avatamsaka-sûtra as a ‘bodhi mandala Text’……… Hermann-Josef Röllicke (Ekô Centre, Düsseldorf) 4. Diagrams as an Architecture by Means of Words: the Yanji tu………………………………………………………… Michael Lackner (University of Erlangen-Nuremberg)

313

341

PART TWO: PICTURING REALITY? TU AS TECHNICAL ILLUSTRATIONS I. THE IMPORTANCE OF THE MEDIUM 1. Imagining Practice: Sense and Sensuality in Early Chinese Medical Illustration……………………………………… Vivienne Lo (SOAS, London)

383

2. Geometrical Diagrams in Traditional Chinese Mathematics………………………………………………………… Alexei Volkov (National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan)

425

3. Woodcut Illustration: A General Outline………………… Michela Bussotti (Ecole française d’Extrême-orient, Paris)

461

II. TEXT AND IMAGE IN THE ERA OF PRINT-CULTURE 1. The Representation of Plants: Engravings and Paintings… Georges Métailié (CNRS, Paris)

487

CONTENTS

2. Agricultural Illustrations: Blueprint or Icon?…………… Francesca Bray (University of Edinburgh) 3. ‘Like Obtaining a Great Treasure’: The Illustrations in Song Yingxing’s The Exploitation of the Works of Nature…… Peter J. Golas (University of Denver) 4. Song Yingxing’s Illustrations of Iron Production………… Donald B. Wagner (Copenhagen)

vii 521

569

615

III. WESTERN INFLUENCES AND THEIR USES 1. The Body Revealed. The Contribution of Forensic Medicine to Knowledge and Representation of the Skeleton in China………………………………………………………… Catherine Despeux (INALCO, Paris) 2. New Maps for the Modernizing State: Western Cartographic Knowledge and Its Application in 19th and 20th Century China…………………………………………… Iwo Amelung (University of Frankfurt)

635

685

INDEX…………………………………………………………

727

COLOUR PLATES……………………………………………

745

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The co-editors gratefully acknowledge the support of the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation, whose generous subsidy made this publication possible. Our warmest thanks go to Tatyana Gardner, Ph.D. candidate at the East Asian Department of the University of Göttingen, for her prodigious and meticulous work on copy-editing and preparing the final text. We are also most grateful to Professor Dieter Kuhn, Institute for Cultural Studies of East and South Asia, University of Würzburg, and to the anonymous reader for Brill, for all their helpful comments and suggestions for improvement. Finally, we would like to thank our contributors for their generosity in allowing us to publish their papers in this collection, and for their patience as the editorial processes unfolded.

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Iwo AMELUNG Professor Sinology University of Frankfurt Germany Wolfgang BEHR Akademischer Rat, Lecturer in Classical Chinese Faculty of East Asian Studies Ruhr-University Bochum Germany Francesca BRAY Professor of Social Anthropology University of Edinburgh UK Michela BUSSOTTI Maître de conférences École française d’Extrême-Orient Paris France Catherine DESPEUX Professeur Institut des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (INALCO) Paris France Vera DOROFEEVA-LICHTMANN Chargé de Recherche Centre Chine-Corée-Japon Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) Paris France

xii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Peter J. GOLAS Professor History Department University of Denver USA Donald HARPER Professor Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations University of Chicago USA Marc KALINOWSKI Professeur École Pratique des Hautes Etudes à la Sorbonne Paris France Michael LACKNER Professor University of Erlangen-Nuremberg Germany Dr. Vivienne LO Lecturer and Convenor of Asian Studies, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine University College London UK Georges METAILIE Directeur de recherche Centre Alexandre Koyré Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS) Paris France

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

Dr. Hermann-Josef RÖLLICKE Member of scientific staff Ekô Centre of Japanese Culture Düsseldorf Germany Griet VANKEERBERGHEN, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of History and Department of East Asian Studies McGill University Montreal Canada Olivier VENTURE Maître de conférences École Pratique des Hautes Etudes à la Sorbonne Paris France Alexei VOLKOV Associate Professor Center for General Education and Institute of History National Tsing-Hua University Hsinchu Taiwan Donald B. WAGNER Independent scholar affiliated with the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies [formerly Senior Lecturer in Chinese at the University of Copenhagen] Copenhagen Denmark WU Hung Harrie H. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art History Department of Art History University of Chicago USA

INTRODUCTION: THE POWERS OF TU Francesca Bray1 The images (tu ቹ) are the warp threads and the written words (shu ஼) are the weft. As warp and weft alternate to form the pattern of a fabric (wen ֮) [so images and written words alternate to form the meaning of a text (wen ֮)]... To see the writing without the image is like hearing a voice without seeing the form; to see the image without the writing is like seeing a person but not hearing his words.2

The contributors to this volume focus on tu ቹ, technical images, and on their relationship with written text in the production of technical knowledge. The articles encompass a broad range of graphic forms and categories of specialised knowledge, from metaphysical cosmograms and magical talismans through mathematical diagrams to coroner’s charts. While we cannot claim to offer a comprehensive span of all significant forms of tu, this is, as far as we know, the first collection of studies devoted specifically to tu as technical images, and to the functional relation of such tu to the written text which almost invariably accompanies them. In his well-known treatise on the importance of tu, the Song scholar Zheng Qiao ㈕᮴(1104–1162) insisted that tu played as essential a part as written words in the techniques (or arts) of learning, xueshu ᖂ๬.3 The best way to convey specialist information was to lay it out in an illustrated register, tupu ࿩⼆, a sequence of rubrics where for each item a graphic illustration was paired with an explanatory text. Among the fields of knowledge which Zheng Qiao listed as depending on tu for the adequate transmission of knowledge were a number whose technical dimension is immediately evident to modern readers, who would naturally be inclined to link the term “technical” with technology or science as we know them today.4 These fields of ——— 1 This introduction, though written by a single author, is the fruit of intensive discussions between the three co-editors. 2 Zheng Qiao, Tupu lüe, Tongzhi j. 71/837a. 3 Xueshu is more usually translated by the single term scholarship. 4 Studies of tu which assess them from the perspective of the history of technology and/or science include Edgerton (1985), Haudricourt and Métailié (1994), Golas

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FRANCESCA BRAY

learning included geography, cosmology, building, the construction of implements and machines, astronomy, mathematics, military science and medicine. But Zheng Qiao’s list of subjects where tu were essential aids to learning also included linguistics, law, official rankings, the study of ritual, music, history, ethics and fine arts, as well as talismans and Daoism. 5 While Zheng Qiao’s essay highlights tu as tools of scholarship and understanding, tu also served as important instruments of statecraft and government, both material and symbolic, and they played a key role in pedagogy. Furthermore tu were closely associated with craft skills,6 and with magical arts and cosmological techniques such as divination or geomancy. Not surprisingly, different technical fields such as magic, law and agronomy generated very different types of tu. Some represented objects, plans, figures or scenes in more or less realistic fashion; others were maps or abstract diagrams or schemata; others consisted entirely of arrangements of written words. There were also significant historical shifts in the predominant forms and functions of tu, associated not only with the evolution of a particular field but also, for example, with changes in elite ideas about education, or with the rise of woodblock printing. What then were the shared characteristics of tu, and what distinguished them from other Chinese visual categories such as hua ྽ (picture or painting) or xiang ွ (image or icon)? Taking into account the full graphic and thematic range of tu and the contexts in which the term was applied, it becomes apparent that in pre-modern Chinese usage the term tu was not—as often supposed today—a general term for pictures, of which pictures of technical themes were one sub-category. In fact it was a specialist term denoting only those graphic images or layouts which encoded technical knowledge: tu were templates for action. This concise definition seems to us to capture the essence of tu across its many variations in pre-modern China. It elegantly resolves many of the confusions about the apparently fuzzy boundaries between tu and other graphic categories which have puzzled historians trying to place tu as an intellectually coherent category. It highlights the fact that from the Chinese perspective tu was not a stylistic but a functional category: tu were instructive images ——— (1999, 2001), Vogel, forthcoming. 5 Reiter (1990: 314) notes that Zheng Qiao’s bibliography of works whose title included tu (divided into two sections listing works where the tu had been preserved along with the text and those where it had not) is not very reliable. 6 The relationship was not always straightforward, as will be discussed below.

INTRODUCTION

3

conveying skilled, specialist knowledge. Tu offered spatial encodings (often but not necessarily two-dimensional) of factual information, structures, processes and relationships, translating temporal or intellectual sequences into purely spatial terms, and encrypting dynamic processes as static layouts. The perusal and decoding of the tu by the viewer constituted what Ames calls “performative looking”: the knowledge contained in the tu was unfolded into realisation and into action.7 Sometimes a tu stood alone, without textual explanation, but usually it contained or accompanied written characters. This means that tu cannot be studied independently of the texts with which they were paired (or from which they were constructed). The epistemological relationship between written text and tu showed many variations and generated recurrent debates among Chinese intellectuals. Text and tu might contribute equally to the viewer’s understanding, but in some cases the tu was held to be of primary importance, while in others it seems that the tu served merely as an organising device, or even just as a mnemonic, for the detailed factual information contained in the text. Sometimes it was context that determined whether a given image was considered a tu or a hua, that is to say whether its purpose was seen as instructive—or rather as entertaining or aesthetically pleasurable.8 The fact that the classification of a given image could depend upon the purpose for which the image was intended supports our argument that tu was a functional rather than a morphological or aesthetic category.9 Though the Chinese themselves did not usually make analytical distinctions between different types of tu,10 here we argue that they fell into two broad categories representing distinctive principles of ——— 7 “There is an unbroken line between image as what is real, image as the presentation (not representation) of what is real, and image as the meaning of what is real. Image is reality ... [Zhi ⶹ ‘to know’] is fundamentally performative – it is ‘realizing’ in the sense of `making real’” (Ames 1990: 239). 8 During the print era, for example, woodblock illustrations of novels or plays were usually classified as paintings, hua ⬿, or images, xiang 䈵 or ‫ڣ‬. Not infrequently identical or very similar illustrations were included in anthologies of instructive anecdotes or exemplary biographies, but here they were categorised as tu, because in this context they were believed to play an important pedagogical role in imparting the moral meaning of the text (Bussotti, this volume; on the use of imagery in moral instruction see also Carlitz (1991), Raphals (1998)). 9 Of course in certain contexts aesthetics and function cannot easily be separated; see below on late Ming arguments that hua communicated to the educated viewer while tu were suited to the ignorant. 10 But see below on Luo Hongxian.

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FRANCESCA BRAY

spatial representation: (i) diagrammatic or schematic tu, forms of symbolic mediation whose formal patternings of space created understanding or generated action by guiding the viewer through a strictly ordered trajectory;11 and (ii) representational images, closer in intent and in cognitive operation to technical illustrations in the modern sense. The main effects of tu and their accompanying text, as we shall show below, could be communicative (displaying information), pedagogical (inculcating understanding), and/or transformative (effecting cosmic or other changes through the very act of inscription). As templates for action tu were powerful devices. Some tu were powerful in themselves, others as instruments. It is surely no coincidence that the first flurry of philosophical statements concerning tu coincided with the flourishing of shushu ๬ᑇ, the occult arts or art of numbers, that began in the late Warring States.12 While the diagrammatic tu discussed in the first section of the book were powerful because they were plans for interpreting and mobilising cosmic forces, the secular, representational tu discussed in the second half of the book were more commonly mobilised in the service of statecraft, and they raise interesting questions about ideology and its tools. Another set of questions arises from consideration of the technical and aesthetic vocabularies of tu and their accompanying texts. What might they tell us about the relations between technical knowledge and artistic expression, or about attitudes towards precision versus allusion, abstraction versus accuracy, the establishment of conventions and the cumulative development of knowledge? Given the dramatic role that the development of technical drawing and technical writing has played in the rise of modern Western science and society, the comparative interest of our collection is clear. Unlike the post-Renaissance West, China did not develop a self-conscious, structured discipline of technical drawing that progressed ——— 11 Henderson speaks of geometric cosmography (1994: 204–204, 222); see also the discussion of forms of symbolic mediation in the production of ritual space in Dickhardt (2003). Vankeerberghen and Röllicke discuss the emotional, political and spiritual dimensions of such ordering. 12 Li Ling 2000, Li Jianmin 2001a. The mantic and numerological techniques of shushu included hemerology and several other types of divination and were closely associated with practices of prolonging life. Li Jianmin notes that all these techniques aimed to combine time, position and direction in a characteristically Chinese concern with cosmic resonances. Recently excavated documents and artefacts show that graphic images, accompanied by numbers or text, were an important part of early works on the occult arts (ibid).

INTRODUCTION

5

hand in hand with steadily evolving disciplines of science.13 A number of interesting insights into the nature and workings of Chinese society and the Chinese state may be stimulated by asking why China did not follow the path of the West, even when examples of Western accomplishments in science and technology were often freely available.14 Another set of questions arises from acknowledging that Chinese world views and the political goals of its rulers were distinctive, as was the social and cultural context within which technical and scientific knowledge were generated. Then we are led to ask not why China failed to be like the West but whether (or how far) it succeeded in achieving the goals it set for itself.15 This approach leads us to ask which domains of technical knowledge were considered particularly important, and what efforts can we see (if any) to make them more effective—technically perhaps, but also morally or symbolically.16 Most previous studies of tu have considered only partial sets of the whole spectrum of tu, focusing on one type of graphic form, or on a specialised subset of the whole range of technical fields in which tu were created.17 The contributors to this volume start from our encompassing functional definition to analyse tu variously as programmes for action, process-oriented schemas, functional representations and blueprints. The examples of text and tu that they discuss include encodings of: cosmic processes; a path to enlightenment; the exegesis of a classical text; the construction of a silk-reeling machine; the reconstruction of a criminal assault; and the coursing of energy through the human body. 18 The advantage of the shared functional approach is ——— 13 Golas 1999, 2001 and this volume. 14 For examples in the field of cartography see Amelung, this volume, and also

Yee (1994: 170–202); for the impact of encounters with Western anatomy, see Despeux, this volume. 15 In his comparative analysis of the historical trajectories of early modern China and Europe, R. Bin Wong (1997) carries this approach one step further. He proposes a method which he calls “symmetrical comparison”, whereby each society is evaluated by the standards of the other rather than allowing unquestioned privilege to Western categories, values and goals. In the history of science, Lloyd and Sivin (2002) represents an analogous approach to balanced comparison between intellectual traditions. 16 Bray, Despeux, this volume; Amelung specifically emphasises the need to avoid bending historical study to teleological models if we wish to see how history goes. See also for example Amelung (1998, 2000), Brook (1994), Elvin (2004), Golas (1999), Will (2003). 17 See below on cartographic studies of tu; Lackner and Reiter's studies highlight abstract, diagrammatic tu, while other scholars (e.g. Edgerton 1985, Golas 1999, 2001) have focused on tu as expressions of scientific and technological knowledge. 18 Other recent publications that discuss tu, text and technical learning include:

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that it allows us to highlight what the Chinese considered to be the knowledge-producing characteristics common to the whole range of graphic representations known as tu, as distinct from or in coordination with written text. In the rest of this introduction, we outline the background to this project; provide a brief survey of the history of tu in the light of the papers in this collection and of other recent scholarship; and offer preliminary explorations of some themes suggested by the contributions. We propose a basic typology of tu (reflected in the two main sections into which the collection is divided), and offer some suggestions about historical trends or shifts in the uses of tu; changing conceptions of the nature of tu and their relation to text and to other categories of graphic representation; the media in which tu were executed; and the design and production of different kinds of tu.

MODERN TU STUDIES: THE STATE OF THE FIELD Most modern scholarship on tu, both Chinese and Western, has been marked by a paradox. In a study of two famous Song-dynasty maps published in 1903, the great French sinologist Édouard Chavannes suggested that we should think of tu as a category that encompasses “all forms of graphic representation”.19 Yet after proposing this very broad definition Chavannes went on to focus exclusively on tu in the sense of maps, and until very recently most Western (and modern Chinese) studies that analysed tu as cognitive tools followed Chavannes in confining their scope to maps and cartography.20 The choice to concentrate on this specialised application of the term tu is certainly ——— Golas (1999, 2001) and Vogel (forthcoming) on illustrations of technology; Smith (1991) on divination, geomancy and physiognomy; Yee (1994: 101 ff.) and Amelung (1998, 2000) on hydraulics (though Vermeer (1987), Dodgen (2001) and Elvin (2004) also discuss the practice and evolution of hydraulics, they do not pay specific attention to the importance of tu in the discipline). On much later administrative versions of the historiographical biao 㸼 or tables in the Shiji (analysed by Vankeerberghen), see Will (2003) on the eighteenth-century tables developed as guides to the penal code, and Hegel (2002) on the interplay between text and tu in Qing legal cases. 19 “Toutes les représentations graphiques quelles qu’elles soient” (Chavannes 1903: 236). 20 See the Chinese and Western language works cited in Sivin and Ledyard (1994: 28, n.13). Such studies could include celestial as well as terrestrial maps. Needham and Wang (1959) discuss star-maps, planispheres etc. in Section 20 on astronomy, and cartography in section 22.

INTRODUCTION

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not arbitrary, for its use in this sense was prominent throughout Chinese history. 21 But the cartographic perspective tended not only to confine studies of tu to a restricted range of examples, but also to limit the kinds of questions that were asked about them as a form of technical communication. 22 At the other end of the spectrum some scholarly enterprises have followed Chavannes’ exhortation to complete comprehensiveness and presumed that in its broader sense the semantic field of tu could be extended to encompass almost any illustration or drawing.23 This approach opens up a range of interesting questions about systems of visual communication, and intersects fruitfully with the new wave of studies of visual cultures and print cultures in China. But in conflating tu with visual forms considered by the Chinese to belong to other categories of visual communication it shifts the focus away from what it was that the Chinese felt were the distinctive features of tu. It is only recently that modern scholars have begun to address Chavannes’ underlying challenge of studying tu both in their full variety, yet within the boundaries of the Chinese concept. Indeed the lack of recognition of tu as a coherent conceptual category is not surprising when we consider that historians of mathematics in China usually encounter tu in the form of abstract diagrams, while historians of agriculture are familiar with tu that consist of drawings of implements and machinery. Furthermore earlier scholars interested in tu usually adopted the perspective of classic history of science, which meant that certain important categories or dimensions of tu eluded their attention. Chavannes chose to discuss his two Song maps in terms of accuracy, setting the agenda for a positivist approach to maps in particular and to tu more generally. There is certainly valuable information to be gained from considering specific tu as more or less successful attempts to observe, measure and then render in two dimensions such objects as the boundaries of a territory or the construction of a waterpump. But on the one hand this approach screened out the ritual, ——— 21 See for example Reiter (1990), Harley and Woodward (1994). 22 Yee (1994: 37 ff.) offers a critique of the flaws inherent in studying Chinese

cartography primarily as a mathematical discipline for understanding geographical space. 23 This agenda is implicit for instance in the programme of the conference entitled “From image to action” discussed below, and even to some extent in Vogel, forthcoming; see also Behr’s repeated assertion that he can find no evidence in ancient or classical texts that tu was a term that applied to pictures in general. We would argue (see below) that often it is not so much form or medium as use and context that determined whether a given image was considered a tu.

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cosmological or moral dimensions of such forms of representation, and thus distorted their original goals.24 On the other hand it focused attention on tu characteristic of fields of thought or activity that corresponded to modern branches of science or technology and their recognised precursors, but ignored the continuity of these fields with other domains of thought and action that the Chinese considered epistemologically, philosophically or pragmatically related. The line of studies that treated tu as geographical maps can be traced from Chavannes to Needham and Wang Ling, 25 and it remained a guiding thread in later studies by Lackner and Reiter.26 But Lackner and Reiter achieved a breakthrough in tu studies because they also tried to answer the question of what tu might be apart from geographical maps. Both scholars focus on the surge of interest in tu among Song philosophers and on the metaphysical diagrams or cosmograms that they (re)created (see below): they thus shift the focus from the mapping of territory to the plotting of structured relationships. Lackner notes that tu refers to maps or charts not only of landforms or political territory, but also of the heavens, of ritually significant buildings, or of genealogies. He makes the crucial point that such tu are characterised by ordering “mapped” things with respect to definitive positions, wei ‫ ;ۯ‬thus the category includes divinatory and medical as well as geographical “maps”. Lackner describes the philosophical tu of the Song dynasty as maps of spiritual regions (Landkarten geistiger Gebiete), and characterises divinatory tu as mandalas—that is to say, he emphasises their importance in structuring a trajectory for the reader or user of the tu.27 Reiter’s article raises another important aspect of tu, which is the connotation of such mapping or positioning with norms and laws. He also remarks on the manifold administrative powers accorded to tu: maps, for example, may record the real boundaries of a territory or they may map symbolic claims to control; in either case they constitute an assertion of the authority to rule. Lackner and Reiter’s papers established the need to include maps, plans or charts in the very broadest sense into the study of tu, and underlined that symbolic tu must be integrated into any analysis of ——— 24 Bray, this volume, Henderson 1994. 25 They quote Chavannes’ article almost in its entirety in the course of develop-

ing his arguments; Needham and Wang (1959: 534–551). 26 Lackner 1990, 1992, 1996 and 2000; Reiter 1990. 27 Lackner 1990: 138–139 and 153.

INTRODUCTION

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the nature of tu and their role in Chinese thought. Meanwhile the study of tu as maps has also been transformed in tune with broader trends in critical cartography. In 1987 J.B. Harley and David Woodward argued forcefully that historical cartography could greatly enrich our understanding of past societies if it set aside narrow scientistic approaches and redefined maps as all forms of “graphic representations that facilitate a spatial understanding of things, concepts, conditions, processes, or events in the human world”. 28 At much the same time historians of China began to address the significance of the wide range of varieties of map produced in China, analysing them as products of aesthetic, political, socioeconomic, ritual and administrative concerns. Innovative studies by Amelung, Brook, Clunas, Hostetler, Smith and other historians, covering such genres as route maps for merchants, temple tours for affluent gentlemen indulging a taste for leisurely travel, assertive demarcations of nebulous imperial frontiers, and the meticulous charting of the hydraulic features of the Yellow River, have made significant contributions to rethinking what maps were and why and how they were made in China.29 A landmark contribution is the section on China by Cordell D.K. Yee and his colleagues30 in the Chicago History of Cartography, a monumental study of maps and mapping throughout the world, edited by J.B. Harley and David Woodward whose expansive approach to maps has just been quoted. It is noteworthy that only one of the contributors on China, F. Richard Stephenson, is a historian of science and technology as conventionally defined; John B. Henderson is a historian of cosmology and Yee himself was trained in English literature before becoming interested in cartography. One striking and stimulating feature of the enterprise is its emphasis on the many roles that maps played in statecraft. From the perspective of “tu studies” as distinct from “map studies”, we might also note that this collection affords Henderson the opportunity to reinstate the crucial ritual and/or cosmological dimensions of many tu, whereas earlier studies had usually simply ignored the non-secular aspects of such forms of representation.31 Innovations in map studies matched the broadening of horizons in ——— 28 Harley and Woodward 1987: xiv. 29 Amelung 1998, 2000; Brook 1988, 1994, 1997, 1998; Clunas 1996, 1997;

Hostetler 2001; Smith 1996. 30 Yee 1994, Sivin and Ledyard 1994, Henderson 1994, Stephenson 1994. 31 Henderson 1994: 203.

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the history of science more generally. Of particular interest to anyone studying graphic representations are the new attention to the role of visual expression in knowledge production, and to the aesthetics and rhetoric of explanation and persuasion.32 Approaches to scientific and technical activity as art, craft, and/or social mobilisation offer fruitful new insights for the analysis of images. The essential underpinning for all such efforts has been the shift to examining systems of knowledge rather than teleologically defined branches of science. 33 Not only does this eliminate artificial boundaries between science and non-science, or between the technological and the technical, it is also an indispensable prerequisite for any serious study of science as culture, or of science as ideology.34 The history of science (or of “the sciences”, scientiae) in China is now integrated into the history of thought more generally, while techniques and technology are beginning to be incorporated more convincingly into the history of government and cultural history.35 As a consequence of these shifts it has been possible to focus more closely on how domains of knowledge and practice were articulated, and to gain new insights into what powerful knowledge was at different points in Chinese history, and how it was expressed and realised. One of the many benefits of these new approaches for anyone interested in understanding tu is that they help circumscribe the fields of knowledge and action in which tu were seen as operating. In recent years historians interested in images have also begun to expand the scope of their studies to think beyond narrow specialist fields, to consider in broader terms the visual cultures of particular social groups or historical periods. This too has opened new opportunities for “tu studies”. Thinking in terms of visual cultures offers possibilities for spanning the divide between “art” and “science”, between “decoration”, “representation” and “symbol”, and helps us to reconstruct the visual conventions, the aesthetic grammar and the iconographic cross-references that a viewer of the time might have ——— 32 See below on visual cultures, as well as for example Kuriyama (1999). 33 For example Chemla et al. (2001). 34 The work of Benjamin Elman (1984) and his colleagues on Confucianism and

knowledge is an excellent example. 35 For example work by Li Jianmin (2001) and by Richard Smith (1996) casts light on fang ᮍ (technical knowledge), fa ⊩ (specialist methods) and the role of “technical specialists”. On techniques of government and the state we might cite recent work by Pierre-Étienne Will and his associates.

