Luxuriant Gems of the Spring and Autumn

In chapters 65, 67, 68, 69, and 70, the reconstructions proposed by D. C. Lau and Su Yu differ. We are generally persuaded by Su Yu’s reasoning, which offers a more coherent reading of the various essay fragments. Therefore, both our introductory discussion of these chapters and our translation follow Su Yu rather than Lau. But where we move blocks of text, following Su Yu, we provide the page references in Lau’s edition so that readers will have a straightforward way of finding the Chinese text. (Thus all the text in Lau’s edition is translated here, but not necessarily where it is placed in that edition.)

Chapter 57, “Things of the Same Kind Activate One Another,” explains the principles of yin and yang that both account for and provide the means for overcoming drought and excessive rainfall:

Heaven has yin and yang [aspects], and people have yin and yang [aspects]. When the qi of Heaven and Earth arises, the qi of people arises in response to it; when the qi of people arises, the qi of Heaven and Earth also arises appropriately in response to it. Their Way is unitary. Those who understand this, when wishing to bring forth rain, activate yin, causing yin to arise; when wishing to stop rain, activate yang, causing yang to arise. Therefore, rain is not caused by the spirits. People suspect that it is the spirits’ doing because its inner principles are subtle and mysterious.²

Chapter 74, “Seeking Rain,” brings together two separate essays of quite different provenance, so we divided the chapter into two sections. The first is a long essay that extensively uses Five-Phase cosmology, and the second simply summarizes a straightforward procedure that uses yin-yang principles to bring rain during any season of the year. In trying to overcome the imbalance of yang over yin, both sections of chapter 74 employ several tried-and-true methods of generating yin energy. Women are encouraged to frequent the market and walk abroad; men are excluded from the market and required to stay indoors. Men and women are encouraged to have sexual intercourse, which was believed to generate yin energy. A shamanka is exposed to the rays of the sun in an open field, in the hope that her concentrated yin spiritual power will counteract the force of the Great Yang. At an extreme, this would amount to an act of human sacrifice. Other shamankas engage in rituals and offer prayers.

The chief instrument for attracting rain is an earthen dragon, an effigy of the quintessential water-loving beast. Section 74.1 amplifies these measures by associating them with an elaborate scheme of Five-Phase correlations. For example, 74.1 divides the year into five seasons (using the now-familiar procedure of designating the seventh month as a separate midsummer season correlated with Earth), rather than the four natural seasons more typical of Dong Zhongshu’s writings. The details of the construction and placement of the earthen dragon in each season emphasize Five-Phase correlations. The dragons’ specifications vary, and in every case their color, dimensions, direction, and other details conform exactly to the seasonal correlative characteristics of Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water.

Chapter 75, “Stopping Rain,” compiles materials on that topic from diverse sources, which divide naturally into three sections. Section 75.1 describes relatively simple and brief procedures for generating yang energy and suppressing yin energy, commensurate with but the obverse of the techniques to procure rain outlined in chapter 74.2. In section 75.1, women are sequestered, men conspicuously appear in public, and a pig and other sacrificial goods are ritually offered at the altar of the soil, with prayers that the excessive yin might be made to subside. The brief fragment making up section 75.2 affirms that the main point of the steps outlined in 75.1 is that women should be kept out of sight and men should join together joyfully in generating yang energy. Section 75.2 also specifies that the celebrants wear vermilion vestments (the color of maximum