INTRODUCTION

11

drawn upon to decode a specific image.36 Craig Clunas’ Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China, which discusses visual cultures in the late Ming, is notable for its specific and sustained attention to how the relations between image and text were conceptualised. Although as Clunas notes the role of painting, hua ྽, figured far more prominently in Ming debates about perception and knowledge than that of tu,37 he is nevertheless able to devote several pages to how conceptualisations of tu evolved during the Ming, seen in the context of contemporary metaphysics and classifications of knowledge, aesthetics, print culture and property relations.38 As he ranges through the vast array of media and styles in late Ming images, covering such diverse forms as literati hand-scrolls, decorated tableware, navigators’ sketch maps, religious paintings, and most notably the proliferation of woodblock illustrations in every kind of printed book,39 Clunas provides a salutory reminder that drawing hard lines between modern visual categories often obscures more than it reveals. The recent surge in studies of print culture and of the book trade in late imperial China has also influenced the study of tu, suggesting new ways to think about the production, transmission and reception of specific images and visual themes, and highlighting questions about the role of graphic media (painting, woodblock print, manuscript, rubbings, etc.) in the design and effectiveness of technical graphics.40 Such sea-changes in the history of knowledge production and in approaches to visual cultures have promoted a growing awareness among sinologists that tu is an important epistemological category which has been poorly understood and deserves renewed attention. In the broad sense of “graphic representations”, tu have figured as the theme of three sinological panels or conferences in recent years: Wu Hung and Hans-Ulrich Vogel organised panels at the Association of Asian Studies in Chicago in 1998 and at the International Conference on East Asian Science, Technology and Medicine in Singapore in 1999 respectively,41 and the whole third meeting of the European and ——— 36 E.g. Wu Hung, this volume; Powers 1991, Cahill 1994, Yee 1994, Hwang 1996, Smith 1996, Li Lin 2000, Ledderose 2000, Li Jianmin 2001. 37 Clunas 1997: 33, 110. 38 See especially pp. 104 ff., and also Clunas 1996, Brook 1998. 39 See also Chia (2002: 52 ff.) and Bussotti (2001), and below. 40 Bussotti, Métailié, this volume, Chia 2002a, Reed 2004, Brokaw and Chow 2005. 41 “Tu (diagrams, charts, drawings) in traditional Chinese culture”, Annual Meeting of the Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, 1998; “Illustration (tu) in Traditional Chinese Science, Technology, and Medicine: Comparative and Cross-cultural

12

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North American Exchanges in East Asian Studies Conference, held in Paris in 2001, was devoted to the theme “From image to action: the dynamics of visual representation in Chinese intellectual and religious culture”. The 1998 Chicago panel looked primarily at tu of the cosmographic type, presenting four studies of ritually, religiously or politically powerful tu from the Warring States through to the Tang. The panel was intended as “a first step towards a more comprehensive interdisciplinary study of tu as a distinct system of knowledge, changing over time”.42 The Singapore panel included twelve papers on the uses of tu in “Chinese sciences and production techniques”, and aimed to explore their historical evolution and to sketch a contrast with Western developments. Topics included secular uses of tu in such fields as mapping, mathematics, engineering and medicine, as well as three papers on cosmographic and symbolic tu.43 The Paris conference, where over forty papers were presented, did not attempt to differentiate specifically between Chinese categories of visual representation. However, the conference’s theme, linking image to action, suggested to the co-editors of this volume the rich possibilities of a new approach to the epistemological powers of tu, treated as graphic guides to action employed across a broad range of technical fields. We also realised that the complex relation between tu and text could not be ignored if we were to throw some new light on how tu worked or were thought to work. Most of the papers in this volume are revised versions of selected presentations made in Paris; Wolfgang Behr wrote his article especially for this volume, as did Michela Bussotti and Francesca Bray whose original presentation in Paris were on different topics; Wu Hung’s contribution was first presented at the Chicago panel and Michael Lackner’s chapter is an elaboration of his contribution to the same panel; Donald Wagner graciously provided an abbreviated version of a paper he gave at another symposium, tailored to fit our analytical framework.44 ——— Perspectives”, 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia (ICHSEA), Singapore, 1999. 42 http://www.aasianst.org/absts/1998abst/china/c189.htm; three of the contributors to this volume, Wu Hung, Donald Harper and Michael Lackner, gave papers in this panel. 43 http://www.uni-tuebingen.de/sinologie/sino/personal/vogel/ichsea.html; five of the contributors to this volume, Dorefeeva-Lichtmann, Métailié, Amelung, Golas and Lackner gave papers at the Singapore meeting. 44 3rd International Symposium on Ancient Chinese Texts and Records on Science and Technology, Tübingen, 2003. Wagner’s paper is published in the proceed-

INTRODUCTION

13

WORDS AND THINGS: A BRIEF SURVEY OF TU IN CHINESE HISTORY

Recent archaeological discoveries of texts and artefacts are transforming our understanding of the early history of tu.45 Both as a concept and as a class of material artefacts tu have a very ancient pedigree in China, but we often need to be wary in postulating equivalence between the words and the things, particularly in pre-imperial China. The character tu itself can be traced back to inscribed bronzes from the early Zhou period (ca. 1000 to 800 BC). Although the exact form of the practices or artefacts that the term tu referred to in these inscriptions and later pre-imperial texts often remains unclear, the primary connotations of the character tu were “to order”, “to position in space”.46 As objects or practices that established or displayed relative positions in time, in space or in rank, the early tu, whatever precise forms they may have taken, were instruments of considerable ritual, political and/or social power.47 By the Song dynasty it was routine for maps, charts and other technical graphics to bear a caption in which they were explicitly identified as tu. But this seems to have been a relatively late development, and although Harper presents one document from an early Han tomb in which a passage in the written portion explicitly refers to the drawings in the graphic portion as tu, all too often we have no proof that all the early figurative representations we now consider to be forms of tu would have necessarily been given this name at the time.48 Conversely, pre-imperial and early imperial texts often refer to tu whose forms cannot now be identified with precision. Chinese scholars were apt to assume that ancient tu were conceived in the same forms and executed in the same media as those at their own disposal, but in fact quite dramatic ruptures between eras can now be ——— ings of this conference (Wagner 2006). 45 See especially Kalinowski, Harper and Lo, this volume. 46 Behr, this volume. 47 Behr, this volume; for more on the importance of relative position, wei ԡ, in Chinese thought see for example Lackner (1990) and especially the papers in Chemla and Lackner 1996. 48 Kalinowski, for example, notes that of the ten calendrical and hemerological documents that he analyses as having forms of tu layout, only one is explicitly designated as a tu. See also Lo on the frequent difficulty of matching text and image. One potential source of confusion is that archaeologists often name finds of early diagrams or pictures as tu in their reports.

14

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identified. In some cases it appears that early tu took a form that was completely different from that hypothesised in later interpretations; in others it seems that both form and function changed.49 Thus when archaeologists today identify an ancient artefact as tu, based on its function, form or layout, this does not necessarily mean that it would have been called tu at the time of its manufacture. Indeed the earliest surviving artefact that can be unambiguously identified as a tu is a bronze plaque depicting a plan for a mortuary monument (see below) and dated to no earlier than around 310 BC. By this time the meanings of tu discussed in contemporary texts converge rather clearly with the forms and functions of certain material objects.50 Nevertheless archaeologists and ancient historians argue plausibly that predecessors of the class of figurative representations which later came to be called tu can be traced back as far as certain abstract, symmetrical motifs on neolithic ceramics from the Taihu region, Liangzhu jade mask designs, and even perhaps to the disarticulation and reassembly of bones in human burials in the fifth millennium BC Yuanjunmiao site of the Wei river valley—“the body had, as it were, been turned into a diagram, a tu, of its former self.”51 Certainly the careful spatial ordering of piercings and written questions on the Yin oracle-bones belongs to a form of inscription that later was considered a tu, even though it is unlikely that such nomenclature was applied to them at the time of their creation. Osteomancy was practised in China well before the Shang period, but the Yin diviners made significant modifications in its techniques: they recorded the questions in written characters, and the characters were carefully arranged according to principles of symmetry and sequence, explored by Venture and Kalinowski. It has also been suggested that Yin diviners chose to use turtle plastrons for divination in addition to the more traditional scapulae of bovines and caprines because their symmetrical form had cosmic significance.52 For the early Zhou period no artefacts that can unequivocally be identified as tu have yet been found, but the character occurs in several bronze inscriptions from which Wolfgang Behr concludes that it “originally denoted some sort of representational token which was used in feudal or military exchanges of the Western Zhou royal ——— 49 50 51 52

Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Volkov, this volume. Behr, this volume. Keightley 1998. See Venture n.22; Kalinowski, this volume; Allan 1991; Li Ling 1993: 54–56.

INTRODUCTION

15

house, and aimed at the fixing of territorial affiliation or rank in a court ritual”.53 Textual references from the late Warring States and early Han show that the term had by then come to designate geographical maps, as well as plans and magico-religious cosmograms. The inscription on the bronze plaque from the tomb of King Cuo of Zhongshan, the Zhaoyu tu ٢഑ቹ, dated to ca. 310 BC, contains the term tu in a context where it clearly signifies “to plan”, “to make a layout”, in other words to ‘design a blueprint’ for King Cuo’s necropolis.54 Planning of this kind was as much ritual as architectural, and there are many references to charts of this kind in the various works on ritual, li ៖, that date from the Warring States–Han transition on. Ritual charts emphasised positioning in time as well as space, and were thus closely related in conception to divination diagrams. There are numerous references to mantic tu of this kind in the “apocryphal” (chenwei ᨅᒮ) literature which proliferated in the Eastern Han dynasty.55 The bibliographic section of the Hanshu records numerous illustrated works, as does that of the Suishu, almost all of which were works on such mantic techniques as divination, astrology or calendar-making.56 The term cosmogram denotes diagrams representing the cosmic forces of creation and change which shape the natural world and its processes, including history and individual human destiny. 57 Cosmograms, whether in the form of two-dimensional diagrams and patterns or of three-dimensional models, were another common theme in the philosophical and technical literature of the period. One prominent cosmic model was the Mingtang ࣔഘ or Luminous Hall. The Mingtang was alluded to cryptically in such pre-Han classics as the Mengzi ࡯՗ ([Book of] Master Meng) and the Zhuozhuan ؐႚ (Zuo’s tradition [of interpreting the Chunqiu or Spring and Autumn annals]). From these works it was clear only that the Mingtang was “a ——— 53 Behr, this volume, p. 120. 54 Behr, this volume. Yee (1994: 36–37) provides a photograph, plan and analy-

sis of the bronze plaque. Though the design for the necropolis included five huge ceremonial halls situated above the burial mounds, intended to form what Behr calls “a megalomaniac ‘funerary park’ ”, the excavation reports show that only one and a half of them were constructed. The failure to complete the project, which as Behr notes was not exceptionally extravagant for the time, was probably due to the invasion of Zhongshan by Zhao in 296 BC. 55 Behr; Kalinowski, this volume. 56 Vogel, forthcoming. 57 Henderson 1994, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann 1996, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann and Kalinowski, this volume.

16

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sort of cosmological temple designed for the performance of imperial rites”, and “an architectural symbol of virtuous government”.58 In the absence of precise descriptions of the Mingtang in the classics, Han scholars enthusiastically seized the opportunity to recreate it according to their own cosmological principles. It is now recognised that the complex form of the Mingtang elaborated in the Han texts was not architecturally feasible; however this did not deter a number of Han and later rulers from ordering Mingtang to be built, for as Wu Hung explains, in building a Mingtang they considered that they were realising a harmonisation of the human with the cosmic order.59 The Mingtang provides a vivid example of a newly emerging understanding of how to interpret and act upon the world. “Among the elite of the third and second centuries BC design and epistemology coalesced in a new idea of tu ... [in] a conception of knowledge in which diagrams functioned together with the written word to reveal a universal plan—at once cosmic and divine”.60 The world was constituted and shaped by cosmic energies and processes whose principles of transformation were being formulated ever more systematically by the philosophers and technical specialists of the time, in terms of a theory of transformations based on yinyang or wuxing (five agents) correspondences. Humans inhabited “an encoded world that sages decoded and made accessible to society in material form”, namely as tu. Tu were microcosms: they depicted the cosmic and divine pulses and patterns, and they provided a framework for human comprehension, interpretation and manipulation of these patterns.61 Primal images of cosmic principles revealed to the sage kings of antiquity and translated into diagrams also included the hexagrams of the Book of Changes (see below), and the Luoshu ੖஼ (Luo River writing) and Hetu ࣾቹ (Yellow River chart). These legendary cosmic diagrams were, like the Mingtang, debated and reconstructed by Han scholars, and they too continued to provoke debate and speculation throughout imperial times. They were considered by early scholars to be the source of nonary cosmography, and later came to be regarded as “the paradigms ... of all tu”.62 ——— 58 Henderson 1994: 212. 59 Wu Hung, this volume, and see also Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume. The

plan of the mausoleum from Zhongshan bears some resemblances to the reconstructed layout of Han versions of the Mingtang (Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, n. 51). 60 Harper, this volume: p. 186. 61 Ibid. 62 Henderson 1994: 213. For a fuller review of the literature on the Hetu-Luoshu

INTRODUCTION

17

Donald Harper suggests that the philosophical preoccupation with tu, and the proliferation of tu-like objects or images in tombs of the period, represent an unprecedented dialogue between technical specialists and the elite. “New cosmological ideas arose from divination and astrology, and new ideas about universal knowledge occupied a middle ground between the mantic wisdom of the specialists and the intellectual programs of the philosophical masters (zhuzi 壆՗).”63 In his analysis of the images in two manuscripts discovered in the 168 BC tomb at Mawangdui, Harper discusses the elaboration in various domains of communication of a set of signs (“paradigmatic patterns”) that allowed people to perceive natural phenomena as part of a universe that was knowable, communicable, and applicable to human affairs. 64 Late Warring States and Han tombs have yielded a wide range of images and objects of this nature, produced by technical experts to serve the elite.65 The tombs have also yielded a great number of hitherto unknown written texts on the arts of divination, healing and the prolongation of life, many of them illustrated.66 Among the illustrated manuscripts recovered from Warring States or Han tombs, some depict what Harper calls “paradigmatic drawings or patterns”, stylised images or signs that appear sometimes in astrological or mantic documents, sometimes as talismans, or banners, or tokens. They appear to have operated equally effectively in magicoreligious or administrative contexts. In one astrological manuscript recovered from Mawangdui the drawings are paired with a text which ——— see Lackner (1990: 136–139), Reiter (1990: 314), Dorofeeva-Lichtmann (2001/ 2005), and the literature cited by Behr, this volume. Nonary layouts, formed by the division of a square into three rows of three smaller squares, were a frequent structuring device found not only in cosmography but also in the legendary “well-field system” (jingtian fa ѩ⬄⊩: the character jing consists of a three-by-three square) supposedly typical of land allocation in villages in high antiquity, and in the “nine provinces”, jiuzhou бᎲ, nine square regions into which the empire was said to have been divided during the reign of the legendary emperor Yu (see below). 63 Harper, this volume: p. 170. 64 See also e.g. Peterson (1982: 91 ff.) on how the Han commentary to the Book of Changes, the Xici zhuan, implies that “cosmological processes are intelligible and humans can adjust their conduct on the basis of that intelligence”. 65 Li Ling (2000) lists the whole range of magical tu so far discovered from the period. 66 As Harper has suggested, the proportion of occult works found in the tombs compared to that of more secular or philosophical texts strongly suggests that the occult arts preoccupied the ruling elite more than the philosophical questions debated in the canonical texts written or compiled at the time, even though it is the latter that were established as canonical during the Han and passed down to posterity in an unbroken textual tradition.

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explains how to use them for divinations; this text explicitly refers to the drawings as tu.67 Other tu-like cosmographs of the period include divination boards (shi ‫)ڤ‬,68 and the various plane and solid layouts for hemerological calculations discussed by Kalinowski. One particularly potent and widely-used cosmograph devised at this time was the so-called “cordhook diagram”, consisting of a square defined by two lines intersecting at their centre, with other lines forming right-angles at each corner of the square. This diagram constituted “a schematic device representing the five sectors of the world, the five agents and the four seasons”; the Xuangong tu ‫خ‬୰ቹ (Diagram of the mysterious palace) chapter of the Guanzi ጥ՗ was also organised according to the symbolism of the five sectors.69 Another characteristic cosmic layout of the period was the “TLV” motif, found on many bronze mirrors and used for the layout of the board for liubo ք໑, a game of chance much in vogue among members of the elite. A third was the diagram of the “nine palaces” (jiugong ԰୰), in which the layout of the nine palaces was ingeniously conflated with that of the five agents.70 Such cosmograms led the user on an itinerary through space which also encoded the passage of time, patterned by the dynamics of cosmic forces and by shifts in orientation. Sometimes the cosmographic layout consisted of patterns of lines, like the game-boards; sometimes the pattern formed by lines was richly decorated with largely abstract motifs, like the bronze TLV mirrors; and sometimes the layout was achieved through an oriented arrangement of written characters, with or without a framework of drawn lines, like the calendrical and hemerological tu discussed by Kalinowski. Similar cosmographic layouts can also be found in written, or written and illustrated documents of the period. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann shows that the Chu Silk Manuscript (4th or 3rd century BC) followed the layout of a divination board. It is “a rare example of a text that bears the clear stamp of a certain operational function. This text is characterised by an attribute that demands a certain action while reading it—rotating the manuscript or a circular movement by ——— 67 Harper, this volume. 68 A circular disc representing the Heavens, marked with astral and planetary

configurations, was mounted by a central pin on a square board, representing the Earth, marked with the compass directions; Stephenson (1994: 526–527). 69 Kalinowski, this volume: p. 141. 70 Ibid.

INTRODUCTION

19

the reader or user around it, or a combination of these actions.”71 The original version, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann suggests, might have been written on bundles of bamboo slips or on wooden tablets, thus facilitating the successive changes in orientation which were a key element in the significance of the document.72 Considering the importance of movement in creating the meaning of documents of this kind, Dorofeeva-Lichtmann proposes that the term jing ᆖ in the title of the document Shanhai jing ՞௧ᆖ should be translated not as “canonical work” but as “itinerary”.73 This work, compiled no later than the beginning of the first century BC, contained “a comprehensive and systematised [verbal] description of the inhabited world”.74 It was taken for granted by later Chinese scholars that such a text must originally have been illustrated with drawn maps, as it would have been in their day, and that the maps had subsequently been lost. However Dorofeeva-Lichtmann argues that drawn maps were unnecessary: in its original form the written text itself was so configured as to lead its readers through an itinerary that was the conceptual equivalent of a map, albeit a map of a highly symbolic type representing the “world ordering travels” of the legendary sage emperor Yu. The term tu also acquired a range of more secular connotations during the Warring States and Han dynasty, as new forms of tu were incorporated into the repertory of government. It is to be noted that the meaning of tu as “to plan”, first attested in the bronze plaque from Zhongshan where it signified the planning of a ritual space, had also acquired a more secular, administrative significance by the Han. The dictionary Shuowen jiezi ᎅ֮ᇞ‫( ڗ‬Explanation of writing and explication of graphs), compiled ca. 100 AD, defined tu as “picturing things that are difficult to plan” hua jinan ye ྽ૠᣄՈ.75 A plan in this context was not a diagram or blue-print for construction, but an algorithm for political action. ——— 71 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume: p. 246. 72 Dickhardt (2003) offers a stimulating discussion of the importance of move-

ment and other sensory experiences in the production of significant spaces. 73 Its title should thus be translated “Itineraries of mountains and seas” rather than “The classic of the mountains and the seas”. Manipulation of a diagram by the reader, and the re-orientation in space, this time not of the whole tu but of certain segments, are also a key feature of such mathematical procedures of demonstrationcalculation as “mending the void with the excess”, yi ying bu xu ҹⲜ㺰㰯, expounded by Liu Hui ࡝ᖑ in the third century AD and analysed by Volkov. 74 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume: p. 217. 75 Our translation is somewhat different from that of Sivin and Ledyard (1994: 26, n.6), often cited in later studies.

20

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Another form of tu that was institutionalised as a powerful tool of government during this period was the territorial map. Cordell Yee cites various textual references indicating that maps, called tu or ditu ‫چ‬ቹ, were being produced and used regularly in military affairs during the late Warring States. The Zhanguo ce ᖏഏ࿜ (Stratagems of the Warring States), a text that may date to the third century BC, de scribes the politician Su Qin ᤕ఻ convincing the king of Zhao to join an alliance to attack the more powerful state of Qin by saying: “I have examined a map [tu] of the empire, and according to it, the territory of the princes is five times that of the Qin”.76 The Sunzi ୪՗ (Master Sun’s [Art of war]), believed to date to the fourth century BC, includes a chapter on “Topography” (dixing ‫ ;)ݮچ‬while it does not explicitly mention maps Yee maintains that their use can be inferred. The Guanzi ጥ՗ ([Book of] Master Guan), parts of which date to the third century BC, does refer explicitly to use of maps (ditu) by military commanders and contains a chapter of that name. A passage in the Han Feizi ឌॺ՗ ([Book of] Master Han Fei), from the third century BC, suggests that maps were vital to state security and that giving up your map to another ruler was tantamount to giving up your state. And other texts of the late Warring States like the Xunzi ಃ՗ ([Book of] Master Xun), parts of which are third century BC, and the Guoyu ഏ፿ (Discourses of the States), perhaps ca. 300 BC, highlight that maps served as symbols of institutional integrity and political continuity; they aided not only spatial but also moral understanding, “functioning in part as guides to moral behavior”.77 The Zhouli ࡌ៖ (Ritual forms of Zhou), compiled in the first century BC, discusses maps as crucial documents of state, used not only to establish a ruler’s claims to territory, but also to chart natural resources such as mines, to locate mountain ranges, rivers and roads, to set up cadasters and adjudicate land disputes.78 Other texts of the period refer to tushu ቹ஼ (maps and documents) or to tuji ቹᤄ (maps and archives) as essential to the administrative and symbolic function of the state.79 From the Han dynasty on, the central government always included offices for documenting and mapping the heavens as well as its earthly territories. Celestial maps were even more potent political and symbolic tools than terrestrial maps: the emperor ruled by the man——— 76 77 78 79

Yee 1994: 74. Ibid: 73, 74. Ibid: 75. Ibid: 77, Reiter 1990.

INTRODUCTION

21

date of Heaven, and unless he understood the celestial phenomena and could predict and respond to celestial anomalies disaster would result. Astrology and celestial maps thus played a key part in legitimising political power.80 Terrestrial mapping, as the Zhouli suggests, offered many essential if more mundane advantages to administrators, not to mention the symbolic powers mentioned earlier. It became recommended practice for officials to compile local gazetteers (fangzhi ֱ‫ )ݳ‬of the administrative units under their jurisdiction; these contained pertinent economic, social and topographic information and were usually accompanied by a series of maps. Copies of the local gazetteers were sent to the capital and used to compile comprehensive gazetteers of the whole empire. Local gazetteers apparently date back to the Han, and the bibliographical section of the Suishu ᙟ஼ (History of the Sui, compiled in the seventh century AD) “lists nearly 140 geographic works, including gazetteers and maps”.81 What physical tu in the category of maps have survived from this period? The earliest surviving astral charts date back to Han-dynasty tombs, and several fine star maps from the Tang or Five Dynasties (sixth to tenth century AD) have been discovered in the grottoes of Dunhuang. 82 One remarkable artefact that can be considered a tu since it was a model of the heavens was the design of the city walls of the Western Han capital at Chang’an, built between 194 and 190 BC in the shape of two major constellations. The ideal Chinese city was square, enclosed between straight walls. But in the case of Chang’an the southern city wall, about 6 km long, followed the outline of the Southern Dipper, nandou ত֯ (Saggitarius), and the northern wall, about 7 km long, that of the Northern Dipper, beidou ‫( ֯ק‬Ursa Major).83 As for territorial maps, the oldest that have survived to date are seven wooden boards excavated from a tomb in Gansu, dating to ca. 239 BC and belonging to an officer in the Qin army. All seven depict different parts of a strategic region around a key pass into the state of Qin; six have maps painted on both sides. A Han tomb at the same site, dated between 179 and 141 BC, yielded a small fragment of a map drawn on paper. And from the Mawangdui tomb of 168 BC came three silk maps of the Changsha region. All these maps are ——— 80 Stephenson 1994. 81 Yee 1994: 89; and also 71–75. Fangzhi were not compiled for all regions of

China during the early dynasties; coverage started to become more complete during the Song (see below). 82 Stephenson 1994. 83 Stephenson 1994: 524, fig. 13.5.

22

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planimetric, and the styles of execution suggest some conventions for the notation of topographical features.84 Other Han tombs, and several of the Dunhuang caves, contain murals of what Yee calls “maps as paintings/paintings as maps”: they show buildings and features of the landscape in elevation and include human and animal figures like a painting, but they also contain planimetric elements—in other words they are both pictorial and cartographic.85 Here there is a similarity with murals in estate-owners tombs of the same period, which depict captioned scenes of different farming procedures executed in the style of decorative paintings.86 Are these pictorial renderings of cities, estates and farming scenes tu? We argue that they are, in that they were intended to transmit the functional details of the tomb occupant’s customary surroundings or sources of wealth and well-being to the world beyond the grave, to encode them so that they could be realised (in Ames’ term) in the afterlife. Although during the print era every field of technical knowledge generated graphic forms of tu, the range seems to have been rather more restricted before the Song dynasty. To some extent this may simply be due to the failure of fragile materials, or of mundane objects not sufficiently valued to be included in noble burials, to survive over long periods. The medieval images and documents that survived in the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang, including early woodblock prints of calendars, almanacs and sutras, often represent more plebeian or monastic concerns than the aristocratic tombs that are the main source of artefacts in the central regions of China. Several of the hemerological tu analysed by Kalinowski come from Dunhuang, including the only one of his twelve examples actually to bear the label tu. From the Dunhuang evidence it is quite clear that tu associated with divination, healing, astrology, the calendar or popular religious symbolism were in regular use among commoners as well as the elite throughout the medieval period. It can be shown that some images from this graphic repertoire were transmitted for centuries almost unchanged, an example being the signs of the zodiac as depicted in a privately printed calendar for the year 877, which reappear in printed works of the Yuan and Ming,87 and it is likely that this period contributed a number of iconic tu which achieved wider dissemination ——— 84 85 86 87

Yee 1994: 37–45. Yee 1994: 147–153. A good compendium of these images is Hayashi (1977). Chia 2002: 57.

INTRODUCTION

23

during the print era (see below). As Volkov notes, however, this was also a period where many tu must have been lost, for the state imposed strict controls over the use and possession of any tu that it considered might be turned to cosmo-political use. The Tang Code of 653 imposed two years of forced labour on any private household found in possession of such works as the Luo River Writing or the Yellow River Chart; similar bans were imposed by subsequent dynasties right up to the Song, leaving only restricted lists of divination works that provided procedures for the indispensable and legitimate calculations of dates for marriages and funerals.88 In certain technical fields where tu later figured prominently, for example mathematics, it appears that tu in the sense of drawn figures inserted in the text were not used by early writers. The author of the Jiuzhang suanshu ԰ີጩ஼ (Nine chapters on mathematical procedures) makes no reference to in-text figures, but Liu Hui’s Ꮵᚧ commentary of ca. 263 contains explicit reference to diagrams. Some historians have proposed that in medieval times cut-out paper figures or solid models were used in conjunction with the text to demonstrate certain procedures, although none have survived as physical objects. 89 Alexei Volkov argues that Liu Hui provided coloured diagrams, drawn on paper and bound together separately from the text, which illustrated general principles through specific examples (see below). At another level, just as the textual configuration of the Shanhai jing provided its readers or users with a map-like experience, so too it can be argued that the arrangement of a work like the Jiuzhang suanshu constituted a tu (a structured progression or set of algorithms) in itself.90 Text-as-tu was also used as a structuring device for exegesis or spiritual training in Daoist and Buddhist texts as early as the medieval period. Hermann–Josef Röllicke demonstrates that the Avatamsaka–sûtra, the foundational text of the Huayan ဎᣤ School of Buddhism, was compiled so as to form a textual mandala. Röllicke lays out for us the structure of the mandala-diagram which led the reader on a journey of awakening, sketching out a rhythmic flow of thoughts through confined corridors of time. An extraordinary achievement of the sutra is to take the reader through a process of awakening which is textually graded in time and space, while extinguishing all consciousness of grades. Thus the structure of the text ——— 88 Volkov, this volume. 89 Ibid. 90 Chemla and Guo 2004.

24

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anticipates its own doctrine, namely the all-presence of confined portions of verbally exposed Dharma anywhere in the universe.91 Another early form of text-as-tu was the biao । or table, literally a laying-out of signs. By late imperial times the terms biao and tu were often used interchangeably for tabular arrangements of data that facilitated information management. The earliest uses of the form were historiographical, and date back to pre-imperial times. The great Han historian Sima Qian ‫್׹‬ᔢ, author of the Shiji ‫׾‬ಖ (Historical records, completed ca. 90 BC), claimed to have invented biao as a way of displaying historical information. But a find of bamboo strips in Anhui in 1977 included 200 strips collated as chronological tables; they record events between roughly the ninth century and the end of the third century BC and predate the Shiji by about a century. Sima Qian elaborated two forms of biao, one with time, the other with place as the organising principle. Griet Vankeerberghen notes that while textual historical narrative is necessarily selective, biao are inherently exhaustive and permit the dramatic representation of geographical or chronological dynamics. Sima Qian’s tables dramatically highlight how the consolidation of imperial rule correlates with the decline of the feudal families—as Vankeerberghen remarks, the visually suggestive layout of a table can carry considerable rhetorical force. Many late imperial biao were devised as tools of statecraft (see below). Sima Qian’s biao, however, were inherently subversive, offering a subtle visual challenge to the new political structures of the Han imperial state.92 In the transmission of technical knowledge about the body, Vivienne Lo notes that among the archaeological finds of documents from the Han dynasty there are tu, and there are texts, but so far there are no examples of illustrations being paired with explanatory text. The forty-two images in the so-called Daoyin tu ᖄ֧ቹ, “Guiding and pulling chart”, discovered at Mawangdui, depict a form of gymnastics designed to rejuvenate aging bodies and to ease discomfort. Some have short captions naming the posture depicted, or indicating what ailment it is good for. Unillustrated texts recovered from another roughly contemporary burial seem to correspond rather well to the concept of the body and of therapy suggested by the technical ——— 91 Röllicke, this volume. 92 This is probably not true of the chronological biao in later dynastic histories;

nevertheless, many would doubtless repay critical analysis from some of the perspectives suggested by Vankeerberghen.

INTRODUCTION

25

drawings of the Daoyin tu. But in the case of the lacquer figurine from a tomb at Shuangbaoshan in Sichuan, sealed in 118 BC, it is not easy directly to relate the understandings of the body it suggests to any single existing text of the period. However by medieval times we find straight pairings of text and tu, for example “mediaeval moxacautery loci charts discovered in the cache of manuscripts at Dunhuang, and in the Hama jing ᓚᝂᆖ (Toad Canon) bring together simple textual instructions with practical illustration.”93 The bibliographical sections of the early dynastic histories list numerous works with tu in the title, but almost none have survived.94 It is not easy to be sure just what form of tu they contained, or what the relation was between tu and text. The works on healing just mentioned are among the relatively few tu-like artefacts surviving from early or medieval times that display the tu-text interplay which was to become standard in the print era, namely a direct pairing of twodimensional graphic images with text. On the other hand in the preprinting era other forms of tu-like artefacts were common, including “paradigmatic patterns” and two- or three-dimensional cosmic models, all apparently usable independently of linear written text, as well as characters arranged (with or without other graphic elements) in diagrammatic or schematic form, and written texts containing no graphics but structured as tu in themselves. The flowering of the print era naturally marked an important transition in what we might call the “tu culture” of China. Woodblock printing was already quite a well-known medium by late medieval times, used as early as the eighth century to produce sutras, religious images, calendars, dictionaries, primers, books on geomancy and divination, and other documents where the rapid production of multiple copies offered an obvious practical or religious advantage. Woodblock printing lends itself both to the reproduction of images and to the organisation of text into structured patterns (for example the layout of calendars or tables), so it is not surprising that tu of various kinds feature in the few early printed documents that have survived.95 A true publishing industry, based on woodblock printing, began to ——— 93 Lo, this volume: p. 384. The Hama jing was probably not compiled till the early Tang, but it contains materials that are quite consistent with Han ideas about the uses of acupuncture and moxibustion to exorcise evil spirits and to protect spirit and qi; correct orientation of the patient while undergoing needling was an important consideration (Lo 2001). 94 Volkov, this volume. 95 E.g. Tsien 1985: 146–159.

26

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develop in the tenth century. Now every field of technical knowledge began to generate its own tu, many of which rapidly entered general circulation, not least because printing greatly facilitated the production of encylopedias, compendia and other collections that included illustrated materials from a range of fields of technical knowledge. But a negative effect of the woodblock medium was that it was much easier for printers to make more or less direct copies of earlier images than to create new ones. A number of tu which entered the iconographic repertory in the early print era were the original creations of writers or woodblock carvers of the Song and Yuan; some dated back to the pre-print era. Although new tu were created during the Ming and Qing in a number of technical fields, all too often publishers simply picked more or less appropriate illustrations from earlier works. Technical drawing never became a specialised skill, let alone a critical discipline, in China—and this, as Peter Golas argues, was a definite impediment to technological creativity. The social history of print culture in China followed a different path from Europe. 96 The earliest uses of printing in China were largely popular and religious, and it was only after a couple of centuries that the medium’s potential for scholarship was realised. In the tenth century several Buddhist and Daoist foundations decided to go beyond printing individual sutras and religious ephemera for distribution to their congregations, launching ambitious projects of critical scholarship. The first complete printed edition of the Tripitaka was produced between 971 and 983 in Sichuan. Other editions of the Tripitaka, and a printing of the complete Daoist corpus, followed. In the late 980s the Song state also took the plunge into print culture. The National Academy undertook a critical edition of the Confucian classics, to which was soon added a critical edition of the seventeen dynastic histories, begun in 994 and completed in 1061. As well as these milestones of orthodox scholarship, the Song state also printed all kinds of technical works that it considered would aid good government and promote the welfare of the general population. Government offices, central and local, printed and distributed dictionaries, anthologies and technical works, including treatises and technical handouts on farming and textile technology, which were circulated to local magistrates so they could develop the rural economy in their district. In 1088 the Office of Medical Administration ——— 96 The thumbnail sketch of the early history of printing that follows is based principally on Tsien (1985).

INTRODUCTION

27

ordered the printing of a small-character edition of the medical classics and collected prescriptions (cheaper and more convenient than the standard large-print versions) to be sold at cost by local governments to practising physicians. The official printing offices also produced forms and documents to facilitate administration, including tax registers, census figures, maps and the legal code. The Jin, Liao and Yuan governments too made extensive and creative use of printing, for scholarly and for administrative purposes. Governments also printed documents that could be used to educate ordinary people, providing instruction both in material technologies like farming or medicine, and in moral practices like ritual and filiality (see below). From the beginning of the Song commercial and private publishing houses kept pace and competed with the official printing offices.97 By the late Song popular genres included works on ritual, farming, medicine and materia medica, treatises on geomancy and other forms of divination, collections of philosophy, poetry and biji (personal notes on miscellaneous topics), and historical studies. Works intended for a more popular readership, including household encyclopedias and illustrated fiction, started to appear in the late Song. From about 1100 on, guides to studying and pocket-sized cribs that could be smuggled into the official examinations sold like hot cakes.98 Many of the technical works were illustrated with tu99 (the illustrations in collections of fiction, as mentioned earlier, were referred to not as tu but as hua or xiang).100 One type of printed tu that apparently became common fairly early in the Song and whose popularity never ceased to grow throughout imperial times was the star-chart.101 Among other examples of Song usage of these charts, Needham cites Zheng Qiao who “advised chanting over portions of the Bu tiange on clear nights to familiarise oneself with the celestial patterns”, but “complained that the available printed star-charts were generally not to be relied upon ——— 97 Chia 2002. 98 Tsien 1985, Chia 2002. For government memorials, edicts and decrees at-

tempting to curb the abuse of such texts, see Chia (2002: 121–123). 99 See the list of subjects which Zheng Qiao records as having produced illustrated studies. As well as providing several reproductions of tu from the Song on, Lucille Chia discusses the technical production and choices of page layout for tu in the Song and in the Ming (Chia 2002: 52–62, 212, 217). 100 Bussotti, this volume. 101 Stephenson 1994. “By the Qing dynasty, the number of surviving star maps and celestial globes escalated to such a degree that it would take a separate essay to describe them in any detail” (ibid: 573).

28

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and hard to correct”.102 The number of Song and Yuan imprints that has survived what is almost a thousand years to the present is not surprisingly rather small. Nevertheless the texts that have survived, together with bibliographies, references, and copies or reproductions of early editions from later dynasties, provide a fair idea of what printed materials were available. Clearly printing helped circulate images of many kinds (both decorative hua and instructive tu) far more widely than before, contributing to the consolidation of an iconic repertory familiar to ordinary people as well as to the educated and travelled elite. Printed books were still too expensive for most, but multi-media visual circuits helped to popularise a number of images. Scenes depicting advanced farming methods were painted as murals on the walls of county magistratures. The scenes from the painted scrolls of the Gengzhi tu (Farming and weaving illustrated), for instance, were carved on stone tablets from which rubbings were made, and made into woodblock versions for printing. These forms of reproduction ensured their widespread diffusion.103 Another interesting multi-media pedagogical tool of the Song was the famous life-size bronze statues drilled with acupuncture points, commissioned from Wang Weiyi ‫׆‬൫ԫ, an officer of the Medical Board, in 1026 and finished the following year. The figures were designed as a teaching aid for medical students; it seems that one was placed in the Central Medical Institute (yiguanyuan ᠔ࡴೃ) and the other in a Buddhist temple at the capital. The acupunture points were covered with wax to conceal their location, and the figure was filled with water so that when the student needled the correct location drops of water would appear; furthermore “the figure was made in two halves, front and back, which could be fitted together to make one whole body”, and contained “the inner and outer viscera [which] were all complete”.104 In preparation for this stage of physical, three-dimensional learning, Wang Weiyi had compiled for the students a study book, also completed in 1027, consisting of a critical selection of written and illus——— 102 Needham and Wang 1959: 281. The Butian ge ℹ໽℠ (Song of the sky pacer) was a late sixth-century work by the poet Wang Ximing ⥟Ꮰᯢ that “gave a brief description of almost 300 asterisms and enumerated the stars in each”; these descriptions were verbal, not illustrated, but it was claimed that they corresponded to a third-century star map (Stephenson 1994: 532). 103 Bray, this volume. 104 Lu and Needham 1980: 131. A Ming version of the figure is shown in fig. 27, p.130.

INTRODUCTION

29

trated texts entitled Xinzhu tongren shuxue zhenjiu tujing ᄅᦷᎭԳ ⟿‫ل‬ಾ߁ቹᆖ (Illustrated classic for the use of the newly cast bronze men showing the acupuncture and moxibustion points).105 So here we have a multi-media system comprising model, tu and text, all of which were considered necessary components of the learning process. The growth and prosperity of the later Ming and high Qing supported a second dramatic expansion of the printing industry starting in the early sixteenth century. Books now reached new audiences of women, children and less privileged families, and bibliographies and publishers’ catalogues of the period indicate that new illustrated editions of earlier works sold well. Popular genres included primers, guides to the classics and to ritual, biographies of virtuous women, household encyclopedias and medical treatises. Many of these works were illustrated on the grounds that tu appealed to the semi-educated or illiterate while helping them to grasp ideas or information. But it seems that all levels of society had by now acquired an appetite for illustrated works, and in the highly competitive world of late Ming publishing editors seem often to have insisted on adding illustrations to any work that passed through their hands. Georges Métailié suggests that the set of rather rough illustrations to the first edition of the Bencao gangmu ‫ء‬ᖙጼ‫( ؾ‬Systematic materia medica) by Li Shizhen ‫ޕ‬ழੴ, published in 1596, was added by the publisher without consulting the author. 106 Another interesting case is that of the Lu Ban jing ᕙఄᆖ (Carpenters’ canon), a compilation of arcane craft knowledge about magical measurements, the taboos and rituals of different phases and types of construction, geomantic precepts, and a series of descriptions of how to build common items of furniture or joinery. Historians of crafts presume that this work originally served not as a how-to guide for young carpenters— who would have been trained through practical apprenticeship, not through studying books—but as an esoteric, holy text that would have been copied in manuscript and kept among the ritual paraphernalia of the carpenters’ guild. In the Jiajing era (1522–1566) an elegant illustrated woodblock edition of the Lu Ban jing was produced.107 Some ——— 105 An illustration from this work is shown ibid (fig. 28, p. 132). The work was considered so important that it was engraved on stone before 1030, and reinscribed by imperial order in 1443; ibid (133–134; 134 fig. 29) shows a section on the Song engraving. 106 Métailié, this volume; Haudricourt and Métailié 1994. See also Bussotti on the addition of images by publishers. 107 Ruitenbeek 1993.

30

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of the tu, for example those depicting talismans, charms and spells, probably came from the original versions of the text; others, for instance the pictures of items of furniture shown in typical domestic settings, were probably newly drawn; the geomantic diagrams appear to have been borrowed from illustrated encylopedias. The publisher of the Jiajing edition is less likely to have intended it for a readership of carpenters than for wealthy people who routinely employed carpenters for building work.108 It would also have catered for a general interest among the leisured class of the period in how everyday objects were made. Craig Clunas has argued that the illustrated technical descriptions of the Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ (Exploitation of the works of nature) by Song Yingxing ‫ݚ‬ᚨਣ, first published in 1637, were likewise intended for entertainment rather than for practical instruction.109 Neither Peter Golas nor Donald Wagner would agree that this was Song Yingxing’s intention in writing Tiangong kaiwu, but we cannot presume that the publisher shared Song’s seriousness of purpose. As Wagner points out, the discrepancies between text and image in certain passages suggest that while some of the illustrations may have been drawn specifically to Song’s specifications, in others the publisher may have supplied a picture without reference to the written text. One interesting and unusual feature of the Tiangong kaiwu is that its illustrations, whatever their quality, were new, not reworked versions of earlier tu. But even borrowed tu could be assembled to new effect, as in Wang Qi’s ‫ ݆׆‬encyclopedia Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ (Illustrated compendium of the Three Powers) of 1609, one of the fullest collections of tu ever assembled (see below). Another great illustrated project of the period, still more ambitious in scope, was the Gujin tushu jicheng ‫ײ‬վቹ஼ႃ‫( ګ‬Complete collection of graphics and texts, ancient and modern), commissioned by the Kangxi emperor in 1701 but only completed and printed under his successor, the Yongzheng emperor, in 1725. This colossal enterprise, which ran to some 800,000 pages, was printed in movable copper type, and the illustrations were all new versions rather than direct copies of the original prototypes. 110 Unfortunately no research has ——— 108 It was most important for a client not to antagonise the carpenters when they were building, and to have some knowledge of the construction process, for disgruntled carpenters could easily ruin the family fortunes by secreting unlucky objects or signs on ritually important parts of the house like the rafters. 109 Clunas 1997a. 110 Ledderose 2000: 140 ff.

INTRODUCTION

31

been carried out specifically on the production of these tu, but we shall offer a few remarks on their qualities below. As the population and the economy expanded through the late Ming and Qing dynasties, the challenges of political control and effective administration grew. It is in the field of statecraft and administration that many of the most interesting innovations in late imperial tu occurred. Two scientific domains closely associated with statecraft were mathematical astronomy and water conservancy, both of which as Cordell Yee notes can be considered established disciplines in late imperial China, “following Stephen Toulmin’s two-tiered definition of an intellectual discipline as having a well-defined subject matter and an explanatory (or procedural) idea”.111 The science and politics of astronomy in late imperial China is a subject that has commanded sustained attention. From the perspective of tu, Stephenson provides a concise survey and evaluation of the star maps produced by the imperial bureau of astronomy, and discusses the impact of Jesuit uranography at the end of the Ming and into the Qing.112 The role of tu in state hydraulics was equally important but has so far attracted rather little specific attention. The management of such vast rivers as the Yangzi and the Yellow River generated a long tradition of official documentation, research and public works. Hydraulic policies and large-scale public works dated back to pre-Imperial times. During the Ming the tax grain transported along the Grand Canal from the rice regions of the south to the capital in Beijing was the lifeblood of the empire, but the steady silting of the Yellow River endangered the Qingkou intersection where the Canal crossed it, and by the second half of the sixteenth century it was clear that a still vaster and more comprehensive system of water management was required than the existing system of dykes and flood basins. Pan Jixun ᑰࡱ቏ (1521–1595) was first appointed as river commissioner in 1565 and “is credited with establishing the paradigm of hydraulic management that would dominate Yellow River engineering for the next three centuries”.113 Using a multimedia approach that included detailed maps at different scales as well as historical data on floods and public works, and a survey of previous memorials, ——— 111 Yee 1994: 96, n.2. 112 Stephenson 1994: esp. 540–555 and 568–578. 113 Dodgen 2001: 18. Dodgen traces the history of the specialised bureaucracy in

charge of managing the Yellow River from the Ming dynasty through to the midnineteenth century.

32

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edicts and policies, Pan attempted to grasp the complex hydraulic principles at work in order to “craft a system in which the force of the river was harnessed to do the work of man”.114 The preface to the Siku quanshu edition of Pan’s study, the Hefang yilan ࣾ߻ԫᥦ (General view of the control of the Yellow River, prefaced 1590), comments that “although changes in methods were afterwards necessary to fit changing circumstances, yet experts in river control always take this book as a standard guide”. 115 Pan’s use of sophisticated maps and charts has seldom been the focus of analysis in the various studies that refer to his work, except for a recent paper by Amelung.116 Clearly they would merit further study given the impressive impact of Pan’s technical analysis.117 Other notable statecraft trends in the production of tu in late imperial China include the elaboration of new charts and tables designed to improve administrative precision or to increase expert command over large and unwieldy bodies of information and procedure (discussed below in Typology). A salient trend in the official use of tu during the Qing dynasty was the production of symbolic representations of the dynasty’s authority to rule. As foreign rulers the Manchu emperors were especially anxious to show themselves to be good Confucians and ardent supports of the Chinese moral and ritual order. Among the tu they deployed to reinforce their image as wise rulers committed to the welfare of the common people were four new versions of the Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ (Ploughing and weaving illustrated), a set of scenes of rural labour first composed by a Song magistrate, Lou Chou ᑔ㙭, in the 1130s. The images of the Gengzhi tu were as much invocations of a harmonious and productive social order as depictions ——— 114 Ibid. 115 Ibid: 20. The Siku quanshu was compiled between 1773 and 1782. 116 E.g. most recently Vermeer (1987), Yee (1994: 131–134), Dodgen (2001 pas-

sim), Elvin (2004: 137 ff.), Yee (1994: 98–99, Figure 5.2 reproduces portions of Pan Jixun’s charts in Hefang yilan). Amelung (2000) pays explicit attention to the role of maps in hydraulic management and policy. 117 My thanks are due to Ramon Guardans for his insights into Pan’s methods of analysis and conceptualisation of dynamic processes. One key long-term failing of Pan’s system, as Dodgen remarks, was that “as the state arrogated to itself more and more complex technical tasks, it failed to anticipate the fiscal or bureaucratic consequences. A weak tax system and an ad hoc approach to technical training proved inadequate to the job of financing, managing, and maintaining the Yellow River system”; Dodgen (2001: 22). Elvin adds ecological considerations, and notes that “the mass mobilization of unpaid labor was not feasible under the Qing to the same degree as it had been in previous dynasties” (Elvin 2004: 123).

INTRODUCTION

33

of advanced technology.118 Other tu that served to reinforce the symbolic authority of the regime included the elaborate ceremonial plans for the reception of foreign visitors or tributaries to the Qing court, and these in turn are closely connected to the symbolically powerful liturgical tu that prescribed the annual cycle of court rituals.119 The boundaries of the Chinese empire were greatly extended by the military and diplomatic campaigns of the early Qing emperors, who also put great effort into drawing all the non-Chinese inhabitants of far corners or remote enclaves of the empire into the imperial fold. Maps were important symbolic as well as military and administrative tools in these campaigns. 120 The government also commissioned compilations of illustrated descriptions of aboriginal, non-Han populations, for instance the “Miao albums” or “Illustrations of the hundred Miao tribes” (baimiao tu ‫્ۍ‬ቹ). Historians like Hostetler have identified such projects as part of a colonial enterprise. Unlike earlier travellers’ tales of exotic and monstrous beings these albums, Hostetler argues, consisted of accurate verbal and visual ethnographic observations of the kind that would assist an administrator in governing such a population.121 At the end of the Ming and in the early Qing the Jesuits had introduced the knowledge and equipment used to produce maps in Europe (mathematics and astronomy; sextants, quadrants and theodolites). But as Iwo Amelung notes, whereas the impact on Qing mathematics and astronomy was profound, the impact on Chinese cartographic practices was negligeable. It seems that Chinese cartographers misunderstood the principles of such key features of Western cartography as the meridian-based grid, and in fact a mid-sixteenth century atlas, Luo Hongxian’s ᢅੋ٣ Guangyu tu ᐖᝨቹ (Enlarged terrestrial atlas, completed ca. 1555) “was reprinted almost unchanged as late as 1799, and probably was the most popular map available in China up to this time”.122 Only with the shock of the first Opium War of 1839–1842 did Qing rulers, officials and intellectuals eventually feel the urgency of acquiring maps which possessed the same powers as the maps of the colonialist Western nations who threatened to overwhelm them; only in the 1880s was a systematic national survey ——— 118 119 120 121 122

Bray, this volume. Hevia 1995, Bastid-Bruguière 1996. Hostetler 2001, Smith 2001. Ibid. Amelung, this volume: _p. 688.

34

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using Western methods initiated. Amelung discusses the resources mobilised for the ambitious large-scale surveys of the 1880s and 1890s, and the benefits Chinese officials hoped to reap from “modern” maps, as part of the often reluctant drive towards transforming China into a modern nation.

TU: A TYPOLOGY AND SOME DEBATES The attention of Chinese thinkers focused essentially on two distinct types of tu, those which revealed or explained cosmic processes and were thus endowed with symbolic or ritual power; and those which represented or organised secular information or knowledge, whose power was by and large didactic. Although Chinese discussions of tu seldom formulated or even acknowledged the differences between them, it is usually immediately apparent which type of tu is at issue. Broadly speaking, Section I of this book, The power of order: tu as symbolic mediation, addresses the first category of tu; the cases discussed include several instances where a complex structuring of written words was in itself the tu. Section II, Picturing reality? Tu as technical illustrations, discusses the second category. As we have seen, tu of both kinds were subjects of reflection in the literature of the late Warring States and Han. Philosophical texts discussed powerful primal images like the Mingtang and the Hetu, and historical records or discussions of statecraft indicated that tushu, “maps and records”, were considered essential tools of government. The popularisation of woodblock printing stimulated a new surge of reflection, among Song and later intellectuals, on how tu of different types functioned. The intellectual impact of printing on the Song literati elite was dramatic. With the routinisation of printing “changes in the ways of learning, remembering, reading and writing and in the ways that text could be collated in a stabilized and easily replicable form began to affect all areas of learning”.123 Among the new cognitive and communicative possibilities that interested Song literati were the contributions that tu could make to scholarship and to the diffusion of knowledge. They were especially interested in the balance of power between tu and verbal expression. ——— 123 Chia 2002: 8.

INTRODUCTION

35

The relation between tu and text was an ancient and enduring debate in Chinese philosophy. The Xici zhuan ᢀ᢯ႚ (Commentary on the attached verbalizations), the early Han commentary on the archaic document known as the Yijing ࣐ᆖ (Book of Changes), attributes to Confucius the following views on the importance of the graphic image in conveying complex knowledge: The master said: [It is well known that] writing does not bring out exhaustively what is said, and what is said does not bring out exhaustively what is thought. That being so, is it the case that the thinking of the sages [which the Changes supposedly represents to us] cannot be [fully] perceived? The master said [in response to this question]: Sages set up figures (xiang ွ) [rather than rely on words] in order to bring out exhaustively what is thought. They set out hexagrams (gua ࠳) in order to bring out exhaustively the actual circumstances and the false.124

The graphic conventions of the figures and hexagrams in the Book of Changes constituted a system of metaphysical notation (supposedly invented by the ancient sages) that elegantly codified the forces and dynamics of cosmic change and their translation into human emotions and actions.125 These cosmic principles were matters so complex that words alone were inadequate to encompass them126—yet the diagrams themselves would elude human interpretation without the sagely verbal counsel that was paired with them.127 The daoxue ሐᖂ or neo-Confucian philosophers of the Song were especially interested in revealed tu. These included the trigrams and hexagrams of the Changes, and indeed the very structure of the Book of Changes which, as Lackner notes, they considered to be the quintessential tu. Wang Bo ‫׆‬ড (1197–1274) echoed the Xici zhuan: “the meaning(fullness) of one single tu can not be exhausted by millions of words”.128 Whether or not through divine revelation, the daoxue philosophers contributed a number of new and highly influential cosmograms to the repertory: Zhou Dunyi ࡌཉᙲ (1017–1073) built his ——— 124 Peterson 1982: 98–99. The Xici zhuan was traditionally attributed to Confucius, but is now dated to the early Han dynasty (third or second century BC); ibid: 69 ff. 125 Ibid: 95. 126 In his Preface to his commentaries, illustrated with diagrams, on the mathematical classic Jiuzhang suanshu, Liu Hui quotes the Xici zhuan; Volkov, this volume. 127 Ibid: 94, “The third claim”. 128 Lackner, this volume: p. 345.

36

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metaphysics around the “diagram of the supreme ultimate” (taiji tu ֜ ᄕቹ), an image which he created under divine inspiration. Shao Yong ३ሸ (1011–1077) was the first to render into graphics another primal image, the “River diagram” (hetu ࣾቹ), in the form in which it has come down to us today.129 Zhu Xi ‫ڹ‬ᗋ (1130–1200) made copious use of exegetical diagrams in his expoundings of the Confucian canonical texts. As Lackner demonstrates in his paper, these diagrams were not considered to be illustrations supporting a verbal argument—rather, they were themselves the argument, and indeed they could stand alone without verbal explanation. An analytical tu could constitute an explanation, shuo ᎅ, in itself.130 Here we observe an analogy with Sima Qian’s biao, designed to structure understanding in such a way as to convey a moral or political message at no point made explicit in the accompanying text, and with the processual diagrams devised by Liu Hui as a form of mathematical explanation. The daoxue philosophers of the Song were principally concerned with two sub-sets of what we might call “transformative” tu. The first set consisted of primal forms that were at the origins of the cosmos, images of fundamental dynamisms revealed to humans and translated into diagrams. The second were exegetical devices, configurations of script or graphics patterned in such a way as to elucidate ancient wisdom; through their very form they expounded cosmograms or canonical works, or important insights into processes of cognition or of knowledge formation. Lackner notes that many of these exegetical diagrams were stemmatic in form, similar to the genealogical charts which starting in the Song became increasingly popular as claims to social status. In both cases the tu consisted essentially of abstract orderings of space/time. The person who engaged with the tu followed the transformative trajectory laid down by the patterning of the tu, which was intended to reflect the fundamental patterning of the cosmos or of certain forms of wisdom. (Röllicke and Lackner discuss the Buddhist and Daoist contributions to the formation of this epistemological-ontogenetic tradition.) In following these paths, the observer was transformed (acquiring knowledge and/or understanding, conforming with the natural flows of the cosmos), or effected a cos——— 129 Clunas (1997: 107, and 106–108) more generally on late imperial imagings of he tu. Ibid: 30, fig. 5 shows a Ming version of 1599. 130 A concrete example of a tu that is in itself a shuo is the geomantic compass, which first gained currency during the Song. The compass is a cosmograph that translates a landscape and plots it in terms of a formal cosmic grid; Henderson (1994: 217).

INTRODUCTION

37

mic transformation (as in the drawing of talismans, or the performance of Daoist rituals such as the “steps of Yu”).131 The acquisition of knowledge and of the capacity to put that knowledge into action was conceived as a spatial and temporal experience folded into the tu. Yet although they played a considerable role in the formation of Song thought, it seems the daoxue philosophers did not theorise about how the tu which they used so creatively should be constructed.132 As shown in the previous section, transformative tu have a pedigree that stretches back into high antiquity.133 The earliest examples of cosmograms included talismans and charms,134 as well as divination materials 135 and hemerological tu. 136 The charms, talismans, spells and astrological charts from this tradition of tu have continued in popular use right through to the present day. As just mentioned, the more elevated and intellectual forms of cosmogram were the object of intense debate during the Song dynasty, and as the Song philosophers developed their repertoire of metaphysical diagrams they made strenuous efforts to purge them of magical connotations. Although they never rose to quite such philosophical prominence again, intellectuals continued to work with these metaphysical cosmograms right through late imperial times—often as an alternative perspective that co-existed in their world-view with new cosmologies adopted (and adapted) from the West. As Richard Smith notes: Recent research, including my own on the Yijing (Classic of Changes), has shown that support of Jesuit mathematics, science and technology by scholars of “evidential research” did not necessarily undermine inherited assumptions about cosmology and cosmography. Kaozheng-oriented individuals such as Jiang Yong (1681–1762), for example, might enthusiastically endorse “Western learning,” yet cling tenaciously to the old correlative cosmology, including explanatory devices such as the Hetu (River Chart) and Luoshu (Luo Writing).137

As well as cosmograms and exegetical diagrams, more straightforwardly representational, illustrative tu also had an important epistemological role to play in the philosophical projects of the Song ——— 131 On the “steps of Yu” see Harper n.39. 132 Lackner, this volume. See also Clunas (1997: 105), on this tradition of phi-

losophical tu and its Ming exponents. 133 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, Wu Hung, this volume. 134 Harper, this volume. 135 Venture, Behr, this volume. 136 Kalinowski, this volume. 137 Smith 2001: 12 and 1998: passim.

38

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daoxue philosophers. Illustrative tu played a key role in the project of gewu ௑ढ, the investigation of phenomena (ranging from plants to history) which paved the way to understanding the fundamental principles that directed Heaven, Earth and Man. Tu also figured in classical studies which aimed to recover the true forms and meanings of the foundational canonical works. In both domains, an important step towards understanding was the correct pairing of “name and referent”, mingwu ‫ټ‬ढ.138 Tu were considered to contribute to a full understanding of all the classics, but were particularly important as exegetical devices for those which discussed rank and ritual, namely the Zhouli ࡌ៖ (Zhou rituals) and the Liji ៖ಖ (Record of rituals). Here images helped recreate the embodied understanding and emotions imparted through the correct practice of liturgies and the manipulation of ritual paraphernalia. Sometimes the reconstructions were technological in nature. In about 1235 Lin Xiyi ࣥ‫ݦ‬ၝ completed a study of the Kaogong ji ‫ە‬ՠಖ (Records on investigating crafts) section of the Zhouli, an ancient work which provided rather cryptic textual descriptions of the construction of carriages, tools, vessels and other artefacts supposedly used at the Zhou court. His study, entitled Kaogong ji jie ‫ە‬ՠಖᇞ (Kaogong ji explained), included drawings to accompany every scholarly explanation.139 Tu were also needed to provide accurate representations of the natural species mentioned in the Shijing ᇣᆖ (Book of poetry), to bring to life important historical episodes, and—in a somewhat different approach to recapturing the past—in antiquarian studies which catalogued collections of ancient bronzes and other treasures.140 In works of this type the philological explanation of each archaic term was usually directly paired with an illustration (invariably captioned tu) of the object or phenomenon in question—in other words, these studies took the form of tupu ቹᢜ or illustrated registers.141 In a well-known essay entitled Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ (A brief account of illustrated registers), completed ca. 1150, the twelth-century histo——— 138 Elman 2002. 139 The great scholar Dai Zhen ᠈䳛 repeated this exercise, in the light of subse-

quent archaeological and antiquarian discoveries, in his Kaogong ji tu 㗗Ꮉ㿬೪ (Illustrated Kaogong ji) of 1746, and in ca. 1805 Cheng Yaotian ⿟⨸⬄ produced a further illustrated study entitled Kaogong ji chuangwu xiaoji 㗗Ꮉ㿬ࡉ⠽ᇣ㿬 (Brief notes on the manufacture of the objects in the Kaogong ji). 140 Chia 2002: Appendix A lists examples of illustrated studies of the classics. Bussotti, this volume, discusses illustrated catalogues of antiques. 141 For two fine examples of Song tupu-type entries to studies of the classics, see Chia 2002: 54, Fig. 9 Part I.

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rian and philosopher Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ (1104–1162) penned an eloquent rationale of tupu as the only truly effective way to transmit any form of technical skills or knowledge.142 As quoted at the beginning of this Introduction, Zheng Qiao begins the Tupu lüe with an analysis of the respective roles of text and image in conveying knowledge.To suggest their respective roles he proposes an analogy: “the images (tu ቹ) are the warp threads (jing ᆖ) and the written words (shu ஼) are the weft (wei ᒮ)”.143 Obviously warp and weft are both indispensable to the structure of cloth. But since the warp threads are the long, strong threads that run longitudinally through a fabric giving it shape and strength, Zheng is suggesting here that images play the primary role in framing understanding, while the written text plays an epistemological role similar to that of the weft thread, weaving back and forth through the warp threads to form the detailed patterns of the cloth. The jing-wei terminology also invokes the cognitively hierarchical relationship between a canonical text and the commentaries or apocrypha written later to elucidate it. 144 The jing-wei relationship also included spatial networks, as in the Zhouli, where jing is used to refer to the principal north-south routes of the capital city and wei denotes the secondary east-west routes that crossed them, completing a grid of location and communications.145 Jing precedes and frames wei, and while wei varies over time, jing cannot be changed. Zheng Qiao’s jing-wei contrast146 thus implies that while images and words work together to convey the full range of meaning, it is the image which is prior, and which establishes the fundamental matrix of understanding—an interpretation fully in accord with the tu-practices of other daoxue philosophers of the Song. Zheng Qiao’s essay discusses the interweaving of tu and text in the form of tupu—registers where each item within a category is described by an illustrative graphic image, tu, paired with a written ex——— 142 Zheng Qiao was fascinated by issues of categorisation and the effective arrangement of knowledge; his most influential work was the Tongzhi 䗮ᖫ (Comprehensive treatises) encyclopedia, which included the Tupu lüe as well as a treatise on bibliography proposing a novel twelve-division classification of knowledge. Zheng also wrote a monograph on the six rules of formation of written characters, and a fivevolume recensus of earlier materia medica, the Caomu wailei 㤝᳼໪串 (Alternative classification of plants, completed ca. 1161), intended to correct the confusions that had arisen in earlier Song compilations. 143 Tongzhi j. 71/837a. 144 Lackner, this volume. 145 Dorofeeva-Lichtmann, this volume. 146 For more details on how Zheng elaborated the distinctions see Lackner’s contribution.

40

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planation, shu or shuo.147 Zheng Qiao lists sixteen technical fields in which tupu are essential for conveying the embodied, practical skills essential for the passage from study to action: such skills include building houses; casting ritual vessels; discerning between primary and secondary effects when setting the levels of taxes; and grasping the significance of the topography laid out in a map. Without tu, declares Zheng Qiao, practical or concrete knowledge (shixue ኔᖂ) degenerates into empy words.148 Despite Zheng Qiao’s ritual lament that attitudes towards tu had degenerated since the Han he was able to list a number of contemporary tupu in his bibliography, for as we have just mentioned illustrations of this representational kind played a central role in Song daoxue scholarship, as they did in statecraft. Tupu continued to be a popular format for technical works through the Yuan, Ming and Qing. Perhaps one of the finest examples of the tupu as applied in the field of technology is the Nongqi tupu (Illustrated register of farming tools) which forms the centrepiece of the Nongshu (Agricultural treatise) completed by the agronomist Wang Zhen in 1313.149 Another notable enterprise intellectual organised in tupu form is Wang Qi’s encyclopedia Sancai tuhui (Illustrated compendium of the Three Powers) of 1609, an ambitious attempt to cover all human knowledge, organised under the three general rubrics of Heaven, Earth and Man (see below). Most of the tu which Zheng Qiao argued were necessary to convey practical or concrete knowledge fall into a different epistemological category from the symbolic diagrams discussed in Part I of this collection. The tu which form the focus of Part II, Picturing reality? Tu as technical illustrations, are mostly representational (if not necessarily “realistic” in the modern Western sense): depictions of the human body and its functions, of territory, of plants or of machinery. Although the representations are (as any representation must be) selective, they consist of a sort of point to point imaging—an illustration in other words—of a concrete object or phenomenon. In his discussion of cosmograms Lackner raises Peirce’s distinction between image and diagram: an image contains many aspects of the signified in the signifier, a diagram is restricted to selected structural aspects of ——— 147 Zheng Qiao uses shu, written text, but other writers use shuo, explanation; see for instance Lackner, Bray, this volume. 148 837c. Ironically Zheng Qiao makes his argument entirely in linear text. 149 Bray, this volume.

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the signified. In this respect many of the tu in our second category are in fact hybrids, containing both structural and non-structural, material and moral elements. More to the point, perhaps, unlike the transformative tu, the tu in this second broad category were not designed to draw viewers into the image and so to guide them along an ordered trajectory through space and time. They were technical devices whose perusal, in conjunction with a textual explanation, was intended to provide the basis for action on the world, rather than constituting a transformative process in itself. With these representational tu the observer remains outside the image and comprehension can be achieved in a more flexible fashion: understanding emerges as the eye roves back and forth freely over the image, or between the image and the explanatory text. With this kind of tu it is sometimes difficult to say where “technical” or “functional” illustration ends and “decorative” illustration begins; as already mentioned, the same image may fall into one category or another depending on context.150 At the same time there is also considerable scope for abstraction within this category. We might mention the simplification into visual tropes of certain botanical types;151 the highly stylised renderings of acupuncture channels152 or of coroners’ charts;153 and the radically different conventions in the maps produced for merchants, sailors, land-owners or magistrates. 154 The level of abstraction reaches its limit in such graphic images as mathematical diagrams155 or administrative charts and tables.156 One could certainly make the case that these last two forms of tu, since they involve guiding the mind through the ordering of space, fit better in the category of tu addressed in the first section of the book. But as objective representations designed to facilitate direct action in or on the world, we feel they belong, or evolved to belong, in the second half with the more clearly “illustrative” tu.157 Technical tu in the representational category are also very ancient; ——— 150 See for example the papers by Bussotti, Métailié, and Bray. Of course our first class of tu was not immune to such transformations: cosmograms like the hexagrams or the TLV diagram were frequently used as decorative motifs. 151 Bussotti, Métailié, this volume. 152 Kuriyama 1999. 153 Despeux, this volume; see also Hegel (2002). 154 Brook 1994; Clunas 1996; and Amelung, this volume. 155 Volkov, this volume. 156 Will 2003. 157 The texts and tu of geomancy, or siting, which is so clearly a form of applied cosmology, form a similarly ambivalent or mixed category.

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early examples include the “Guiding and pulling chart” and the lacquer figurine, both from the early Han dynasty, discussed by Vivienne Lo. But although written texts of the period have been discovered that provide context for interpreting the figurine and the images in the chart, in neither of these cases are the representations named as tu or paired with any written explanation.158 In the domain of agriculture we also find that early texts make no reference to any kind of table or illustration, although they were written at a period when figurines and murals depicting farm tools and activities abounded. Only in the Song dynasty do we find the first pairings of text and image, in other words the first appearance of agricultural illustration.159 Similarly, the original text of the Jiuzhang suanshu ԰ີጩ஼ (Nine chapters on mathematical procedures, a work compiled in the first century AD on the basis of earlier mathematical writings) “does not refer anywhere to figures or to other forms of visualisation. The first references to visual aids in ancient Chinese mathematics are found in the [third-century AD] commentaries to the Classics, as if figures etc. were linked to the activity of exegesis”. 160 The early mathematical commentators refer to two- and three-dimensional figures in their explanations of mathematical procedures and Volkov argues that Liu Hui’s written commentaries on the Jiuzhang suanshu were accompanied by a separate work, containing a corresponding series of coloured diagrams illustrating the various procedures, shu ๬, by which each problem could be solved. The processes of spatial transformation that underpinned such operations as “mending the void with the excess”, yi ying bu xu ‫א‬આᇖဠ, highlight fundamental differences between the theoretical premises of axiomatic mathematical traditions like the Euclidian, and non-axiomatic traditions like the Chinese. Volkov suggests that it was only in the early Song, with the advent of woodblock printing as a readily available format for the inscription and circulation of technical works, that diagrams and figures began to be inserted into the mathematical texts themselves. However this should probably not be seen as a simple translation of existing practices into a new medium. Volkov argues for a radical ——— 158 The images in the “Chart” are labelled, very simply, with the names of the positions they represent, but textual explanations of the positions have to be sought in separate documents (Lo, this volume). 159 Bray, this volume. 160 Chemla 2004: 34.

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epistemological break between the use of figures in the early mathematical works and in works dating from the Song and later. The earlier “conceptual diagrams” constituted a form of demonstration in themselves, featuring the interrelationship between geometric and algorithmic-algebraic features of the objects under consideration; but starting in the Song many mathematicians began to use diagrams simply as illustrations of geometrical objects. We might say that by and large, some time after the Tang, mathematical tu shifted from our first category of transformative, exegetical tu to our second category of representational tu. Representational tu certainly predate the Song, but they came to real prominence during that era thanks to the popularisation of woodblock printing.161 Because the state had adopted printing as one of its key tools of government, many new tu of this type were developed for statecraft purposes. Sometimes tu and text were intended to communicate knowledge between experts or to help professional training: examples include officially produced administrative maps; the paintings of plants and other materia medica commissioned by the emperor as a central resource for medical practitioners throughout the realm;162 the modular architectural drawings of the Yingzao fashi ᛜ ທऄ‫( ڤ‬Norms and models for building) which served as a handbook for managers of official construction sites ranging from palaces to stables around the empire;163 the illustrated acupuncture manual and bronze figures designed by Wang Weiyi; 164 the maps, sketches of equipment and extraction processes, and taxation tables developed for the administration of the salt industry (a government monopoly);165 and the technical drawings of farming tools in Wang Zhen’s ‫׆‬ᄙ Nongshu ል஼ (Agricultural treatise).166. Another dimension of statecraft which first came to prominence during the Song was the use of tu for popular pedagogy. The kings and emperors of the Warring ——— 161 Lucille Chia notes that tu were very common in Buddhist printed works dating back to the Tang; however it is difficult to assess how prevalent tu might have been in non-Buddhist imprints pre-Song because so few have survived (Chia 2002: 337, n.89). 162 Unschuld 1986: 53 ff. 163 Compiled by Li Jie ᴢ䁵 (1035–1110). In 1097 Li, who was serving in the Department of Construction, was ordered to re-edit an earlier manual of building standards. He presented the Yingzao fashi, in 34 chapters, to the emperor in 1103. The work has survived in a revised printed edition of 1145. See Ledderose 2000: 132 ff; also Chen Mingda 1981, Glahn 1984, Guo 1995. 164 Lu and Needham 1980: 131. 165 Vogel 1999 and forthcoming. 166 Bray, this volume; Wang Zhen’s treatise was completed in 1313.

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States and Han used cosmograms as the visual symbols of their claims to power. Late imperial ruling elites devised a new range of representational tu for pedagogical purposes, demonstrating their moral worth by educating the common people. When the daoxue philosophers declared that tu conveyed profound levels of understanding that went beyond words, they were by and large treating tu as a form of communication between fellow intellectuals. Only men of learning would be able to profit from the sophisticated cosmograms of Zhou Dunyi and his colleagues. The same was true of the mandala texts analysed by Röllicke, whose wisdom was only available to Buddhists who were highly literate and educated. But tu, frequently of the representational type, were also widely used to convey knowledge and understanding to the uneducated, whether illiterate or semi-literate; here the rationale was that tu conveyed the essentials, yao ૞, simply and accessibly. Among the earliest printed tu were Buddhist images that were distributed to general congregations. But starting in the Song we see the educated elite making systematic use of tu, considered to be an effective means for transmitting secular knowledge to ordinary people, along with other media that were considered to be pedagogically effective such as simple verse. Illustrative tu were enthusiastically adopted by late imperial statesmen and rulers as a tool of governance and pedagogy. Print and other media combined in such endeavours. Improving or inspiring scenes were sometimes painted on the walls of palaces or magistrates’ courts. Along with simple texts or adaptations into easily memorised forms like ballads, tu were used to popularise what the state believed were essential forms of knowledge for the common people: herbal prescriptions for common complaints, improved farming methods, moral principles and the essentials of ritual. Representational tu also served the pedagogical purposes of the daoxue philosophers. One example is the Jiali ୮៖ (Family rituals), compiled by Zhu Xi ca. 1169. This handbook was intended as an accessible liturgical handbook for ordinary families that would encourage the widespread adoption of orthodox ritual practices and values. It is not certain that the earliest versions were illustrated, but the work soon became immensely popular (not least because it quickly received imperial endorsement), and tu depicting key ritual layouts are a crucial element of some of the earliest surviving printed editions.167 ——— 167 Ebrey 1991.

INTRODUCTION

45

With the second print revolution of the sixteenth century it became common for publishers to include illustrations in almost every work. Yet, notes Craig Clunas, “when one looks at the titles of Ming books [it is noticeable] how rarely, rather than how often, the presence of illustration is signalled in the work’s title”. Of the nearly 10,000 works listed in a recent bibliography of Ming editions, Clunas calculates that just over seventy fall into the category of tujie ቹᇞ or tushuo ቹᎅ (illustrated explanations), while another 120 or so are works of illustrated (xiang ቝ) drama or fiction.168 Tu were everywhere by the mid-Ming, but nobody was paying much attention. Did people now just take tu for granted, or had the terms of reference shifted with the ubiquity of images, creating what Clunas calls a crisis of representation? Despite the respect paid to earlier philosophical debates that had placed tu at the centre of understanding, as Lucille Chia notes, in most late imperial imprints tu were very definitely considered secondary to the text by the authors, publishers, woodblock designers and carvers who produced printed works. By the mid-Ming, when it seems that almost every work that was printed contained illustrations, most literati believed that the real meaning of a book lay in the words. Chia argues that this view had considerable impact on the design of many tu: “the simpler and more schematic certain tu were, the more efficiently they served to clarify the text”.169 At the same time, although the text was considered primary by the producers of books, it was certainly not uncommon for the consumers of books to look at (or “read”) images or diagrams in preference to the text.170 In the case of popular dramas, histories or morality works, the books “were not only read privately by individuals but also read aloud to a listening audience to whom the pictures [usually mediocre to crude images drawn from a stock repertoire] would be shown. In addition, the caption placed on either side of the illustration was often a catchy couplet that would be recited aloud and memorized”.171 In the case of fiction Chia surmises that the illustrations may often have “served as visual distraction, in the sense of both entertainment and relief from the often hard to read text below”, whereas in technical publications such as “physiognomy works, medical works, and household ency——— 168 169 170 171

Clunas 1997: 34. Chia 2002: 61; see also Clunas 1997: 33 ff. Chia 2002: 61. Ibid: 242.

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clopedias, the pictures not only illustrate the text but also can function somewhat independently as pictorial references for a “reader” who dispenses with the text because the person is illiterate or because the image (possibly with captions) supplies adequate information”.172 Tu could also help readers find their way around a work, or they could serve as mnemonics, for instance in reading primers, where individual words were paired with illustrations of the objects to which they referred. The intellectual debates about the nature and powers of tu during the Song had made no attempt to distinguish between different types of tu: for the daoxue philosophers the crucial contrast was between tu and written, linear text. But during the Ming and into the Qing we see different contrasts coming to the fore. The famous sixteenth-century cartographer Luo Hongxian ᢅੋ٣ (1504–1564) drew an interesting distinction between the epistemological bases of the two different types of tu that we have just proposed. Some tu including maps, Luo said, had to be based on measurement, so that they could serve as an accurate guide to official action. But other tu, for instance acupuncture charts or the Daoyin tu ሐ ֧ቹ, “Guiding and Pulling Chart”, that Luo included in a manual that he wrote on preserving health (weisheng ᓡ‫)س‬, conveyed a reality that could not be measured. What was important in acupuncture charts was to indicate the relative positions of the needling points. In the Daoyin tu the main function of the tu was to provide a metaphoric vision of an immortal in a perfect state of health to which the practitioner could aspire.173 Luo classified the Daoyin tu in his manual as revealed tu, like the Taiji tu: he received them from an immortal whom he had encountered on his travels.174 The epistemological distinction that Luo proposes corresponds rather neatly to a broader division of elite knowledge and its visual applications, already apparent in the different types and functions of tu being produced in the Song or even further back in the Warring States and Han, namely the distinction between statecraft skills applied to government or public service, and the scholarly or private practices of self-cultivation. The two projects were theoretically ——— 172 Ibid: 207. 173 This is the same mode of operation that Lo hypothesises for the Han daoyin

tu that she discusses. 174 Rogaski 1999, cited Vogel, forthcoming. Luo Hongxian wrote a manual called Weisheng zhenjue: xian chuan sishijiu fang (True formulas for guarding life: forty-nine prescriptions transmitted by an immortal).

INTRODUCTION

47

complementary, for good government was considered to be rooted in the personal virtue of members of the literati class from whom public servants were recruited, while educating the common people in orthodox values was one of the first duties of a wise and responsible ruler. Zhu Xi’s “Family rituals” were initially intended for private use, as a manual that families of reasonable means could use to ensure that their daily behaviour and ceremonies adhered to orthodox Confucian practice. The founding emperor of the Ming used the “Family rituals” as a tool of governance, declaring that all families, however humble, must conform to its prescriptions for the conduct of marriage ceremonies. Tu depicting templates for the correct ritual design of domestic space played an important role in diffusing orthodox values through every level of society during the late imperial period.175 The private techniques of self-cultivation were also a preparation for public office. They ranged from the study of philosophy and the classics to the practice of medicine (considered a duty for filial sons and responsible patriarchs), and of exercises to maintain health and prolong life and mental acuity. From there to the cultivation of leisure and refinement was but a step. During the late Ming tu and texts that served projects of self-cultivation, refinement and leisure proliferated. For example in 1591 the Hangzhou merchant and connoisseur Gao Lian ೏ᖷ published Zunsheng bajian ᙅ‫س‬Զጧ (Eight discourses on the art of living), a compilation which included advice on reading, collecting and art appreciation, along with illustrated sections listing the furnishings and appurtenances of a refined life and demonstrating several types of weisheng technique. Although some of the tu were probably adapted from earlier publications, some appear to have been designed or at any rate directly commissioned by Gao Lian himself, including for example his various ingenious inventions for picnics, notably a cunning multi-tiered basket for keeping wine warm, the description and tushi ቹ‫( ڤ‬design, blueprint) of which were later incorporated into the section on “useful objects”, qiyong ᕴ‫ش‬, in the Sancai tuhui, published only a few years later in 1609.176 Another good example of tu used in the service of leisure and refinement is the illustrated collection Xinshang bian ࣲ ᓾᒳ (For pleasure), a compilation by Shen Jin ާ੍, completed in 1511 and reprinted several times, including a popular expanded version printed ——— 175 Bray 1997, ch.3. 176 Zunsheng bajian 232, 233; Sancai tuhui, Qiyong 12/28, p. 1347. On Gao

Lian see for instance Clunas (1997: 118–119).

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during the Wanli era (1573–1620). Among the many works included, on topics such as the collection of antique jades, tea-drinking, luteplaying, hygienic exercises and a variety of games, was a short treatise entitled Yanji tu ᗊԷቹ (Illustrations for arranging low tables), attributed (dubiously) to the Song author Huang Bo’en ႓ ‫ ܄‬஑ (1079–1118). Michela Bussotti suggests that the Yanji tu, which contains only tu without text, could be a form of solitary mathematical game, but more probably represents another kind of game in which a host could display his social and symbolic artisty through cunning arrangements of the tables at parties. A large number of the illustrated sections in the Xinshang bian deal with games, demonstrating the importance of these “unproductive activities” in the creation of late imperial social networks.177 In the rich, dense networks of visual culture of the prosperous late Ming and Qing we also see cases of tu, originally functional or didactic depictions of technical themes, being translated into decorative motifs,178 and conversely, we see a growing snobbery about tu. During the late Ming many well-off people aspired to refinement, while members of the elite were determined to maintain their distinction. Understanding the nuances of material objects was as important in this struggle for status as it had been for the Song classical scholars striving to recapture the authentic meaning of ancient practices, hence didactic tu figured prominently in the guides to leisure activities, connoisseurship and self-cultivation of the period. It is probably no coincidence that we now see the educated elite beginning to disparage tu and to give the term new nuances. At a time when paintings and decorations of all kinds abounded, freely available to anyone who could afford the price, the appreciation of the essence of fine painting, designated by the term hua, was singled out as a sign of true aesthetic refinement. During the Song and Yuan dynasties, “realistic” styles of painting were still given serious critical consideration. By the late Ming literati painters liked it to be thought that they had abandoned representational painting in favour of nearly abstract landscapes that “portrayed impressions”. It is interesting that the terms in which a literati painter like Gong Xian ᧍ᔃ (1619–1689) chose to contrast the genres were tu, for representational paintings likely to please the vulgar, and hua for what he considered true art. Tu were ——— 177 Bussotti 2002. 178 Images from the Gengzhi tu, for example, were used to decorate vases, plates,

screens and wallpaper; see Bray, this volume.

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the work of anonymous painters who were paid for their work like any other craftsmen, while hua were the creations of well-known and revered artists, and were definitely not classed as trade goods.179 In the late Ming, then, we see contrasts being drawn between tu and hua which equate the former with representation through vulgar mimesis, the latter with evocation through refined metaphor. Hua are accessible only to the educated elite, while tu can be understood by anyone. This is a very different formulation of the tu-hua distinction from that formulated by the Tang critic Zhang Yanyuan ്৯᎛ (fl. 847–874), in his tripartite distinction between tu, trigrams and diagrams that inscribed abstract principles, shu, written characters that conveyed cognitive values, and hua, paintings that represented visual forms. 180 It is also quite different from the tu-hua distinction proposed by Wu Hung in his study of how iconographic systems were deployed during the Han. Wu Hung contrasts tu and hua as two fundamental semiotic systems, both used to represent the universe, neither aimed at mimesis. They were complementary iconographies, each designed to reveal a different set of essential characteristics of the universe. The semiotic system of tu, embodied by the Mingtang tradition, worked through diagrams, developing an abstract cosmological vocabulary of geometric shapes, orientations, colours and numerology. It was closely associated with the imperial court of the early Han, and with the symbolic consolidation of imperial rule. The system of hua, embodied in the bas-relief sculptures of the Wu Liang family’s memorial shrine (late second century AD), used a pictorial language of figures, icons, allusions, and narratives drawn from history and mythology. This iconography was associated with the Confucian scholars and their families who became increasingly influential as critics of the centralised imperial regime during the Later Han.181 By the Ming, then, refined consumers were inclined to put a pejorative spin on tu, implying that it was a mode of visual communication inferior to high art, hua. Another equally important trend in late Ming thought, however, was concerned with tu in the more classic sense of technical images that benefited society, and with their role in statecraft. During the late Ming and Qing, as noted earlier, the chal——— 179 Clunas 1997: 184 ff. Clunas notes that even the most esteemed scholar-artists of the period received some form of compensation for most of their work, and produced works across a range of genres, some more distinguished than others. On the anonymity of tu as opposed to hua see also Vogel, forthcoming. 180 Eugene Y. Wang 1998. 181 See also Powers 1991.

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lenges of government brought statecraft concerns and the importance of shixue, concrete or practical studies, to heightened prominence. We have already mentioned Luo Hongxian’s assertion that accuracy was essential for statecraft documents such as territorial maps. Timothy Brook describes what he sees as a revitalisation of cartography in the mid-sixteenth century, initiated by Luo Hongxian’s revival of a grid system that had fallen out of use since medieval times, which he refined to produce “a universal collection of regional maps”, the Guangyu tu ᐖᝨቹ (Enlarged terrestrial atlas, completed ca. 1555). 182 Ye Chunji ᆺਞ֗ (1532–1595), a county magistrate, was an acquaintance and disciple of Luo. Appointed to Huian County in Fujian in the 1560s, Ye set to work planning his administration using the gazetteer compiled by a distinguished predecessor in the late 1520s. But he found this gazetteer insufficient on various counts and decided that he must give priority to updating its contents, especially the maps. Ye left an account of the steps he took to remedy the situation, which included carefully noting the discrepancies between maps of local areas; sending out clerks to produce improved maps; and cross-checking the results for fit and consistency. Ye Chunji’s goal was to produce accurate maps that encoded precise territorial knowledge, maps that would be used “as one technology among several to organize knowledge efficiently”. He was aware that maps did not offer a suitable format for encoding all the types of territorial information useful to a magistrate, so he devised charts and text to accompany the map of each township. The text summarised the main characteristics of the township, the five charts (biao ।) showed: (1) human settlements and structures; (2) lijia household categories; (3) population figures (male, female, adult, child); (4) arable land; and (5) taxes. The data compiled in the charts were collected specifically for the occasion rather than being taken from the archives.183 Ye was just one magistrate of his period who contributed to the elaboration of a new set of norms and procedures for the compilation of local gazetteers, later spelled out in a well-known magistrates’ handbook of the late Ming which emphasised the need for accurate, up-to-date maps and information for “planning one’s administration”. Brook notes that these procedural conventions continued to be refined during the first century of the Qing; “nonetheless, the gazetteer by the late Ming had ——— 182 Brook 1994: 9. Yee (1994: 59 ff.) offers a critical analysis of the Guangyu tu in the context of Ming cartography together with an evaluation of Luo’s grid system. 183 Brook 1994: 13.

INTRODUCTION

51

become a recognizable genre, communicating local knowledge within general categories”.184 The quest of Ye Chunji, a relatively obscure minor official, to generate a system of accurate local knowledge displayed in easily accessible formats, highlights the extent to which the commitment to statecraft philosophy and techniques had penetrated the ranks of the official class by the mid-sixteenth century. “Perfect action [was] predicated on perfect knowledge, and the impairment of knowledge [caused] the impairment of action.”185 Tu, both illustrative and diagrammatic, had a key role to play in shixue, here conceived as “practical studies” whose goal was better government. There are clear analogies between the goals and methods embodied in Ye Chunji’s maps and charts and Pan Jixun’s studies of the hydrological characteristics of the Yellow River. Both highlight important characteristics of shixue in the service of government: shixue strove to identify principles of dynamic, systemic change through studies which included the specific, accurate documentation of natural phenomena in their social and historical context. Pan Jixun’s Hefang yilan is remarkable in that its goal was to work at multiple timescales: as an effective basis for routine management, for improved engineering of hydraulic works, and for planning long-term policy.186 Not all exponents of shixue invested in the creative use of tu, however. One notable figure in “practical studies” at the end of the Ming dynasty was the polymath statesman Xu Guangqi ஊ٠ඔ (1562– 1633). 187 Like many of his contemporaries, Xu believed that new administrative responses to the military, economic and social threats besetting the late Ming regime could best be generated through shixue. Xu was one of a group of officials of the period who engaged enthusiastically with the Western sciences and techniques brought to the Ming imperial court by the Jesuits, though not all converted to Christianity like Xu. Perceiving the potential of this new knowledge for practical improvements at every level of government, Xu became familiar with Western astronomical equipment and observation methods as he worked on calendrical reform, and he also collaborated closely with Jesuit colleagues on translating treatises concerning mathematics, astronomy and mechanics, all of which contained tech——— 184 185 186 187

Brook 1994: 6, emphasis added. Ibid: 7. See the discussion of Pan Jixun above. Jami et al. 2001.

52

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nical illustrations designed according to conventions quite alien to Chinese graphic traditions. It has frequently been observed that Chinese artists and woodblock carvers were very selective in their adoption of Western visual and graphic techniques, including perspective or cross-hatching. It is also notable that Western originals of technical drawings were never copied exactly, but—like the text that accompanied them—were essentially translated.188 The works that Xu helped publish were no exceptions. Xu Guangqi did not imagine that an influx of Western practical knowledge would suffice in itself to save the empire. The problems facing the late Ming had to be understood in the context of Chinese history and institutions, its resources and the demands made upon them. The wide range of new measures and policies Xu proposed drew on his extensive historical researches in the national archives of the Hanlin Academy, on enquiries he conducted in his extensive travels throughout China, on experiments that he conducted himself, and on intensive debate with colleagues on key administrative topics like water-control. Although it is Xu’s work in fields influenced by Jesuit science that have commanded most attention, the work which Xu himself considered his greatest contribution to shixue and to the preservation of the Ming was one that owed nothing to Jesuit science, namely his great treatise on agronomy, the Nongzheng quanshu ልਙ ٤஼ (A complete treatise on agricultural administration), published posthumously in 1639 by a group of admiring disciples as part of a last-ditch effort to save the dynasty. The published work was lavishly illustrated, not surprisingly since it included the Yuan agronomist Wang Zhen’s Nongshu (Agricultural treatise)—a highly original piece of iconography—in its entirety.189 It also included the complete text and illustrations of the Taixi shuifa ௠ֽ۫ऄ (Hydraulic machinery of the West), a study of pumps, screws and related machinery that Xu had produced with Sabatino de Ursis in 1612. (This section is in no way integrated into the rest of the work, however, and the machinery it describes was never adopted in China.) There are one or two new illustrations in the section on hydraulics, including templates for labour tallies and one or two drawings of tools. Xu also added a long final section on famine foods in which were included two illus——— 188 Bussotti provides a brief critical analysis in her paper. See also Edgerton

1985.

189 See Bray, this volume, on the originality of the Nongshu illustrations. The Nongzheng quanshu versions differed only in the most minor details.

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trated works in tupu form: Zhu Xiao’s ‫ڹ‬㒺 Jiuhuang bencao එ౶‫ء‬ ౻ (Famine-relief flora) of 1406 and Wang Pan’s ‫׆‬ᒙ Yecai pu ມလ ᢜ (Treatise on edible wild plants) of 1524. All the novelty of Xu’s approaches is conveyed through text.190 It could be that Xu would have devised new graphics if he had lived long enough to see his magnum opus into print. As it is, the work offers a dramatic contrast with Song Yingxing’s Tiangong kaiwu, published two years earlier in 1637, in which almost all the images were new. Xu’s templates for tallies used to organise paid or corvée labour are, however, good examples of another category of administrative tu that drew increasing attention in late imperial times. Administrative forms and tables were not new. Catherine Despeux’s study of autopsy charts traces their history back to 1211. This was when the first woodblock engravings showing the back and front of the human skeleton were designed as models that the expert ostensor used both to check and to note missing or damaged bones and points of injury in the reconstruction of the causes of death. The completed forms were included in the legal file. Despeux shows that there were progressive if not dramatic improvements to these charts over the centuries, driven not by advances in medical knowledge and practice but by the cumulative experiences of forensics. These representations of the body were diagrams, not pictures, notes Despeux, designed to serve administrative not therapeutic needs. By 1770 one driving quest was to find anatomical norms and standards and to represent them in the charts in such a way as to avoid judicial error—and to minimise the discrepancies between the anatomical sketches and the texts that accompanied them. A new study was commissioned at court, and there were lively debates about how standards should be established, many involving the commentaries of specialised secretaries or judges who worked closely with the ostensors. But only in the late nineteenth century did a judge named Xu Lian bring an expert draughtsman (hua jiang ဎٰ) with him to autopsies to make drawings based on direct observation. As a result, the autopsy charts that Xu published bore rather little resemblance to those of 1770. Although they showed a few signs of Western graphic influence, for example a “timid” introduction of perspective, Xu Lian’s anatomical drawings remained very different from Western anatomical ——— 190 On Xu’s highly successful blueprint for locust prediction and control, based on comparative historical and geographical analysis, and on his signal achievements in the introduction of new crop plants, see Bray and Métailié (2001).

54

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representations, even though these had been known and admired in China since they were first introduced by the Jesuits in the seventeenth century. One reason, argues Despeux, is that the Vesalian tradition, though based on the dissection of corpses, aimed to represent living bodies. Chinese therapeutic medicine also focused on living bodies, but conceptualised them from the perspective of the circulation of energies. Chinese physicians felt that Western representations of bones, muscles, nerves and organs were irrelevant to the physiological processes which most interested them. Chinese judges and ostensors, on the other hand, were interested only in dead bodies and trauma, so again the relevance of Western anatomy to their work did not become apparent until very recently. Another form of administrative tu which flowered in late imperial times was the table. Tables were referred to either as tu or as biao during the Qing. The tradition of inherently political tables, by Sima Qian, like other forms of tu was facilitated by the medium of print. A late imperial example of a biao with similarly forceful moral import to those of the Shiji, but here designed to uphold the claims of the regime in power rather than to subvert them, is the table (here called tu) showing the orthodox transmission of political power to the Ming ruling family, included in the Sancai tuhui of 1609.191 Biao were also a powerful tool for the organisation of administrative knowledge. A recent study by Pierre-Étienne Will analyses the role of tables in improving access to the Qing penal code. The official penal code was a huge and complex compilation of laws and amendments. Magistrates had to deal with a constant flow of cases and were expected to make appropriate judgements rapidly, under penalty of fines or even punishments. By the Qing, magistrates routinely employed professional financial and judicial consultants to help them keep abreast. The first legal manual arranged in tables appeared in 1734; there was a steady flood of similar handbooks for the next twenty years, but then no more appeared till 1824. But in the interval another genre of manual appeared: an administrative encyclopedia in table form which did not simply facilitate access to specialist categories of knowledge, but conveyed a sense of the organising principles, the underlying rules and procedures.192 The prefaces of these manuals always claimed that they were intended for newly appointed officials, but Will observes that the works in fact presumed a fair degree of ——— 191 Illustrated in Clunas (1997: 106, fig. 60). 192 Will 2003: 95, 111 ff.

INTRODUCTION

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experience with the rowdy atmosphere of the courtroom. He suggests that the manuals were intended as everyday tools for seasoned administrators who needed to make quick decisions under pressure, avoiding appeals or rejections. It is relevant here that the tables were designed wherever possible to lay out all the key information so that it could be seen at a single glance, rather than having to turn the page as was so often the case with more traditional shuo-tu arrangements.193 Disagreeing with William Skinner’s classic argument that the late imperial bureaucracy failed to keep pace with rapid population and economic growth, Will suggests that technical aids like these tu or biao, and a growing cadre of aides including professional technical consultants and trainee magistrates, 194 allowed the imperial administration to meet expanding demands without significant increases in the number of official posts.195 Henderson sees the seventeenth century as a turning point in literati attitudes towards tu. This was the period when both shixue, concrete studies, and kaozheng ‫ە‬ᢞ, evidential enquiry, crystallised as the guiding philosophies of responsible scholarship. The late Ming revival of geographical studies, discussed earlier, criticised the geographical principles that had predominated since the Song dynasty, where the map itself was not so much a precise record of a given locality as a general visual guide for arranging information contained in the accompanying text. 196 Instead, says Henderson, geography became “a precise field of evidential inquiry” and “an important element of concrete studies” intended for practical application in such fields as land reclamation and hydraulic works. Such scholars, says Henderson, used and conceptualised the term tu “not as cosmological diagrams but as realistic maps”.197 There was a significant shift in intellectual mood, Henderson believes, where some leading scholars rejected the order and abstract tidiness of Song cosmology with its emphasis on balance. Whereas formerly anomalies had been considered dangerous aberrations from the natural order, by the early Qing they were seen not as a source of evil but as a significant part of that order. It was important not to try to smooth over the details of irregular and complex phenomena but to examine their significance. Hen——— 193 Ibid: 122, 125; see Métailié, Table 1, for contrast. 194 Candidates who had qualified by passing the examinations but had not yet

been allocated to a post. 195 Ibid: 147. 196 Henderson (1994) and Brook (1994) both draw this contrast. 197 Henderson 1994: 224.

56

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derson gives the example of Yan Yuan ᠱց (1636–1704), who argued that “proper moral cultivation could begin from any point on the moral map, not just the mean position”, and indeed put together a set of moral maps that he included in his Cunxing bian ‫ࢤژ‬ᒳ (Treatise on preserving the nature) “as a guide to show how those with different endowments or propensities might improve their moral stance”.198 Repudiating the visions of coherence that inspired great Song thinkers and artists, many Qing scholars and painters were more inclined to agree with the cosmological critic Zhang Huiyan ്༡ߢ (1761– 1802), who stated that “the ways of heaven are invariably uneven and irregular”.199 Henderson lists a series of distinguished Qing scholars, including the mathematician and astronomer Mei Wending ම֮ቓ (1633–1721), who criticised what they saw as the unnaturally neat models of European cosmology and astronomy. Their solution was to document and analyse anomalies, discrepancies and irregularities, while acknowledging that any model they developed to explain them could have only temporary validity.200 One consequence of this critique of regularities was a growing interest in the specificities of locality. This fostered new ideas about the importance of regional or local microenvironments and their impact on natural processes, expressed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in such fields as medical theory.201 Tu played a central role in these philosophical disputes. Henderson argues that Qing scholars’ evidential critique and rejection of the authenticity and validity of the Hetu and Luoshu cosmograms, which had played such a pivotal role in the formation of Song philosophy, “was a major episode in the intellectual history of the era ... [that] did more to subvert cosmology and cosmography in the traditional mode than did any other affair in the intellectual history of late traditional China”.202 Yet the great cosmographic tu continued to exercise fascination and power among other late imperial intellectuals, and their appeal to the imperial house remained untarnished. The great imperial encyclopedia Gujin tushu jicheng (Complete collection of graphics and texts, ancient and modern) of 1725 devotes more space to materi——— 198 In his work of ca. 1700 entitled Yi tu tiaobian ᯧ೪ṱ䕼 (Systematic critique of the diagrams associated with the Book of Changes); quoted Henderson (1994: 225). 199 Quoted ibid: 225. 200 Ibid: 226, 227. 201 Hanson 1998. 202 Henderson 1994: 224.

INTRODUCTION

57

als on the Hetu and Luoshu than to some of the individual Confucian classics, and for many respected scholars these tu were still “among the primary sources of order in the world, as important in this regard as the books of the Confucian canon”. Eminent theoreticians from Wang Fuzhi ‫֛׆‬հ (1619–1692) to Kang Youwei ൈ‫ڶ‬੡ (1858– 1927) continued to write on the Mingtang. Such attention to geometric cosmography, as Henderson notes, was “not simply an aspect of the traditional worldview or solely a matter for cosmographical speculation. Even as late as the nineteenth century, political reformers in China and Japan proposed to establish squared administrative districts as a prelude to a reign of virtue, or at least the improvement of government”, assuming “that the geometrization of political districts was an important aspect of serious political reform”.203 Even within the late imperial rubric of shixue, “concrete” or “practical studies”, it is not always easy to separate the material, symbolic and moral dimensions of the knowledge produced, or of the administrative or didactic uses to which it was put. In many of the technical works from the late imperial period discussed in Section II the role of the tu was directly informative. Usually the design of the tu was closely and specifically linked to the text and it was intended to complete, complement or clarify the information it contained; sometimes text was written to explain the technical details of the image. Yet many of these functional, technical tu also worked at another, more evocative or allusive level. Writers on the high-art forms of painting, hua, stressed their power to move those who contemplated them, to generate powerful emotions, to evoke the gentle warmth of autumn sunlight or to strike fear in the heart and set one’s limbs trembling.204 Although late imperial aesthetic theorists belittled tu by comparison to hua, often dismissing them as fit only for women or simpletons, there is no doubt that many tu were, like hua, intended to elicit a rather precise emotional response. This is particularly obvious in morality works. Just as an image in a primer was intended to conjure up the corresponding word, so the illustrations of moral episodes that featured in collections of exemplary stories, almanacs and household encyclopaedias were intended to stimulate appropriate feelings of filiality, respect and affection, or disgust for bad behaviour.205 ——— 203 Ibid: 213, 207. 204 Kerlan-Stephens 2002: 77. 205 Moral works for women and children were usually illustrated, for example Lü

Kun’s ਖസ Guifan 䒠㆘ (Standards for women) or the various collections entitled

58

FRANCESCA BRAY

Such moral concern frequently spilled over into the composition of more obviously technical works. The painting and poems of the Gengzhi tu ౙ៣ቹ (Pictures of farming and weaving), produced by the Southern Song magistrate Lou Chou ᑔ㙭 in the 1130s, depicted the main processes of local methods of rice-farming and sericulture, often in considerable technical detail. However Bray argues that although these tu accurately portrayed advanced techniques and so could be used to instruct farmers in improved practices, perhaps the main purpose of their composition was to convey a moral message, to remind members of the ruling class how hard poor farmers toiled to produce the rice and silk upon which the imperial order, and the wealth of the landlord class, depended—and to elicit suitable feelings of gratitude and respect. In 1696 when the Kangxi emperor penned his own preface to a new version of the Gengzhi tu that he had commissioned, he too reminded his readers of the hardships suffered by the common people in order to produce the grain and cloth they took for granted. In a recent study of the oeuvre of Song Yingxing ‫ݚ‬ᚨਣ (1589– 166?), the author of the famous work Tiangong kaiwu ֚ՠၲढ (usually translated as “The exploitation of the works of nature”) which describes all the main productive activities and crafts of the period, Dagmar Schäfer argues that this work too should be seen as a moral and metaphysical statement as much as a technical treatise. Schäfer remarks that, unlike several other famous authors of technical treatises, Song Yingxing could not claim any practical experience with crafts or technology. She also notes that Song had originally intended to include in the Tiangong kaiwu (published in the same year as four other much shorter treatises on metaphysical, scholarly and political themes) additional chapters on the observation of natural phenomena and on musical tones. She deduces that Song’s interest in productive techniques did not coincide with modern definitions of “technology”: It must be considered that for Song the documentation of technical details merely served as an approved means to an end—as it was able to carry his main belief: that it is the congruence of knowledge and action which ought to shape man’s world.

The translation she therefore proposes for the title Tiangong kaiwu is ——— Riji gushi ᮹㿬ᬙџ (Stories for daily notice); Raphals (1998) and Chia (2002: 235, 236, 242).

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59

“Heaven, work and the inception of things”.206 Peter Golas, however, believes that Song’s rationale for his composition of the Tiangong kaiwu was “the idea that technology involved human beings employing their skills to make useful the resources provided by nature”, tying in with “the neo-Confucian idea of man as the co-creator rather than merely a creature of the universe”.207 This humanist perspective, says Golas, explains the striking differences between the tu of the Tiangong kaiwu and those in Wang Zhen’s Nongshu of 1313: the Nongshu illustrations highlight the technical details of the implements or machinery and seldom show people, but the Tiangong kaiwu illustrations focus on craftmen or workers engaged in the processes of using the tools. As Golas remarks, although the emphasis on process is unusual and often revealing, “this is not a view likely to encourage consistent emphasis on precise construction details of the tools and machines”.208 In early modern Europe the producers of scientific graphics progressively removed human operators from their representations of experiments or technical procedures, representing them as formal, abstract processes. At another level of objectivisation, the language and iconography of science increasingly strove to divest themselves of subjective emotions and sensuality. It might be supposed from the late imperial debates around tu and hua that a similar process was at work here too, a divergence between the subjective, allusive, metaphoric operations of hua and the down-to-earth, factual operations of tu. Yet Robert Hegel very convincingly argues that the texts which accompanied coroners’ charts in the legal case reports of the Qing dynasty worked as emotional narratives. The chart itself (discussed in detail in the paper by Catherine Despeux) was filled in by the magistrate himself during his examination of the corpse, aided by the coroner and the clerk of the criminal section; in the chart were recorded the objective details of the wounds inflicted. Then depositions were taken from the accused and from witnesses describing the circumstances which led up to the crime and the details of how it unfolded. The depositions charted the dynamics of an emerging emotional crisis and its violent outcome, and were thus a necessary dimension that explained both the nature of the injuries inflicted, and also the social and psychological circumstances. This was essential to a proper ap——— 206 Schäfer 2005: 54. 207 Golas, this volume, p. 585, and ibid, n. 77, quoting Fong (1992: 75–76). 208 Ibid; see also Bray on the Nongshu illustrations.

60

FRANCESCA BRAY

preciation of the crime and a proper judgement of its severity.209 Luo Hongxian’s distinction between the cognitive operation of maps and of the tu used in treatises on acupuncture and on techniques of hygiene or self-cultivation (weisheng) was discussed earlier. Luo Hongxian argued that acupuncture charts operate by presenting the relative positioning of points of action, while weisheng diagrams operate through sensual metaphor. These explanations demonstrate strong epistemological continuities with the health-related images and therapeutic texts from the early Han that Vivienne Lo analyses in her paper. She concludes from her analysis that as early as the Western Han the bodily images and operational mechanisms of therapeutic medicine and of self-cultivation techniques were and must be recognised as distinct. Already in the early Han, Lo sees: ... a dialectic between exercises to preserve and enhance health and the treatment of disorder ... Where self-cultivation is solitary practice and aims at perfecting the physiology of the body the records naturally generate a lyrical and animated body imagined through metaphor, not just a passive object upon which we construct realities. By appealing to the animal images the daoyin forms engage all the senses of the self-cultivator, not just the visual, but through imagination, both movement and mood. In contrast as the body increasingly becomes the subject of professional observation it is, inevitably, silenced and contained within its visibly perceived boundaries, or other such boundaries that are amenable to the physician’s control.210

What is fascinating here is the transmission of this dialectic of knowledge, and of its visual and verbal representations, right through the imperial era. Yet even if therapeutic medicine generated “a passive object upon which [the physician] constructs realities”, the importance of metaphor and allusion in scientific and technical language and imagery, even in late imperial times, should not be underestimated. Shigehisa Kuriyama’s discussion of the “haptic knowledge” involved in the pulse-taking of therapeutic medicine reminds us that in the Chinese tradition poetic metaphor was a legitimate technical language for conveying complex natural realities. Referring to Chinese writings on the pulse, John Floyer wrote in 1707 that “Europeans excel in reasoning and judgement, and clearness of expression ... Asiatics have a gay luxurious imagination”.211 The key Chinese terms for describing the ——— 209 Hegel 2002. 210 Lo, this volume: p. 413, emphasis added. 211 Quoted Kuriyama (1999:62).

INTRODUCTION

61

pulse have remained stable since they were first laid out by Wang Shuhe ‫( ࡉ ࠸ ׆‬210?–286?) in the Maijing ౧ᆖ (Classic of the pulse), but the descriptions were continually elaborated by later physicians. The language of the pulses worked through simile and metaphor, not through definition. A rough pulse was described as “like sawing bamboo” or “like rain-soaked sand”. The Classic describes a floating pulse thus: “If one lifts the finger, there is abundance, if one presses down, one finds insufficiency”; the Ming physician Li Shizhen ‫ޕ‬ழੴ elaborated: “[It] is like a subtle breeze blowing across the down of a bird’s back. It is quiet and whispering, like falling elm pods, like wood floating in water, like scallion leaves rolled lightly between the fingers”. As Kuriyama points out, here the goal of language was not to define facts but to convey sensual perceptions. The metaphors guided the novice to grasp the subtle differences between twenty-four basic variations in the pulses so that he could confidently classify the whisperings experienced under his fingers. As an aid to categorising his sensations, the novice referred to illustrated charts. To anyone not familiar with the haptics of Chinese pulse-taking, such tu appear crude and almost devoid of informational content. To anyone trained in the haptic traditions, the images serve as a mnemonic that economically yet forcefully evokes the qualities and the dynamics characteristic of each pulse.212 In the Chinese tradition most physicians, astronomers, producers of maps or writers of farming treatises were not specialised technical professionals but broadly educated scholars, trained to express themselves in poetry and painting. This was certainly an important factor militating against the progressive separation between technical drawing and art which played such an important role in the emergence of modern science in the West.

THE CRAFT OF TU: MEDIUM AND DESIGN Here we briefly address the question of how tu were produced, in what media and by whom, and we outline a comparison of the production of technical graphics in China and the West. The tu discussed by our contributors include artefacts of bronze, wooden blocks, wooden strips, paintings, engravings on stone and ——— 212 Ibid: 84, figure 13.

62

FRANCESCA BRAY

woodblock prints. The majority of tu are two-dimensional, but there was some disagreement between the co-editors as to whether only two-dimensional artefacts could or should be considered tu. Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann was inclined to exclude three-dimensional artefacts from the category. Francesca Bray, taking into account the arguments of Keightley, the importance of three-dimensionality in the hemerological artefacts discussed by Kalinowski, the existence of such tu-like objects as the early star-maps painted on the inside of domed roofs, and the hypotheses of Volkov and of Chemla concerning early mathematical models for demonstrations, would argue instead that whereas early tu could also be produced in three-dimensional forms, the passage to print culture encouraged the restriction of the term to two-dimensional expression. The flexibility of several of the principal media in which tu were produced has also to be borne in mind. Silk, wooden or bamboo strips and paper can all be considered as media that essentially constitute a plane surface for inscription and for reading. Yet all can be rolled, folded or cut to form objects or patterns in three-dimensional space—or, in the case of scrolls for example, to offer presentations that unfold in chronological sequence. Dorofeeva-Lichtmann herself argues that in the case of archaic “maps” like the Shanhai jing the act of viewing or reading required the wooden strips carrying the text to be rearranged; this allowed the reader to experience significant shifts in orientation as well as sequences in time. But three-dimensional layout and chronological sequencing seem to have figured less frequently in the design of later tu, with a tendency in the print era to reduce them to one plane surface completely visible at a single glance. Nevertheless we might suppose that even in late imperial times there was still some significance to the use of such proxies for multidimensionality and diachronicity as tu laid out in sequence over several pages. Yet here we have to bear in mind the possibility of conflicting interests between author and publisher. It seems that in many printed works containing tu their ordering, layout, and spatial combinations with text were dictated by convention or publishing convenience. Zheng Qiao stated that “in order to study, the scholars of antiquity required that the tu be placed on the left and the text, shu, on the right”. 213 In primers 214 and in other works that followed the tupu ——— 213 Tongzhi j.71/837a. 214 Clunas (1997: 112, figure 62) shows a fine example from the mid-fifteenth

century.

INTRODUCTION

63

(illustrated register) format where there was room for several entries on a page, for instance the Sancai tuhui, this recommended layout was followed. In other technical works designed as tupu, including the Nongshu (Agricultural treatise) by Wang Zhen discussed by Bray, text and corresponding tu are carved on the right and left side of a single block. Once the paper is folded to make up into a book, however, the text is on the first fold of the printed page and the image on the second, so that the reader has to turn the page to look at the tu. In the case of the Tiangong kaiwu, the pictures are grouped at the end of each chapter. Michela Bussotti and Georges Métailié both discuss the wide range of layouts to be found not only in printed but also in painted technical works. Acknowledging that having to turn the page or go to the end of the chapter to look at the tu reduces their functional value, Bussotti remarks that this is a choice determined by printing convenience rather than by the technical weaknesses of the wood-block medium or the ignorance of the craftsmen. Focusing on studies of plants, Métailié lists a wide range of variations in the placing of the tu. In one or two cases all the images are placed at the beginning or end of a chapter or of the book; generally, however, texts and pictures were placed close together, though often it would be necessary to turn one or more pages to get to the picture. Sometimes elements in the illustrations would be numbered and referred to specifically in the text. “However, in the great majority of texts, there are no explicit textual references to the pictures, as if their mere presence was enough.”215 The visual quality of the illustrations was not necessarily directly related to their technical value. Sometimes very crude drawings of plants could effectively indicate the key characteristics that distinguished them from similar plants (very useful in the case of manuals showing famine foods); in others artistic elegance belied the poor quality (or lack) of observation. Sometimes the choice of illustrations was so arbitrary that it seems they must simply have been added by the publisher to sell the book. As Métailié remarks, it seems that by the Ming and Qing authors felt free to use illustrations in whichever way they chose, which suggests that in these contexts tu had no ritual dimension at all. Just as we have to consider how tu worked in conjunction with linear text, so we also need to think about other clusters of multimedia information. How did models, for instance, connect? It seems that in ——— 215 Métailié, this volume, p. 491; emphasis added.

64

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ancient and early imperial China distinctions but also communicative connections were made between tu and xiang ွ/ቝ (image, likeness),216 as well as between the tu and hua discussed by Wu Hung. It is possible that other terms for, or types of, graphic or solid representation, for instance shi ‫( ڤ‬the term denoting divination board, which also had the more general meaning of “template, model”), or mo ᑓ (also “model”), were used in conjunction with or in place of tu to convey technical information in ancient times; this is suggested, but in the current state of knowledge cannot be proved, by Lo in her analysis of the lacquer figurine. A much more recent example is the eleventh-century bronze acupuncture models produced by Wang Weiyi of the Medical Board to help train students. These models were simply referred to as xuewei tongren ‫ۯل‬ᎭԳ (“the bronze men with the acupuncture needling positions”); thus neither the term tu nor any term denoting “model” was used, even though the figures were in essence a three-dimensional map that charted the relative positions, wei, of the acupuncture points. As mentioned earlier, the students practised with the models but they were first expected to study a text containing tu. The treatises with their combination of text and tu were thus expected to prepare the students for a first stage of material action; the bronze men provided a medium for testing their booklearning and gaining a first level of embodied experience before moving on to human patients. Even after the popularisation of printing not all tu were printed: as discussed in the papers by Bussotti, Bray and Métailié the media of paintings, murals and carvings also figured prominently in the imagecircuits that helped form the visual cultures of the Song and later. Cordell Yee discusses the use of jiehua ੺྽, “ruled-line paintings” involving the use of ruler, square and compass as well as brush, in cartography. The jiehua technique began around the sixth century AD, but although initially it was admired as a genre of fine painting, by the late Song the technical procedures involved had begun to clash with high artistic ideals. But the technique survived in the realm of tu because it was so well suited to architectural drawing. It seems that building plans were sometimes designed using jiehua during the Song, while city plans and other maps of architectural constructions continued to be produced using the straightedge technique through to the nineteenth century.217 ——— 216 See Keightley (1998), in his comments on Harper. 217 Yee 1994: 122 ff.

INTRODUCTION

65

While the advent of a print culture did not lead to the abandonment of all earlier forms of tu, it reshaped many of the ways in which tu were conceptualised. Woodblock printing offered distinctive opportunities for graphic representation, and for placing tu in relation to text. Yet in some domains of knowledge it can be shown that printing led to the impoverishment or elimination of certain patterns of thought. Volkov argues that the mathematical tu of printed editions of the classical mathematical texts no longer presented arguments, but merely illustrated the forms discussed in the text. Furthermore the ubiquity of two-dimensional tu in the print era led many scholars to project their own norms and expectations onto the past. Projects for the critical reconstruction of ancient classical texts led late imperial scholars to propose what they imagined were reconstructions of the original tu included in canonical works. Yet as Dorofeeva-Lichtmann demonstrates, in the case of the “maps” of the Shanhai jing, Qing scholars’ everyday experience of tu rendered them unable to perceive that the text between their hands constituted a map-like experience in itself. Who designed tu, and how were they executed? Many of the mantic and magical tu of early China were the apparatus used by “technical specialists”, fangshi ֱՓ. Harper suggests that the graphic vocabulary of these specialists and of scholars began to merge during the late Warring States. The artefacts and motifs of the aristocratic and royal burials of the period were presumably produced by the technical specialists routinely employed by members of the ruling class. The burial chamber of the first emperor of unified China, Qin Shihuangdi ఻ࡨ઄০, was surrounded and protected by a magnificent model of the universe: All the country’s streams, the Yellow River and the Yangzi were reproduced in quicksilver and by some mechanical means made to flow into a miniature ocean. The heavenly constellations were shown above and the regions of the earth below.

Shihuangdi put his chancellor Li Si ‫ޕ‬ཎ in charge of planning and constructing his tomb, but we may presume that the details of this gigantic cosmogram were designed not by Li Si himself but by technical specialists.218 On the other hand in the pre-print era the philosophers who wrote on cosmology and on primal diagram must have ——— 218 Shiji, quoted Ledderose (2000: 52 ff.). Shihuangdi began plans for his burial as soon as he ascended the throne of Qin, at the age of 13, in 247 BC.

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drawn their tu directly into their manuscripts themselves, to be passed down, like the text, in manuscript copies. When it comes to the great cosmograms developed by the Song philosophers, clearly they too drew the original versions of the diagrams themselves, and these drawings provided the basis for the subsequent engraving onto woodblocks. Images like the Taiji tu, with its dramatic symmetries of black and white, have the appearance of being designed directly for woodblock. Tu of this diagrammatic type were relatively simple to draw and required no special skills to translate into woodblock for publication. Generally speaking, the observational and graphic quality of representational tu was high in the Song and Yuan dynasties. We know little about how woodblock tu were designed and by whom, either in the Song and Yuan or later, though Michela Bussotti provides a detailed description of the technical procedures involved in their production.219 It seems reasonable to suppose that in the earlier printing era, during the Song and the Yuan, not only were there fewer readymade images in circulation for woodblock carvers to copy from than during the Ming and Qing, but also greater attention was paid to accurate observation in the design of tu, and greater care was taken in translating non-woodblock originals into woodblock form. Golas has argued that the forty-seven technical illustrations in the Xin yi xiang fa yao ᄅᏚွ࿇૞ (New armillary sphere and celestial globe system essentials), compiled by Su Song ᤕቈ in the early 1090’s to describe the construction of his famous clocktower, were “unique in the history of Chinese representations of technology; no other machine or apparatus in traditional China ever received even remotely similar detailed visual treatment”.220 Others note that Song or Yuan paintings and woodblock illustrations of such subjects as water-mills, textile apparatus, chain-pumps or human skeletons show a degree of technical precision that is seldom found in later representations of the same objects.221 Wang Zhen we are told made drawings based on his direct observation of tools and machines, which he had workmen disassemble and ——— 219 See also Chia 2002: 52 ff. 220 Golas 1999: 49. 221 Kuhn (1987: ch. 3) discusses paintings of mills, Despeux paintings showing

skeletons. Golas notes the pertinent observation by historians of art including Michael Sullivan and James Cahill that after several centuries of efforts by painters to achieve greater precision and realism in their work, the late Song marked a significant shift away from realism in painting.

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reassemble so that he understood their structure. The magnificent paintings of mills or other technical subjects of the period, often cited as the acme of accurate technical observation in China, are realistic in approach, showing only what the eye can see. Unlike them Wang’s drawings (and the matching text) take deliberate steps to highlight the details of technical structure. His tu are true technical illustrations, presenting “a schematic representation of a technological principle”.222 Among Wang Zhen’s innovative representations are: a drawing of a winnowing-fan that cuts away the casing to show the mounting of the fan inside; drawings of water-mills that also use cut-away to show the mechanical connections between the components situated on the different floors of the mill, from the water-race up to the grinding-stones, sifters or bellows; and a drawing of a silk-reel in which all the main working parts are labelled by name, and explained in the accompanying text. Wang Zhen intended his work for wide circulation in print, and the graphic style of his tu takes full advantage of the woodblock medium, without apparently suffering in the translation from the author’s manuscript.223 It seems that Song Yingxing may have faced greater difficulties in the process of illustrating the printed edition of the Tiangong kaiwu. In Peter Golas’ study of the capacities and limitations of technical illustration in late imperial China, he explores who the illustrators might have been, the economic factors affecting illustration, and how the illustrative styles reflect Song’s philosophy of technology. Golas suggests that Song intended his work much as Wang Zhen had his treatise on farming, namely as a work that an official could show to an experienced craftsman, providing sufficient information to construct an experimental version of a machine hitherto unknown in the locality. Even on purely stylistic grounds it is clear that more than one workshop was involved in the production of the woodblocks for the first edition. Golas stresses the remarkable technical precision of Song’s text, not always matched by that of the illustrations, and argues that “rather than being disconcerted by mistaken or incomplete portrayals of the technology in the illustrations, he was probably satisfied when the illustrations generally succeeded in providing essential information that he understood could not be conveyed by the text ——— 222 Kuhn 1977. 223 Bray, this volume. The earliest surviving edition of the Nongshu is from

1530, but experts believe that the illustrations were very close to the originals.

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alone”. 224 Golas presents us with a picture of an author who is in control of his knowledge but in less than perfect control of his illustrators. Donald Wagner has a very different view. He believes that Song based much of his technical text on earlier sources, most of which were reliable, but which he did not always understand correctly. Focusing on the sections on iron-working, Wagner distinguishes between three cases. In one illustration and text match perfectly; in the second the text gives an accurate account of one method while the picture accurately portrays another process; in the third, the picture simply has nothing to do with any likely real methods of the period, presumably because Song misunderstood his source. Wagner’s paper underlines the importance of looking at just how familiar the author and the illustrator were with the technical process that was being illustrated, both through personal experience and through knowledge of other written or illustrated sources. In some cases where original illustrations were reworked for later editions technical details were distorted or quite brazenly hidden behind a wisp of cloud or a swirl of water where the woodblock designer failed to understand the mechanisms involved.225 And yet this trend was not invariable. In Chen Menglei’s ຫኄሼ Gujin tushu jicheng ‫ײ‬վቹ஼ ႃ‫( ګ‬Complete collection of graphics and texts, ancient and modern) of 1726, for instance, several of the reworked Tiangong kaiwu illustrations show greater technical accuracy than the original Ming illustrations (see below). Yet, as Samuel Edgerton shows in his comparative study of technical illustration, in the case of Agostino Ramelli’s 1588 engraving of a complex mechanical windlass, first rendered by a Chinese woodblock engraver in Johannes Terentius’ and Wang Zheng’s ‫׆‬ᐛ collection of translations of European works on mechanical design entitled Qiqi tushuo ࡛ᕴቹᎅ (Illustrations and explanations of strange devices, 1627), and subsequently reworked in the Gujin tushu jicheng, the Gujing tushu jicheng version is even more fanciful and incomplete than the Qiqi tushuo illustration. The difference may lie in the fact that the woodblock designers for the Gujin tushu jucheng were likely to have laid eyes on the apparatus discussed in the Tiangong kaiwu, but not on the European machinery, which was never adopted in China. The ease with which woodblock lent itself to copying was probably one key factor standing in way of the professional specialisation ——— 224 Golas, this volume, p. 587. 225 Edgerton 1985.

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of draftsmen and of innovation in techniques of representation. By late imperial times, although great artists (or lesser artisans capable of imitating their style convincingly) were often commissioned to design original, attributed hua for woodblock editions, the majority of the images used in works illustrated with tu were not original creations. There was no sense that tu or any subset of tu formed graphic categories with any special technical requirements, nor that the craftsmen who produced these tu required any special training or experience. Hans-Ulrich Vogel argues that one distinction between hua and tu in late imperial times was that the former were attributed, the latter always anonymous. 226 In fact many printed hua were anonymous as well, and some tu were attributed, for example the diagrams of the Song philosophers, and the scenes and poems of the Gengzhi tu in their various renderings right through to the late eighteenth century. In the case of the Gengzhi tu, emperors themselves contributed to the tu by inscribing them with poems of their own composition. But we do indeed know frustratingly little about the designers and carvers of the majority of tu. As a medium that facilitated the reproduction of existing images, woodblock printing made it particularly tempting for authors to delegate the design or choice of illustrations, and for publishers to insist on cheap copies rather than new images. As Bussotti demonstrates, there is no inherent reason why the woodblock medium could not be used to produce graphics of great technical sophistication and accuracy, and she provides examples of the subtlety and cognitive creativity achieved in late imperial woodblock images. But most of these fell into the category of hua; meanwhile the techniques of technical illustration seem to have stagnated. The Jesuits made available graphic techniques which played a key role in the development of scientific and technical illustration in post-Renaissance Europe, such as shading or hatching to show volume, the use of perspective, or standardised graphics to represent common forms or mechanical components. But none of these seems to have attracted much interest in China until the late nineteenth century.227 As Golas and Amelung demonstrate, the development of shared graphic norms and conventions which played ——— 226 Vogel, forthcoming. 227 Edgerton 1985. Several Qing court artists were admired for their mastery of

Western perspective. In the 1690s the Kangxi emperor commissioned Jiao Bingzhen ⛺⾝䉲 to paint a version of the Gengzhi tu using Western perspective and everyone was delighted with the result. But it did not add in any significant way to the technical accuracy of Jiao’s depictions; Bray, this volume.

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such a powerful role in the advancement of knowledge in the West was largely absent in late imperial technological tu and in cartography, though some standardisation of graphic representation did emerge in the genres of adminstrative tu discussed by Despeux and Will. As Donald Wagner suggests, the graphic lineages of tu in specific technical fields would repay further study. Often it is impossible to trace an individual image back to its origins, yet it is fairly obvious that the illustrator was drawing from a repertoire of conventional images that he had perhaps been taught as an apprentice, or had copied from a pattern-book or from an earlier illustrated work on a similar subject. This was a time-honoured practice among book illustrators in late imperial China just as it was in Europe in the early period of print-culture.228 An interesting case is the Shinzoku kibun 堚ঋಖ ፊ (Recorded accounts of Qing customs) of 1799, an account of everyday life and practices in the cities of Southeast China commissioned by the Governor of Nagasaki and based on extensive interviews with Chinese merchants from the region. The woodblock illustrations were produced by Japanese artesans who had been trained by a Chinese master. One striking feature of the work is that the majority of the delightful full-page or double-page illustrations are completely original, and show contemporary scenes and settings that correspond closely to the specific locales and settings described by the merchants in the text. However most of the illustrations of individual items, types of furniture or farming tools for example, were copied from centuries-old Chinese prototypes, and had presumably been transmitted to Japan through works like the Sancai tuhui or the Gujin tushu jicheng.229 Many Chinese book illustrators drew on a repertoire of traditional components even when they were creating new images, or they might change one or two key details of an existing image in order to fit a new textual context. Katherine Carlitz gives the example of a woodcut portraying a standing woman. In the version illustrating a romance she is holding a letter in her hand; in the version illustrating a moral tale of virtuous women she holds a knife that she is using to slice flesh from her arm to make restorative soup for her sick fatherin-law. (The former, intended to entertain and give pleasure, is a hua; the latter, didactic in purpose, is a tu.) Some illustrators of fiction ——— 228 Hegel 1998. 229 Bray 1997: 65–67.

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“drew on the work of major figure and landscape painters to weave even conventional elements (now exquisitely drawn) into unified compositions with a new narrative power”.230 More frequently, however, as Bussotti shows, repeated scissor-and-paste assemblage, like straightfoward copying, led to a progressive degeneration of the quality and accuracy of the original image. Bray shows how the original Nongshu version of a tu depicting a chain-pump degenerated in technical quality as it was copied for reproduction in two late-Ming works, the Tiangong kaiwu and the Nongzheng quanshu. Yet in technical tu as in aesthetic hua copying did not always mean degeneration: contrary to received opinion, Golas shows that in several cases the Qing copies of the original Ming illustrations to the Tiangong kaiwu were not only stylistically more elegant, but also technically more accurate and informative. In deciding to design new illustrations for the Tiangong kaiwu, Song Yingxing was perhaps making a more subversive choice than would be immediately apparent viewed from a purely technological perspective, opening the way to a social realism that was seldom seen in tu of the period—perhaps in part because direct copying of images was an inherently intellectually as well as visually conservative technique. An example: orthodox representations of textile production during the late Ming and Qing continued to represent women working reeling machines and looms, even though with the expansion and commercialisation of the textile industry men had generally replaced them in these tasks. The original Ming illustrations of Tiangong kaiwu, and the Qing reworkings, are unique in showing men reeling, weaving and mounting the looms, thus accurately reflecting a social reality frequently deplored by the orthodox as a reversal of the natural order, a non-traditional gender division of labour occluded in all the other depictions of textile production of the period.231 The comparison with the role of technical representation in China and Europe in the early modern period is inevitable, because of its perceived key role in the development of Western science and society. In Europe from the Renaissance we observe a steady development of observational techniques and of corresponding graphic conventions for recording natural or technical knowledge—geometric diagrams and Cartesian coordinates, Vesalius’ anatomical charts, diagrams of machinery or botanical drawings, to mention just a few. ——— 230 Carlitz 1991: 120. 231 Bray 1997: ch. 6.

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As technical graphics and text entered an era of professionalisation and of consistent, critical efforts at improvement, they quickly came to constitute a system of differentiated, specialised and highly effective codes of communication. The development of such specialised technical and scientific styles of graphic representation is acknowledged to have played a key role in the emergence of modern science and technology. Indeed it has been argued that the privileging and disciplining of vision that underpinned the search for such methods is a characteristically western—and uniquely efficacious—approach to investigating and portraying the world. Unlike in Europe, in the Chinese tradition of technical representation we observe no systematic attempts to improve the accuracy of observation or effectiveness of imaging. Nor did norms or conventions of representation emerge in most fields. Given that tu as a concept covered a much broader range of technical knowledge than science and technology as they emerged in Europe, we should not perhaps be surprised at this lack of coordination. Yet at least in the domain of the technical fields associated with statecraft, the absence of standardisation is somewhat curious, especially viewed in the context of rather carefully standardised governmental and administrative practice. Obviously late imperial officials saw potential for tu as tools for maintaining norms and increasing efficacy in some areas. The tables developed to provide algorithms or flow charts for magistrates faced with the huge complexities of the Qing legal code, like the autopsy charts and the new forms of map discussed by Despeux and Amelung, show conscious efforts by officials to incorporate graphic design into the devising of more effective management techniques in sub-sets of the vast, overarching domain of statecraft knowledge that officials were expected to master for administrative competence.

*

*

*

Throughout Chinese history statecraft knowledge made use both of “transformative”, diagrammatic tu and of “representational”, illustrative tu. So, too, did the technical fields associated with personal selfcultivation and health, or with mantic practices. “Tu studies” have tended to focus on one category of tu or the other, depending on whether the specific topic is more closely related to cosmology and its applications or to domains of knowledge that we now classify as

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“science” and “technology”. But we have argued here that tu of both classes had a conceptual unity in Chinese thought: what distinguished a tu from other forms of graphic expression, and gave it its peculiar powers, was that it was an encoding of knowledge that served as a template for action. We have argued in this Introduction for an inclusive approach acknowledging the whole spectrum of tu, and of the technical fields which generated tu, rather than a selective focus on small sub-sets which often risks distorting our picture of what was considered technical knowledge, and of how tu were deployed in a specific technical setting. From our perspective, the comparison of Eastern and Western technical graphics retains its interest but acquires a new breadth, more akin to the studies of visual cultures and of the circulation of images and knowledge that are proving so fruitful in Western intellectual history.232 The more inclusive approach to tu that we advocate also provides a framework for what R. Bin Wong calls “symmetrical comparison”, focusing greater attention on what it was that Chinese graphics were designed to do rather than what they failed to do or to become. Acknowledging the full range of graphics belonging to the category of tu also permits us to formulate new questions. What types of tu are characteristic of a particular field of technical knowledge? How did they convey the philosophical preoccupations and practical goals of the specialists working in that technical field? How did they function cognitively as graphics, alone or in conjunction with other media? We hope that the Typology proposed in this introduction has been suggestive in this respect. Equally significantly, perhaps, we have argued that the presence of tu signals a technical field, so that recognising the full range of tu may cast interesting new light on how technical knowledge was conceived and expressed in China, and how different fields of technical knowledge were related and articulated. This reframing of technical knowledge and its uses is hinted at in many of the papers included in this collection, but a fuller exploration awaits future research.

REFERENCES ALLAN, Sarah. 1991. The Shape of the Turtle: Myth, Art and Cosmos in Early China. Albany: SUNY. AMELUNG, Iwo. 1998. “Basic Conceptions for the Control of the Yellow River as

——— 232 Stafford (1993), to cite just one example.

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Seen in the Writings of Ming and Qing Dynasty Hydraulic Engineers.” In: Zhongguo keji dianji yanjiu – diyi jie Zhongguo keji dianji guoji huiyi lunwenji խഏઝ‫ࠢݾ‬ᤄઔߒ – รԫࡻխഏઝ‫ࠢݾ‬ᤄഏᎾᄎᤜᓵ֮ႃ (Studies of Chinese sources for science and technology: proceedings of the 1st international conference on Chinese scientific and technological sources), ed. Hua Jueming et al. ဎᤚࣔ࿛. Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, pp. 189–200. ——. 2000. Der Gelbe Fluß in Shandong (1851–1911): Überschwemmungskatastrophen und ihre Bewältigung im China der späten Qing-Zeit. Wiesbaden: Harrasowitz (Opera Sinologica 9). AMES, Roger T. 1990. “Meaning as Imaging: Prologomena to a Confucian Epistemology.” In: Culture and Modernity, ed. Eliot Deatsch. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 227–244. BASTID-BRUGUIERE, Marianne. 1996. “La ‘position’ dans le cérémonial d’État à la fin de l’Empire.” In: Chemla and Lackner 1996, pp. 51–69. BRAY, Francesca. 1997. Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. BRAY, Francesca and Georges MÉTAILIÉ. 2001. “Who Was the Author of the Nongzheng quanshu?” In: Jami et al 2001, pp. 322–359. BROKAW, Cynthia and Kai-wing CHOW, eds. 2005. Printing and Book Culture in Late Imperial China. Berkeley: University of California Press. BROOK, Timothy. 1988. Geographical Sources of Ming-Qing History. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan. ——. 1994. “Mapping Knowledge in the Sixteenth Century: The Gazetteer Cartography of Ye Chunji.” The East Asian Library Journal 7.2: 5–32. ——. 1997. “Communications and Commerce.” In: Cambridge History of China. Vol. VIII. The Ming Dynasty, part 2, ed. Frederick Mote and Denis Twitchett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 579–707. ——. 1998. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press. BUSSOTTI, Michela. 2001. Gravures de Hui: Étude du livre illustré chinois du XVIe siècle à la première moitié du XVIIe siècle. Paris: École Française d’ExtrêmeOrient. ——. 2002. “Jeux de tables: le Yanji tu, livre sans texte d’«images en action»?” In: Drège 2000, pp. 291–326. CAHILL, James. 1994. The Painter’s Practice. New York: Columbia University Press. CARLITZ, Katherine. 1991. “The Social Uses of Female Virtue in Late Ming Editions of Lienü zhuan.” Late Imperial China 12.2: 117–152. CHAVANNES, Édouard. 1903. “Les deux plus anciens spécimènes de la cartographie chinoise.” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 3: 214–247. CHEMLA, Karine. 2004. “Présentation générale des Neuf chapitres et de leurs commentaires.” In: Chemla and Guo 2004, pp. 3–42. CHEMLA, Karine, Francesca BRAY, FU Daiwie, HUANG Yi-Long and Georges MÉTAILIÉ, eds. 2001. “La scienza in Cina.” In: Enciclopedia Italiana, Storia della Scienza, ed. Sandro Petruccioli, vol. II. Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, pp. 1–608. CHEMLA, Karine and GUO Shuchun, eds. 2004. Les Neuf chapitres: le Classique mathématique de la Chine ancienne et ses commentaires. Paris: Dunod. CHEMLA, Karine and Michael LACKNER, eds. 1996. Disposer pour dire, placer pour penser, situer pour agir. Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 18. CHEN Mingda ຫࣔሒ. 1981. Yingzao fashi damuzuo zhidu yanjiu ᛜທऄ‫ڤ‬Օֵ‫܂‬ ࠫ৫ઔߒ . Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe. CHIA, Lucille. 2002. Printing for Profit: the Commercial Publishers of Jianyang, Fujian (11th – 17th Centuries). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia

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Center. ——. 2002a. “Text and tu in Context: Reading the Illustrated Page in Chinese Blockprinted Books.” In: Drège 2002, pp. 241–276. CLUNAS, Craig. 1996. Fruitful Sites: Garden Culture in Ming Dynasty China. Durham: Duke University Press. ——. 1997. Pictures and Visuality in Early Modern China. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ——. 1997a. “Luxury Knowledge: the Xiushi lu [Records of lacquering] of 1625.” Techniques et culture 29/1997 special issue, De la Chine et des Andes, pp. 27– 40. DICKHARDT, Michael. 2003. “Creating and Representing Sacred Spaces as Processes of Symbolic Mediation: A Theoretical Introduction from a Cultural Anthropological Perspective.” In: Creating and Representing Sacred Spaces, eds. Michael Dickhardt and Vera Dorofeeva-Lichtmann. Göttinger Beiträge zur Asienforschung 2-3: pp. 7–33. DODGEN, Randall A. 2001. Controlling the Dragon: Confucian Engineers and the Yellow River in Late Imperial China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. DOROFEEVA-LICHTMANN, Vera. 1996. “Political Concept behind an Interplay of Spatial ‘Positions’”, in: Chemla and Lackner (eds.), pp. 9–34. ——. 2001/2005. “Spatiality of the Media for Writing in Ancient China and Spatial Organization of Ancient Chinese Texts.” Göttinger Beiträge zur Asienforschung 1 (2001): 87–135. Revised as “Spatial Composition of Ancient Chinese Texts”, in: History of Science, History of Text, ed. Karine Chemla (Boston Studies in History and Philosophy of Science). London – Dordrecht – Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 3–47. DREGE, Jean-Pierre ed. 2002. Dossier: Texte et image dans le livre illustré chinois. Special section in Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrême-Orient 89: 237–326. EBREY, Patricia Buckley. 1991. Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites. Princeton: Princeton University Press. EDGERTON, Samuel Y., Jr. 1985. “The Renaissance Development of the Scientific Illustration.” In: Science and the Arts in the Renaissance, ed. John W. Shirley and F. David Hoeniger. Washington: Folger Books, pp. 168–197. ELMAN, Benjamin A. 1984. From Philosophy to Philology: Intellectual and Social Aspects of Change in Late Imperial China. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard East Asian Monographs. ——. 2002. “Jesuit scientia and Natural Studies in Late Imperial China.” Journal of Early Modern History: Contacts, Comparisons, Contrasts 6.3 (Fall 2002): 209– 232. ELVIN, Mark. 2004. The Retreat of the Elephants: an Environmental History of China. New Haven: Yale University Press. FONG, Wen C. 1992. Beyond Representation: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, 8th to 14th Century. New Haven: Yale University Press. GLAHN, Else. 1984. “Research on the Yingtsao fa-shih.” In: Chinese Traditional Architecture, ed. Nancy Shatzman Steinhardt. New York: China Institute of America, pp. 47–57. GOLAS, Peter J. 1999. “The Emergence of Technical Drawing in China; the Xin yi xiang fa yao and its Antecedents.” History of Technology 21: 29–63. ——. 2001. “Technological Illustration in China; a Post-Needham Perspective.” In: Science and Technology in East Asia; the Legacy of Joseph Needham, ed. Alain Arrault and Catherine Jami. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, pp. 43–58. GUO, Qinghua. 1995. “The Structure of Chinese Timber Architecture: Twelfth-Century Design Standards and Construction Principles.” Ph.D. diss., Chalmers Uni-

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versity of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden. HANSON, Marta. 1998. “Robust Northerners and Delicate Southerners: The Nineteenth-century Invention of a Southern Medical Tradition.” Positions 6.3: 515– 550. HARLEY, J.B. and David Woodward. 1987. “Preface.” In: The History of Cartography, Vol. I. Cartography in prehistoric, ancient, and medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, ed. Harley and Woodward. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ——, eds. 1994. The History of Cartography. Vol II, Book 2. Cartography in the Traditional East and Southeast Asian Societies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. HAUDRICOURT, André-Georges and Georges Métailié. 1994. “De l’illustration botanique en Chine.” Etudes chinoises 13.1–2: 381–416. HAYASHI Minao ࣥգ࡜֛. 1977. Kandai no bunbutsu ዧ‫ז‬圸֮ढ (Cultural relics of the Han dynasty). Kyǀto: Kyǀto University Press. HEGEL, Robert E. 1998. Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ——. 2002. “Images in Legal and Fictional Texts from Qing China.” In: Drège 2002, pp. 277–290. HENDERSON, John B. 1994. “Chinese Cosmographical Thought: the High Intellectual Tradition.” In: Harley and Woodward, pp. 203–227. HEVIA, James. 1995. Cherishing Men from Afar: Qing Guest Ritual and the Macartney Embassy. Durham: Duke University Press. HOSTETLER, Laura. 2001. Qing Colonial Enterprise: Ethnography and Cartography in Early Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. HWANG Ming-Chorng. 1996. “Ming-Tang: Cosmology, Political Order and Monuments in Early China.” Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University. JAMI, Catherine, Peter ENGELFRIET and Gregory BLUE, eds. 2001. Statecraft and Intellectual Renewal in Late Ming China: the Cross-Cultural Synthesis of Xu Guangqi (1562–1633). Leiden: Brill. KEIGHTLEY, David N. 1998. Unpublished comments on the panel “Tu” (diagrams, charts, drawings) in traditional Chinese culture, Association of Asian Studies, Chicago. KERLAN-STEPHENS, Anne. 2002. “De l’image à l’action. Les descriptions de peintures dans la culture lettrée chinoise.” Études chinoises 21.1–2: 67–98. KUHN, Dieter. 1977. “Marginalie zu einigen Illustrationen im Nung-shu ል஼ des Wang Chen ‫׆‬ᄙ. ” In: Zur Kunstgeschichte Asiens; 50 Jahre Lehre und Forschung an der Universität Köln. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner, pp. 143–152. ——. 1987. Die Song-Dynastie (960 bis 1279): eine neue Gesellschaft im Spiegel ihrer Kultur. Weinheim: Acta Humaniorum VCH. KURIYAMA, Shigehisa. 1999. The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine. New York: Zone Books. LACKNER, Michael. 1990. “Die Verplanung des Denkens am Beispiel der tu..” In: Lebenswelt und Weltanschauung in frühneuzeitlichen China, ed. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 134–156. ——. 1992. “Argumentation par diagrammes: une architecture à base de mots. Le Ximing (l’Inscription Occidentale) depuis Zhang Zai jusqu’au Yanjitu.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 14: 131–168. ——. 1996. “La position d’une expression dans un texte: explorations diagrammatiques de la signification.” Extrême-Orient Extrême-Occident 18: 35–49. ——. 2000. “Was Millionen Wörter nicht sagen können: Diagramme zur Visualisierung klassischer Texte im China des 13. bis 14. Jahrhunderts.” Semiotik 22.2: 209–237.

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LEDDEROSE, Lothar. 2000. Ten Thousand Things: Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art. Princeton: Princeton University Press. LI Jianmin ‫ޕ‬৬‫ا‬. 2001. Sisheng zhi yu: Zhou Qin Han mai xue zhi yuan liu ‫ڽ‬ᜢհ ഑Υࡌ఻ዧ౧ᖂհ଺ੌ . Taibei: Academica Sinica. ——. 2001a. “Shushu – la divinazione: Introduzione all’arte dei pronostoci.” In: Chemla et al 2001, pp. 116–119. LI Ling ‫ޕ‬ሿ. 1993. Zhongguo fangshu kao խഏֱ๬‫ە‬. Beijing: Dongfang chubanshe [repr. 2000]. LLOYD, Geoffrey and Nathan SIVIN. 2002. The Way and the Word: Science and Medicine in Early China and Greece. New Haven: Yale University Press. LO, Vivienne. 2001. ‘Huangdi Hama jing (Yellow Emperor’s Toad Canon).” Asia Major 14.2: 61–99. LU Gwei-Djen and Joseph NEEDHAM. 1980. Celestial Lancets: a History and Rationale of Acupunture and Moxa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. NEEDHAM, Joseph with WANG Ling. 1959. Science and Civilisation in China. Vol. III. Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. PETERSON, Willard J. 1982. “Making Connections: ‘Commentary on the Attached Verbalizations’ of the Book of Change.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 42.1: 67–116. POWERS, Martin J. 1991. Art and Political Expression in Early China. New Haven: Yale University Press. RAPHALS, Lisa. 1998. Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China. Albany: SUNY . REED, Christopher A. 2004. Gutenberg in Shanghai: Chinese Print Capitalism 1876– 1937. Honolulu, University of Hawai’i Press. REITER, Florian C. 1990. “Some Remarks on the Chinese Word t’u ‘chart, plan, design’.” Oriens 32: 308–327. ROGASKI, Ruth. 1999. “Efficacy and Accuracy in Luo Hongxian’s tu”, paper presented at the 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Singapore. RUITENBEEK, Klaas. 1993. Carpentry and Building in Late Imperial China: A Study of the Fifteenth-Century Carpenters’ Manual Lu Ban Jing. Leiden: Brill. Sancai tuhui Կթቹᄎ (Illustrated compendium of the Three Powers). 1609/1970. Wang Qi ‫݆׆‬. Facsimile edition, Taipei: Chengwen Press, 1970. SCHÄFER, Dagmar. 2005. “The Congruence of Knowledge and Action: the Tiangong kaiwu and its Author Song Yingxing.” In: Chinese Handicrafts Regulations of the Qing Dynasty: Theory and Application, ed. Hans-Ulrich Vogel, Christine Moll-Murata and Song Jianze. Munich: Iudicum, pp 35–60. SIVIN, Nathan and Gari LEDYARD. 1994. “Introduction to East Asian Cartography.” In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 23–31. SMITH, Richard J. 1991. Fortune Tellers and Philosophers: Divination in Traditional Chinese Society. Boulder, Co.: University of Colorado Press. ——. 1996. Chinese Maps. Hong Kong, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press. ——. 2001. “Maps, Myths and Multiple Realities: Images of the ‘Other’ In Late Imperial China”, paper presented at the European and North American Exchanges in East Asian Studies Conference, “De l’image à l’action : la dynamique des représentations visuelles dans la culture intellectuelle et religieuse de la Chine / From Image to Action: The Dynamics of Visual Representation in Chinese Intellectual and Religious Culture.” Paris, September 3–5, 2001. STAFFORD, Barbara Maria. 1993. Body Criticism: Imaging the Unseen in Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

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STEPHENSON, F. Richard. 1994. “Chinese and Korean Star Maps and Catalogs.” In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 511–578. TSIEN, Tsuen-hsuin. 1985. Science and Civilisation in China, Volume V, Part 1, Paper and Printing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tupu lüe ቹᢜฃ, ca. 1150, Tongzhi ຏ‫ ݳ‬j. 71/837–840, by Zheng Qiao ᔤᖱ; Taipei [?] Xin Xing Shuju, no date, 10 vols. (Collection: Guoxue jiben congshu). UNSCHULD, Paul. 1986. Medicine in China: A History of Pharmaceutics. Berkeley: University of California Press. VERMEER, Eduard B. 1987. “Pan Chi-hsun’s Solutions for the Yellow River Problems of the late 16th Century.” T’oung Pao 73.1–3: 33–67. VOGEL, Hans Ulrich. 1999. “Illustrations (tu) and Explanations (shuo) of Traditional Chinese Salt Production and Salt Administration”, paper presented at the 9th International Conference on the History of Science in East Asia, Singapore, August 1999. ——. Forthcoming. “Diagrams and Illustrations.” In: Enciclopedia Italiana, Storia della Scienza, addendum to “La scienza in Cina.” (see Chemla et al. 2001). WAGNER, Donald B. 2006. “Iron Production in three Ming Texts: Tie ye zhi, Guangdong xinyu, and Tian gong kai wu.” In: Studies in Ancient Chinese Scientific and Technical Texts (Proceedings of the 3rd ISACBRST), ed. Hans-Ulrich Vogel, Christine Moll-Murata and Gao Xuan. Zhengzhou: Daxiang chubanshe, pp. 173–188. WANG, Eugene Y. 1998. “What is tu (chart/picture)? Or what became of tu in medieval China?” Paper presented at the panel “Tu” (diagrams, charts, drawings) in traditional Chinese culture, Association of Asian Studies, Chicago. WILL, Pierre-Étienne. 2003. “La réglementation administrative et le code pénal mis en tableaux.” Études chinoises 22: 93–157. WONG, R. Bin. 1997. China Transformed: Historical Change and the Limits of European Experience. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. YEE, Cordell D.K. 1994. “Reinterpreting Traditional Chinese Geographical Maps”; “Chinese Maps in Political Culture”; “Taking the World’s Measure: Chinese Maps between Observation and Text”; “Chinese Cartography among the Arts: Objectivity, Subjectivity, Representation”; and “Traditional Chinese Cartography and the Myth of Westernization.” In: Harley and Woodward 1994, pp. 35– 70; 71–95; 96–127; 128–169; 170–202.

PART ONE THE POWER OF ORDER: TU AS SYMBOLIC MEDIATION

I. THE ORIGINS OF TU

LA REPRESENTATION VISUELLE DANS LES PRATIQUES PYRO-OSTEOMANTIQUES DE LA CHINE ARCHAIQUE1 Olivier Venture La célébrité actuelle de la ville d’Anyang provient en grande partie de la découverte au début du siècle dernier, dans la banlieue nord-ouest de la ville, près d’un village appelé Xiaotun, de milliers d’os et de carapaces de tortue sur lesquels figuraient des inscriptions datant de la fin de la dynastie des Shang (env. 1250–1300 av. notre ère).2 Ces inscriptions ne représentent pas les seuls témoignages écrits que nous possédions pour cette période, mais elles constituent néanmoins le corpus de textes le plus important.3 Les chercheurs ont rapidement constaté que les pièces en os et en carapace qui servaient de support aux inscriptions avaient préalablement été utilisées dans le cadre de pratiques divinatoires. Ces pratiques consistaient à faire apparaître sur les supports, sous l’effet d’une forte chaleur, des craquelures que des devins étaient ensuite chargés d’interpréter. Le travail des épigraphistes révéla que les textes qui accompagnent parfois ces pratiques sont des comptes rendus de divinations. Les découvertes archéologiques qui se sont succédé tout au long du XXe siècle montrent que cette forme de divination, que nous désignerons par le terme de pyro-ostéomancie, ne fut pas une invention des Shang, mais remonte beaucoup plus loin dans le temps.4 En revanche, l’ajout d’inscriptions sur les supports paraît bien être une innovation des devins Shang, innovation qui focalise jusqu’à aujourd’hui l’attention des chercheurs, pour la plupart, intéressés avant ———

1 Ce texte avait été présenté au colloque From image to action: the dynamics of visual representation in Chinese intellectual and religious culture (3–5.09.2001, Collège de France, Paris). La version définitive de cet article a été remise en septembre 2003. Je tiens à remercier Grégoire Espesset, Marc Kalinowski et Alain Thote pour leurs précieuses relectures du présent travail. Toutefois, j’assume seul l’entière responsabilité de cet article et des idées qui y sont formulées. 2 Sur les circonstances de la découverte, voir Lefeuvre (1975). 3 D’autres inscriptions contemporaines sur bronze, sur pierre et sur céramique sont aussi attestées pour cette période (Qiu Xigui 2000: 60). Pour une description d’ensemble de ces inscriptions, voir Venture (2002: 30–169). 4 Voir ci-dessous notre présentation des origines de cette pratique.

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tout par le contenu des textes.5 Mais l’ajout de caractères d’écriture sur les supports de divination est loin de constituer la seule modification que les devins Shang ont apportée à cette ancienne pratique. Une analyse chronologique des supports montre en effet qu’une des préoccupations majeures des devins était l’organisation de la disposition des inscriptions et des éléments visuels que constituent les craquelures en fonction de certains principes. C’est en cela que ces pratiques nous paraissent annonciatrices de l’utilisation des diagrammes (tu ቹ) telle qu’elle se développa dans les pratiques mantiques ultérieures. Pour mieux mettre en valeur les choix des devins Shang, et essayer de comprendre les relations existant entre la forme donnée à la pratique mantique et ses principes, il convient de replacer cette tradition dans le contexte d’une évolution générale des pratiques de pyroostéomancie depuis le Néolithique jusqu’aux alentours de notre ère.6

1. LES ORIGINES La pyro-ostéomancie est une tradition extrêmement ancienne en Chine, puisque les premières traces connues, qui ont été relevées à Fujiamen மኅ㐷, au Gansu, remontent aux environs de 3500 ans avant notre ère.7 Dès cette époque, les omoplates apparaissent comme le support privilégié de ces pratiques mantiques. On peut penser que ce sont avant tout des raisons techniques qui ont motivé le choix de ces os en particulier. Les omoplates présentent en effet à l’état naturel des parties assez planes, de très fable épaisseur, où des craquelures peuvent être obtenues relativement aisément sous l’effet de la cha———

5 Nous ne remettons pas en cause l’intérêt de telles études, mais regrettons seulement ici le fait qu’elles ont largement occulté des travaux qui auraient pu être menés sur les pratiques mantiques elles-mêmes. Pour une présentation du contenu des inscriptions dites oraculaires, voir Keightley (1978 et 1997). 6 Si les techniques des devins Shang ont suscité d’assez nombreux de travaux, les études spécialisées concernant les autres périodes sont rares. L’étude de Li Hengqiu (1981a, 1981b et 1982), sur laquelle nous nous sommes entre autres appuyé ici, fait figure d’exception. D’une manière générale, les supports de divination, lorsqu’ils ne portent pas d’inscriptions, ont assez peu intéressé les chercheurs. Cette absence d’intérêt se retrouve aussi dans les rapports de fouilles où les descriptions des os sont souvent peu précises (quantités pas systématiquement indiquées, absence parfois d’identification de l’animal auquel appartenait l’os, etc.), les reproductions sont généralement peu fréquentes, et lorsqu’elles existent, c’est presque toujours en petit nombre. Ces problèmes ont nécessairement limité notre travail d’analyse. 7 Zhongguo Gan Qing 1995: 293.

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leur.8 La découverte d’autres pièces antérieures à 2500 avant notre ère semble confirmer l’origine septentrionale de ce mode de divination.9 On soulignera toutefois qu’il reste alors un phénomène ponctuel et qu’il ne s’agit pas encore d’une véritable tradition. C’est là une des différences fondamentales par rapport à ce que l’on peut observer dans différentes régions de Chine à partir de 2500, et qui apparaît clairement comme un véritable phénomène culturel durable. En témoignent les nombreuses découvertes réalisées dans les vestiges rattachés aux cultures de Qijia 㥱ኅ (2100–1600) au Gansu, de Xiajiadian ᄐኅᐫ inférieur (2000–1500) dans le Nord-Est, de Longshan 㦖 ጊ du Shandong (2200–1900) et de Yueshi ጪ⍹ (1900–1700) dans le Shandong, de Longshan du Henan (env. 2800–1900)10 et de Erlitou ੑ㉿㗡 (env. 1700–1500) dans la région du cours moyen du fleuve Jaune. Certaines de ces cultures ont utilisé des méthodes très simples, semblables à celles qui étaient en cours avant 2500. Les personnes en charge de la divination se contentaient d’appliquer la source de chaleur (probablement un morceau de bois incandescent) directement sur un support n’ayant apparemment fait l’objet d’aucune préparation particulière. La disposition des différentes traces de brûlage ne suivait manifestement aucun ordre précis. Les traces sont en effet concentrées sur les parties les moins épaisses de l’omoplate soit au centre de ——— 8 L’utilisation de côtes aussi est attestée sur différents sites néolithiques, mais de manière ponctuelle. Voir par exemple Li Hengqiu (1981b: 44). 9 On a en effet aussi découvert des supports de divination très anciens en Mongolie Intérieure, sur les sites de Fuhegoumen ༄ࣾᄮ॰ (env. 2785 ±110) et de Zhaizita ን՗Ⴣ (env. 3000). Voir respectivement Zhongguo Neimenggu (1964: 3 et pl. I.9), et Neimenggu yanjiusuo (1997: 303, fig. 26.1–3 et p. 304). Une découverte plus méridionale a été faite dans le Henan, sur le site de Xiawanggang Հ‫ ൂ׆‬où un support de divination a été mis au jour dans une couche relevant de la culture de Yangshao ٛᏄ (env. 3800–3600). Voir Henan Changjiang 1989: 200 et pl. LIII. 8. Toutefois, on soulignera que la couche à laquelle appartient cette pièce date de la fin de la culture de Yangshao. Araki Hiroko (1999: 258) a avancé de manière convaincante l’hypothèse que l’objet pourrait en réalité provenir de couches supérieures du site appartenant à la culture de Longshan du Henan et dans lesquelles plusieurs supports de ce type ont été retrouvés. Pour une vue d’ensemble des découvertes depuis le Néolithique jusqu’au début de l’Age du bronze, voir la présentation d’Araki Hiroko (1999: 257–265). 10 Nous l’utilisons ici l’expression de “culture de Longshan du Henan” par souci de clarté, la “culture de Longshan” étant un terme évocateur même pour les personnes non spécialistes de la période. Toutefois, de plus en plus d’archéologues estiment qu’il s’agit d’une appellation trop large et préfèrent distinguer différents types, mais le nombre et le nom de ces types varient aujourd’hui encore suivant les auteurs. Au sujet des problèmes posés par l’appellation de “culture de Longshan du Henan”, voir la traduction par Alain Thote d’un article de Yang Xizhang (1988: 60–77).

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la palette de part et d’autre de l’épine. De telles pratiques sont en particulier attestées dans la culture de Qijia, où ce sont des omoplates de mouton, et de porc dans une moindre mesure, qui furent principalement utilisées [Fig. 1:1].11 Sur le site éponyme d’Erlitou, cette méthode que l’on pourrait qualifier de “primitive” a été pratiquée pendant environ deux cents ans, mais là essentiellement sur des omoplates de porc [Fig. 1:2]. 1

2

Qijia12

Erlitou13

Fig. 1: Traces de techniques primitives de pyro-ostéomancie sur omoplates.

D’autres cultures ont opté pour des pratiques moins simples, impliquant un travail préalable sur les supports. Ce travail visait à faciliter l’apparition des craquelures d’une part sur des os plus épais que les omoplates de mouton (par exemple: des omoplates de bovidé), et d’autre part sur des parties de l’omoplate jusqu’alors inutilisées (col et bords latéraux).14 Deux techniques furent alors employées, parfois en ——— 11 12 13 14

Au sujet de la culture de Qijia, voir Debaine-Francfort (1995). Voir Zhongguo Gansu 1974, n°2: 55, fig. 30. Voir Zhongguo shehui 1999, pl. 114.7. Les raisons du choix d’un autre animal que le mouton pourraient être liées à des traditions d’élevage différentes: essentiellement tournée vers les ovins dans le Gansu, et plus vers les bovins dans les plaines fertiles du cours inférieur du fleuve Jaune. Mais ces choix étaient sans doute aussi probablement liés à des considérations touchant au statut accordé à l’animal au sein des différentes cultures. Ceci pourrait expliquer un phénomène dont témoigne par exemple le site de Zhukaigou ‫ڹ‬ၲᄮ, en Mongolie intérieure, qui fut en activité de 2000 à 1500 avant notre ère. L’étude de l’ensemble des ossements retrouvés sur ce site a montré que c’étaient avant tout des porcs et des moutons qui étaient consommés par les habitants. En revanche, on note une nette préférence pour les bovidés pour les pratiques ostéomantiques. Voir Huang Yunping 1996: 534.

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association, pour amincir les supports et ainsi faciliter la production de craquelures. La première consistait à racler la surface du support, la seconde à y creuser des cavités. Ces deux techniques sont en particulier bien attestées sur les supports retrouvés dans les vestiges de la culture de Xiajiadian inférieur. Sur certains supports, on a relevé de très grandes quantités de cavités disposées densément, mais sans ordre apparent [Fig. 2].

Fig. 2: Fragment d’omoplate de la culture de Xiajiadian inférieur.15

La superficie du support ainsi aminci était donc là relativement importante. Toutefois, ces cavités n’étaient pas toutes destinées à être brûlées, seule une partie d’entre elles l’était. Malheureusement, les descriptions des rapports de fouilles sont trop peu précises à ce sujet pour nous permettre de savoir si le choix des cavités répondait à un ordre quelconque. On voit donc qu’il n’y a pas eu dans le domaine des pratiques de pyro-ostéomancie une évolution globale et continue des techniques sur l’ensemble de ce qui constitue aujourd’hui le territoire chinois. Ainsi, les habitants du site de Erlitou, pourtant reconnus pour leurs innovations technologiques dans le domaine du travail du bronze,16 se sont contentés de méthodes de divination relativement archaïques, alors que des cultures moins avancées dans l’art de la métallurgie comme celle de Xiajiadian inférieur développaient parallèlement des méthodes relativement sophistiquées.17 ——— 15 Li Hengqiu 1981b: 44, fig. 10.1. 16 Au sujet de la culture de Erlitou, voir Thorp (1991). 17 On soulignera que la culture de Dongxiafeng ࣟՀ႑, considérée comme un

sous-groupe de la culture de Erlitou, a clairement choisi d’adopter des techniques de pyro-ostéomancie beaucoup plus complexes. Voir Zhongguo shehui 1988: 28, 49, 99, 146–147, 185 et 207. Cela nous incite à dire qu’il ne s’agit pas là d’un développement local et que l’apparition de ces techniques est sur ce site clairement liée à l’introduction de l’omoplate de bovidé en tant que support de divination. Or, comme

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Mais qu’ils relèvent de techniques rudimentaires ou complexes, aucun des témoignages de pyro-ostéomancie laissés par ces cultures ne révèle un quelconque souci de régularité dans la disposition des différents éléments (cavités ou craquelures) apparaissant sur les supports. Cette constatation s’applique aussi aux supports de divination retrouvés dans les plus anciennes couches des vestiges de la capitale que les Shang avaient établi à Zhengzhou entre 1500 et 1300 savant notre ère.18

2. LES SHANG On a exhumé du site de Zhengzhou de très nombreux supports de divination, témoignant d’une activité mantique plus importante que sur les sites antérieurs.19 Les techniques employées jusque vers 1400 y restent relativement simples. On note un travail au niveau du col, l’épine est généralement supprimée et la surface de l’os où se trouvait cette dernière est le plus souvent polie. Le brûlage s’effectue encore directement sur la surface, sans recours aux cavités. Ce n’est qu’après 1400 que l’on voit se développer, à Zhengzhou, un travail associant un amincissement de l’os par raclage sur une large surface et l’emploi de cavités [Fig. 3:1]. Dans la disposition des éléments, les archéologues ont observé que plusieurs supports datant d’une phase correspondant à 1450–1400 environ attestaient d’une volonté des devins d’organiser les traces de brûlages selon des axes linéaires [Fig. 3:2].20

——— à Erlitou, cette culture utilisait à l’origine essentiellement des omoplates de porc. 18 Pour une présentation récente du site de Zhengzhou et des découvertes archéologiques concernant les Shang d’une manière plus générale, voir Bagley (1999). 19 En 1953, 384 supports et fragments de supports (dont 9 en carapace, le reste en omoplate) ont été mis au jour sur le site de Erligang. Voir Henan sheng wenhua ju 1959. En outre, plus de 200 autres supports et fragments de supports ont été découverts sur l’ensemble du site de Zhengzhou entre 1953 et 1985. Voir Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 174, 681 et 834. En comparaison, sur la plupart des sites antérieurs, le nombre de supports se compte généralement en unités, voire en dizaines d’unités pour les découvertes les plus importantes. 20 Voir Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 681.

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1

2

1400–135021

1450–140022

89

Fig. 3: Omoplates Shang à Zhengzhou.

Mais on ne retrouve pas ce phénomène sur les supports des phases suivantes au cours desquelles se sont développées les techniques complexes que nous avons évoquées ci-dessus. Une autre innovation des devins Shang de Zhengzhou connut une remarquable destinée. Au lieu d’utiliser des omoplates, ces spécialistes ont commencé à employer des carapaces de tortue, et plus particulièrement la partie inférieure de la carapace que l’on appelle “plastron”.23 L’introduction de ce support est, dans le cadre de cette étude, particulièrement intéressant. En effet, les plastrons de carapaces présentent une surface constituée de plaques agencées de manière symétrique de part et d’autre d’un axe allant de la tête à la queue de l’animal. Cependant, adopté à partir de 1450 environ comme support concurrent de l’omoplate, le plastron ne semble pas avoir immédiatement suscité une plus grande rigueur dans la disposition des points de brûlage. Quelques-uns de ces supports témoignent certes d’une volonté d’organisation, mais on est encore loin de la régularité naturelle présente dans l’organisation des plaques de plastron [Fig. 4]. ———

21 Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 835, fig. 560.2. 22 Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 682, fig. 467.5. 23 Le choix de ce support n’est assurément pas fortuit, car la carapace de tortue

est un objet qui jouissait depuis longtemps d’un certain prestige. On la retrouve en particulier dans les pratiques funéraires de différentes cultures indiquant qu’elle avait alors probablement une valeur religieuse ou magique. Voir Li Ling 1993: 54–56.

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1

2

1450–140024

1400–135025

Fig. 4: Plastrons Shang à Zhengzhou.

Au cours du XIIIe siècle, les Shang déplacèrent leur capitale dans le nord de l’actuelle province du Henan, près de Anyang. Là, vraisemblablement sous l’influence d’une tradition locale,26 les devins de la maison royale firent évoluer leur pratique d’une manière qui révèle une prise en compte plus importante de l’aspect visuel de l’objet. Ainsi, l’adoption de la technique de la “double cavité” a permis la normalisation de craquelures qui jusque là avaient tendance à s’étoiler dans tous les sens.27 Celles-ci prennent désormais la forme d’un “T” renversé, que les devins pouvaient orienter à leur convenance vers la droite ou vers la gauche (Ō ou ō). La seule variable visuelle, probablement utilisée par le devin dans son interprétation, était alors l’amplitude de l’angle entre les parties horizontale et verticale des craquelures.28 ——— 24 Henan sheng yanjiusuo 2001: 683, fig. 468.4. 25 Ibid., p. 837, fig. 561: 1 26 On a en effet retrouvé sur le site de Xiaqiyuan ՀԮূ, dans le Hebei (à moins

de 20 km au nord du site de Xiaotun) des supports de divination antérieurs au XVIe siècle témoignant de nombreuses innovations qui seront ensuite reprises et développées, à très grande échelle, par les devins de la cour des rois Shang. Voir Hebei sheng wenwu 1979: 199. 27 Ce point a déjà été souligné par Léon Vandermeersch (1980: 161). La technique de la “double cavité” consistait à creuser une petite cavité peu profonde sur l’un des bords latéraux d’une cavité de manière à influer ultérieurement sur la forme de la craquelure. Voir ibid., p. 287. 28 Nous devons ici reconnaître que nous ignorons encore aujourd’hui la manière exacte par laquelle les devins parvenaient à définir le caractère faste ou néfaste d’une divination. Si l’amplitude de l’angle des craquelures apparaît comme un critère vraisemblable de leur interprétation, il est probable qu’il en existait d’autres que nous

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Les plus anciennes pièces attribuées au règne du roi Wu Ding ᱞৼ des Shang (environ 1250–1192 avant notre ère)29 témoignent du fait que l’organisation des différents éléments apparaissant sur les supports ne s’est pas faite de manière brutale. Sur certains d’entre eux on observe qu’une partie des cavités est déjà disposée en colonnes, alors que d’autres présentent encore un désordre rappelant les pratiques antérieures [Fig. 5:1 et 5:2]. 1

2

3

Heji 19946 recto

Heji 19946 verso

Tunnan 2316 verso

Fig. 5: Omoplates Shang à Anyang.

Mais vers le milieu du règne de Wu Ding, la notion d’ordre semble s’être imposée pour les omoplates comme pour les carapaces et la disposition du texte commence également à être prise en compte. Sur les omoplates, les craquelures sont disposées en colonnes généralement calées au niveau du col du support (voir Fig. 5:3). Mais c’est sur les plastrons que la notion d’organisation des cavités (et donc des craquelures) a pris sa forme la plus aboutie. Sur les plastrons, deux types d’agencements sont alors attestés; nous les désignerons par les lettre A et B [Fig. 6].30 ——— n’avons pas encore réussi à identifier. 29 Dates indicatives données dans Xia Shang Zhou (2000: 88). 30 Au sujet de ces deux styles et de leurs liens avec la “mise en page” des inscriptions oraculaires, voir Venture (2001).

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A

B

Fig. 6: Dispositions des cavités sur plastron sous le règne de Wu Ding.

La disposition de type B est essentiellement basée sur un principe de symétrie, mais les cavités ne sont pas forcément alignées [Fig. 6:B]. Les textes que nous pouvons lire sur ces pièces nous apprennent que la symétrie était alors un principe de base de cette pratique divinatoire. Les devins présentaient généralement leur demande d’oracle sous la forme de deux prédictions parallèles. Ainsi on peut lire sur la moitié droite de la pièce 32 du Heji “le roi ne suivra pas Wang Cheng ᦸ਷” s’opposant (à gauche) à “le roi suivra Wang Cheng” [pl. I]. La symétrie est donc ici à la fois présente dans la disposition des craquelures et du texte, mais aussi dans la forme même du discours prédictif. Ce style de “mise en page” des plastrons fut abandonné à la fin du règne de Wu Ding. Les devins lui ont en effet préféré l’agencement de type A qui était pratiqué concurremment jusque-là. Celui-ci repose aussi sur un principe de symétrie. Mais ce qui domine avant tout ici c’est une impression d’ordre beaucoup plus grande, qui est due à l’utilisation d’alignements de colonnes (voir Fig. 6:A). Cette disposition a été adoptée pour l’ensemble des plastrons jusqu’à la fin de la dynastie. Or, on constate que ce choix n’est pas d’ordre esthétique, mais s’inscrit dans un ensemble de profonds changements ayant à cette époque touché la forme même des demandes d’oracles. 31 Si ———

31 Sur ces changements, voir Peng Yushang (1995: 228–246).

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dans le passé un texte pouvait fréquemment être associé à plusieurs craquelures, voire même plusieurs supports, ce phénomène devient de plus en plus rare. L’association d’un texte à chaque craquelure va de plus renforcer l’impression de régularité, comme le montre un fragment de plastron du Musée Guimet qui peut être daté d’entre 1190 et 1150 environ [pl. II]. On décèle en outre sur ce support la logique ayant présidé à l’orientation des caractères, selon qu’ils se trouvent sur la moitié droite ou sur la moitié gauche (disposition en miroir). Ce phénomène, qui atteint alors son apogée, a pratiquement été abandonné par la suite (sauf pour la graphie bu ඵ) comme en témoignent les pièces datant de la toute fin de la dynastie des Shang, entre environ 1100 et 1050 [pl. III]. Cette normalisation des éléments visibles sur le support (cavités, craquelures et textes) s’inscrit dans le cadre d’une évolution globale touchant non seulement les pratiques mantiques, mais aussi les pratiques rituelles dans leur ensemble. Parallèlement en effet, les sacrifices aux ancêtres ont été intégrés dans un cycle annuel précis et les demandes d’oracle sont devenues de moins en moins variées et de plus en plus formelles.32 Toutefois, l’évolution qui vient d’être retracée ci-dessus fut propre aux pratiques des devins de la cour des rois Shang. En dehors de ce cercle, la normalisation s’est manifestée de manière beaucoup moins rigoureuse, comme en témoignent par exemple les supports de divinations retrouvés dans les vestiges Shang de Daxinzhuang ᄢㄆ⩑ au Shandong,33 et même ceux découverts à la périphérie du site de Xiaotun, près de Anyang.34 Là officiaient des devins qui devaient certes prendre pour modèle les pratiques de la cour, mais sans atteindre la régularité des devins officiant pour le roi dans l’organisation graphique des supports.

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32 Au sujet du processus de normalisation des rituels voir Keightley (2000: 47–

49). 33 Voir Xu Ji 1995: 47–52. L’auteur de cet article insiste essentiellement sur les similitudes existant avec les pratiques d’Anyang. Cependant, il nous semble évident que les spécimens présentés dans ce travail se démarquent clairement de leur probables modèles. 34 Liu Yiman (1997) a été un des premiers chercheurs à mettre en avant cette particularité.

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1

2

Daxinzhuang35

Xiaotun36

Fig. 7: Plastrons Shang de tradition non royale.

Tout comme d’autres éléments culturels, les pratiques de pyroostéomancie Shang ont aussi connu un certains succès dans d’autres cultures. Cependant, leur diffusion s’y est traduite par des pratiques encore moins régulières que celles des zones Shang périphériques qui viennent d’être évoquées. Parmi les rares traditions prenant en compte l’aspect visuel et qui semblent s’être développées de manière indépendante, on relève en particulier le cas de celle attestée, à partir du début du deuxième millénaire avant notre ère et jusque sous les Zhou occidentaux, dans la partie occidentale de la péninsule du Shandong. Celle-ci repose sur un choix sensiblement différent dans l’organisation des cavités. L’unité de base est là une ligne horizontale de trois cavités liées entre elles.

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35 Shandong daxue kaogu zhuanye 1995: 24, fig. 23.1. 36 Zhongguo shehui 1987, pl. XLIV.3.

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Gaohuangmiao (Jiangsu)37

Yinjiacheng (Shandong)38

95

Fig. 8: Omoplates témoignant d’une tradition à part.

Malgré l’absence de données plus précises, cette particularité semble bien refléter une forme de divination qui repose sur des principes différents de ceux à l’œuvre dans les pratiques Shang où la symétrie revêtait une importance majeure. Après les Shang, les témoignages de divination sur os ou sur carapace sont beaucoup moins nombreux. Cependant, les quelques pièces retrouvées apportent des éléments de réflexion intéressants sur le rapport entre les principes de la pratique et sa forme.

3. APRES LES SHANG Les techniques utilisées par les Zhou au moment de la conquête sont beaucoup plus proches des pratiques de la cour des Shang que celles en vigueur dans les autres cultures au tournant du premier millénaire.39 En particulier, les plastrons présentent pareillement des cavités en colonnes serrées. ———

37 Yan Yiping 1978: 540, fig. 83. 38 Shandong daxue kaogu jiaoyan shi 1990: 252, fig. 166.2. 39 Des supports de divination contemporains des règnes des derniers rois Shang

ont été découverts, parmi d’autres plus tardifs, en 1977 à Fengchu Ꮥᠩ, au Shaanxi. Pour une présentation de cette découverte et des inscriptions, voir Xu Xitai (1987).

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1

2

Qijia, Shaanxi (1050–950 av. notre ère)40

Luoyang, Henan (1050–950 av. notre ère)41

Fig. 9: Plastrons des Zhou occidentaux.

De même, comme dans les pratiques royales Shang, certains supports sont inscrits. Mais contrairement à leurs prédécesseurs, les Zhou semblent avoir traité le texte comme un élément extérieur à l’organisation visuelle des supports. Aucun parallélisme, aucune régularité n’est perceptible dans le contenu ni dans la forme des inscriptions Zhou.42 Celles-ci semblent alors à ce point secondaires qu’elles finissent même par disparaître avant la fin des Zhou occidentaux. Seuls demeurent alors des anciennes pratiques Shang les principes de régularité dans la disposition des cavités. C’est du moins ce dont témoignent les rares fragments de plastrons retrouvés pour les périodes dites des Printemps et Automnes et des Royaumes combatants.43 ———

40 Wang Yuxin 1984: 345, fig. 300. 41 Zhao Zhenhua 1985: 376, fig. 5.2. 42 A ce jour, une seule inscription Zhou semble obéir à une certaine forme de pa-

rallélisme, mais celui-ci est loin d’être aussi manifeste que sur les pièces Shang. Voir Xu Xitai 1987: 119–121. Pour une présentation d’ensemble des inscriptions Zhou de Fengchu, voir Xu Xitai (1987). Pour les nombreux problèmes posés par ces pièces, voir l’article de Shaughnessy (1987) dont le titre explicite est malheureusement toujours d’actualité: “Zhouyuan Oracle-Bone Inscriptions: Entering the Research Stage ?” 43 Pour une description de quelques-uns de ces supports, voir Zhao Zhenhua (1985: 374–377).

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2

3

Houma (env. Ve siècle)44

Luoyang (env. Ve–IIIe siècle)45

Luoyang (env. Ve–IIIe siècle)46

Fig. 10: Fragments de plastrons des Zhou orientaux.

Privés de cette précieuse clef que constituaient les inscriptions, nous ne pouvons pas savoir si les principes qui sous-tendaient les pratiques de pyro-ostéomancie des Zhou étaient ou non différents de ceux élaborés par les devins Shang. On perçoit certes une constance dans la disposition régulière des cavités, mais on ne peut affirmer que celle-ci reflète une continuité des principes mantiques. On note par ailleurs que les Zhou semblent avoir progressivement abandonné l’omoplate, qui était alors sans doute considérée comme un support moins noble, moins raffiné.47 A partir de cette époque on ne trouve plus de traces de pyro-scapulomancie dans le monde chinois. En revanche, cette pratique a survécu dans certains groupes ethniques non-Han, comme chez les mongols, les Yi ᒸ ou les Naxi ⚊⷏.48 Mais ces traditions ne peuvent être rattachées aux pratiques des Shang et des Zhou; les techniques employées sont beaucoup plus proches des celles des premières traditions néolithiques évoquées plus haut et aucune d’elles ne traduit un souci d’organisation des ——— 44 45 46 47

Shanxi sheng yanjiusuo 1993: 426 et pl. CCCIV.3. Zhao Zhenhua 1985: 377, fig. 6.4. Ibid., p. 377, fig. 6.5. Wang Chong ‫ך׆‬, au premier siècle de notre ère, y fait d’ailleurs allusion sur un ton ironique dans un passage du Lunheng ᓵᘝ: Avec des omoplates de porc ou de mouton, on peut obtenir des craquelures. Avec des tiges de roseau ou des brins de paille, on peut obtenir des chiffres. Alors pourquoi utiliser l’achillée et la tortue ? “Bushi pian Խᆑᒧ”, édition Han Wei congshu ዧᠿហ஼, 1592, Réimp. Jilin daxue chubanshe, Changchun, 1992, p. 750–892: 866a). 48 Au sujet de la tradition mongole, voir Bawden (1958–1959), concernant celles des Naxi et des Yi, voir Wang Ningsheng (1986). On soulignera que dans la tradition mongole, les omoplates étaient directement déposées sur le feu.

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éléments apparaissant sur les supports. Dans le monde sinisé, c’est donc le plastron qui s’est imposé comme le support de pyro-ostéomancie par excellence. Les Chinois ont d’ailleurs développé à propos de cette technique mantique une véritable littérature spécialisée. Malheureusement, c’est à peu près à partir du moment où cette documentation apparaît que l’on ne trouve plus dans le matériel archéologique de traces de cette pratique.49 La confrontation est donc impossible. En outre, nombre de ces textes ont aujourd’hui disparu et ne nous sont connus que d’après leur titre dans les catalogues ou par quelques citations figurant dans d’autres textes transmis.50 D’après Li Ling, qui semble avoir eu accès à des manuscrits dont les plus anciens remontent à l’époque des Song (960– 1279), les représentations que l’on trouve dans ces ouvrages sont très éloignées des témoignages que nous avons décrits.51 Il estime que, parmi les textes transmis, les seuls reflétant véritablement des pratiques assez anciennes sont le Zhouli ๟⑥, le “Guice liezhuan” 㦟╷೉ ொ, chapitre du Shiji ผ⸥ consacré à la divination, et quelques mentions faites dans certains des Treize classiques.52 Mais, là encore, on relève de nombreuses références aux cinq agents ou au yin et au yang, ———

49 Des fragments de supports de divination en carapace présentant des cavités disposées de manière très régulière ont été découverts à Canton dans la tombe du deuxième roi du Nanyue ত။ datant de la deuxième moitié du IIe siècle avant notre ère. Voir Guangzhou wenwu 1991: 217–218 et pl. CCXXVI.2. Il serait tentant de considérer ces pièces comme des témoignages des pratiques mantiques des Han. Cependant celles-ci ne proviennent pas d’une simple fosse, mais se trouvaient à l’origine dans une boîte en laque qui avait été placée dans le compartiment de tête du cercueil du défunt. Cet ensemble, placé là comme un objet précieux, est peut-être un vestige d’une tradition plus ancienne et ne reflète donc pas forcément les pratiques de cette époque. La périphérie de ce royaume a aussi pu jouer un rôle dans la conservation de pratiques déjà obsolètes à la cour des Han. Par soucis d’exhaustivité, signalons enfin ces quelques fragments de plastrons qui ont été récemment exhumés à Mingyueba ִࣔ᧸, dans le district de Yunyang ႆၺ au Sichuan, et qui datent de la dynastie des Tang. Voir Sichuan daxue 1998: 106–107. On n’observe là aucune régularité dans la disposition des cavités. Les auteurs du rapport de fouilles situent d’ailleurs ces pièces dans un contexte d’habitat populaire (ibid. p. 109), bien éloigné de celui des pratiques qui nous préoccupent ici. 50 Ces deux sources posent des problèmes distincts. Premièrement, il est difficile d’être sûr du contenu d’une méthode uniquement à partir de son titre et tous les ouvrages de divination comprenant dans leur titre le terme de tortue, gui ᚋ, ne concernent pas forcément la pyro-chéloniomancie. C’est ce que montre par exemple un des textes exhumés en 1993 d’une tombe Han à Yinwan ձ᨜, au Jiangsu. Pour une présentation de cette méthode, voir Liu Lexian (1999: 175–176). Deuxièmement, les quelques citations que l’on peut trouver de ces textes se rapportent essentiellement aux cinq agents ou à la théorie du yin et du yang. 51 Li Ling 1993: 58. 52 Li Ling 1993: 57–58.

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que l’on considère généralement comme des notions s’étant développées au cours du quatrième siècle avant notre ère.53 Des changements importants se sont donc produits dans les pratiques mantiques sous le règne des Zhou. Mais les supports retrouvés de cette période (voir cidessus) ne nous permettent pas de percevoir une manifestation visible de tels bouleversements. Parmi les rares représentations graphiques anciennes qui nous soient parvenues, il en est une qui figure aujourd’hui dans un manuel de divination par la tortue appelé La méthode de divination par la tortue de Wu Zhong (Wu Zhong bufa 藀ਛ ඵᴺ), inséré, au début du XVIIIe siècle, dans le Bufa xiangkao ඵᴺ ⹦⠨ de Hu Xu ⢫ᾕ (1655–1736). Cette représentation de plastrons (Fig. 11) est instructive sur deux plans. Premièrement, elle montre, peut-être encore plus clairement que les textes, une distance par rapport aux pratiques révélées par l’archéologie. Deuxièmement, les schémas et les explications qui s’y rapportent donnent l’impression d’une pratique extrêmement abstraite plus influencée par les théories du yin et du yang et des cinq agents que par une tradition concrète de pyro-ostéomancie.

Fig. 11: Représentation de supports de divination en plastron (env. XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle).54

———

53 Un tel constat nous invite à la plus grande prudence face à des travaux dans lesquels les auteurs essaient d’utiliser les textes transmis pour éclairer les pratiques Shang telles qu’elles nous apparaissent au travers des découvertes archéologiques. Pour un exemple d’une telle démarche, voir Liu Yujian (1992: 88–212). 54 Bufa xiangkao, Hu Xu, édition Siku quanshu. Réimp. in Siku quanshu shushu

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CONCLUSION Malgré ses limites,55 notre analyse des pratiques de pyro-ostéomancie dans la Chine archaïque nous aura permis de mettre en lumière certains aspects particuliers de la tradition Shang. Les devins de la maison royale ne se sont pas contentés d’introduire l’écriture dans les traditions mantiques existantes. Ils ont développé leur propre tradition en insistant plus particulièrement sur la mise en ordre des éléments visibles sur le support, se distinguant en cela de tout ce qui avait été fait jusque là et se faisait encore dans d’autres cultures. L’évolution a commencé à Zhengzhou, par des essais d’alignements réguliers des brûlures faites sur les omoplates. Mais l’étape la plus importante a sans doute eut lieu à Anyang lors du règne de Wu Ding. C’est là qu’en s’appropriant des techniques plus complexes de préparation des supports, les devins sont parvenus à une plus grande maîtrise du processus de production des craquelures. Parallèlement, la carapace de tortue que les devins Shang avaient adoptée comme nouveau support à Zhengzhou connut un important succès lors de la phase Anyang. Ce support permit en particulier aux devins Shang d’aller encore plus loin dans leur entreprise de mise en ordre de cette pratique mantique. Grâce aux inscriptions qui figurent sur de nombreux supports, on a pu constater qu’il existe un lien assez fort entre les fondements de la pratique mantique, dont la caractéristique majeure est le parallélisme, et la disposition des éléments sur le support. Si l’aspect régulier de la disposition des cavités et des craquelures a bien été repris par les Zhou, on ignore si les principes d’origine sont restés inchangés, car les rares inscriptions présentes sur certains supports de l’époque des Zhou occidentaux ne nous permettent plus de suivre la procédure. Mais dans les plus anciens textes consacrés à cet art, qui reflètent probablement des pratiques de la fin des Zhou, les techniques décrites paraissent très éloignées de celles des Shang, et ce, alors que les rares supports contemporains retrouvés indiquent plutôt une continuité. Il semble donc que les évolutions qui ont touché la pyro-chéloniomancie sous les Zhou ne se sont pas traduites de manière visible sur les supports. Le recours de l’élite Zhou à une forme de pratique divinatoire extrêmement proche de celle de la cour des Shang a probablement été ——— congshu ؄஄٤஼ᑇ๬ហ஼, Shanghai guji chubanshe, Shanghai, 1990, vol. 6, p. 849–981. 55 Voir ci-dessus, note 4.

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fortement motivé par la volonté de s’approprier un élément de légitimité supplémentaire contribuant à renforcer leur nouveau pouvoir. On note d’ailleurs qu’avec le temps, les témoignages de pyrochéloniomancie se raréfient et les inscriptions disparaissent des supports. La concurrence d’une autre pratique mantique doit sans doute être évoquée; la cléromancie, ou divination par tirage au sort, dont le Livre des Mutations constitue l’exemple le plus célèbre. Des traces de cette pratique sont attestées dans le matériel archéologique sous la forme de suites numériques dès la fin des Shang.56 Alors que sous les Shang les techniques de pyro-ostéomancie semblent avoir été au centre des spéculations théoriques des devins dont elles suivaient l’évolution, elles paraissent avoir, sous les Zhou, été dépassées par ces spéculations. La cléromancie reposait sur des objets plus simples (tiges d’achillée, jetons etc.) et était mieux à même, sans doute, de s’adapter aux évolutions théoriques successives. Il resta toutefois de la pyro-chéloniomancie le prestige d’une pratique royale qui poussa par exemple les empereurs Wu Di des Han et Wang Mang à la remettre à l’honneur.57 Mais ces tentatives n’ont pas abouti à la résurrection d’une tradition difficilement conciliable avec la complexification des théories divinatoires développées dans le milieu des devins. 58 Finalement, dans la représentation proposée au début du XVIIIe siècle par Hu Xu, la carapace de tortue n’apparaît plus que comme un support de prestige sur lequel est tracé un cadre rectangulaire, semblable à une feuille de papier vierge, où la disposition des craquelures n’est pas spécifiée, mais où apparaissent en revanche, disposées sous une forme de diagramme, les indications se rapportant aux principes du yin et du yang et des cinq agents.

REFERENCES ARAKI Hiroko ⨹ᧁᣣํሶ. 1999. “Zhongguo xinshiqi shidai de bugu jiqi shehui yiyi” ਛ࿡ᣂ⍹ེᤨઍ⊛ඵ㛽෸౔␠ᦩᗧ⟵. In: Zhongguo Yin Shang wenhua xuehui ਛ࿡Გ໡ᢥൻቑᦩ, Shangdai wenming yanjiu ໡ઍᢥ᣿⎇ⓥ. Pékin: Zhongguo wenlian chubanshe, pp. 257–281.

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56 Voir les références données par Li Ling (1993: 244–252). 57 Voir Liu Yujian 1992: 397–403. A ce prestige, s’ajoute aussi l’importance

symbolique accordée à la tortue en tant qu’animal. Au sujet de la pratique de la divination par la tortue sous les Han, voir Loewe (1988). 58 On notera d’ailleurs que dans les nombreux manuscrits concernant la divination découverts à Dunhuang, et qui sont datés d’entre le VIIe et le XIe siècle de notre ère, on ne trouve aucun traité de pyro-ostéomancie. Sur ces manuscrits et sur les pratiques mantiques qu’ils reflètent, voir Kalinowski (2003).

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BAGLEY, Robert. 1999. “Shang Archaeology.” In: The Cambridge History of Ancient China – From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C., éd. Michael Loewe et Edward L. Shaughnessy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 124–231. BAWDEN, C. R. 1959. “On the Practice of Scapulimancy Among the Mongols.” Central Asian Journal 4: 1–44. Bufa xiangkao ඵᴺ⹦⠨[by Hu Xu ⢫ᾕ], 1990. Siku quanshu shushu congshu ྾ᐶ ోᦠᢞⴚฌᦠ. Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, vol. 6, pp. 849–981. [Réimp. de l’édition Siku quanshu ྾ᐶోᦠ]. DEBAINE-FRANCFORT, Corinne. 1995. Du néolithique à l’Age du Bronze en Chine du Nord-Ouest: la culture de Qijia et ses connections. Paris: Editions Recherche sur les civilisations. GUANGZHOU WENWU. 1991. Guangzhou shi wenwu guanli weiyuanhui ᑝᎺᏒᢥ‛ ▤ℂᆔຬᦩ et al. éd., Xi Han Nanyue wang mu ⷏ṽධ⿧₺Ⴤ. Pékin: Wenwu chubanshe. GUO Moruo ㇳᴜ⧯, éd. 1978–1982. Jiaguwen heji ↲㛽ᢥว㓸, 13 vol. Pékin: Zhonghua shuju [ci-dessus abrégé en Heji]. HEBEI SHENG WENWU. 1979. Hebei sheng wenwu guanlichu ᴡർ⋭ᢥ‛▤ℂ⯪, “Ci xian Xiaqiyuan yizhi fajue baogao” ⏛❐ਅ৾၂ㆮဇ⊔ជႎ๔. Kaogu xuebao 2: 185–214. HENAN CHANGJIANG. 1989. Henan sheng wenwu yanjiusuo ᴡධ⋭ᢥ‛⎇ⓥᚲ– Changjiang liuyu bangongshi kaogu dui Henan fendui 㐳ᳯᵹၞㄐ౏ቶ⠨ฎ㓌 ᴡධಽ㓌, Xichuan Xiawanggang ᶲᎹਅ₺ፘ. Pékin: Wenwu chubanshe. HENAN SHENG WENHUA JU. 1959. Henan sheng wenhua ju wenwu gongzuo dui ᴡධ ⋭ᢥൻዪᢥ‛Ꮏ૞㓌, Zhengzhou Erligang ㈕Ꮊੑ㉿ፘ. Pékin: Kexue chubanshe. HENAN SHENG YANJIUSUO. 2001. Henan sheng wenwu kaogu yanjiusuo ᴡධ⋭ᢥ‛ ⠨ฎ⎇ⓥᚲ, Zhengzhou Shang cheng – yijiuwusan nian – yijiubawu nian kaogu fajue baogao ㈕Ꮊ໡ၔ – ৻਻੖ਃᐕ – ৻਻౎੖ᐕ⠨ฎ⊔ជႎ๔. Pékin: Wenwu chubanshe. Heji. Voir Guo Moruo. HUANG Yunping 赣⯄ᐔ. 1996. “Zhukaigou yizhi shougu de jianding yu yanjiu” ᧇ 㐿Ḵㆮဇ₭㛽⊛㐔ቯ⥜⎇ⓥ. Kaogu xuebao 4: 515–536. KALINOWSKI, Marc, éd. 2003. Divination et société dans la Chine ancienne. Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale de France. KEIGHTLEY, David N. 1978. Sources of Shang History – The Oracle-Bone Inscriptions of Bronze Age China. Berkeley–Los Angeles–London: University of California Press. ——. 1997. “Shang Oracle Bone Inscriptions.” In: New Sources of Early Chinese History: An Introduction to the Reading of Inscriptions and Manuscripts, éd. Edward L. Shaughnessy. Berkeley: Early China special monograph series n°3, The Society for the Study of Early China and The Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California. KEIGHTLEY, David N. 2000. The Ancestral Landscape – Time, Space and Community in Late Shang China (ca. 1200–1245 B.C.). Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California; Center for Chinese Studies (China Research Monograph 53). LEFEUVRE, Jean. 1975. “Les inscriptions des Shang sur carapaces de tortues et sur os – Aperçu historique et bibliographique de la découverte et des premières études.” T’oung Pao 61.1–3: 1–82. LI Hengqiu ᧘੧᳞. 1981a. “Bohai Yanya zaoqi wuzi bugu zhi yanjiu” ᷳᶏᴪፗᣧ ᦼήሼඵ㛽ਯ⎇ⓥ (1). Gugong jikan 16–1: 41–56. ——. 1981b. “Bohai Yanya zaoqi wuzi bugu zhi yanjiu” ᷳᶏᴪፗᣧᦼήሼඵ㛽ਯ ⎇ⓥ (2). Gugong jikan 16–2: 41–64.

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Planche I 1 plastron. Heji, 32, verso. (29 x 17,5cm); 1 plastron. Heji, 32, recto. (29 x 17,5cm)

LA REPRESENTATION VISUELLE

105

106

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Planche II 1 fragment de plastron, Musée Guimet, MG–S3–3, recto (hauteur: 11,2 cm). D’après J. Lefeuvre, Collections d’inscriptions oraculaires en France. Taipei, Paris, Hongkong: Institut Ricci, 1985, p. 64.

LA REPRESENTATION VISUELLE

Planche III 1 plastron. Heji, 36639, recto. (20,5 x 10,5cm)

107

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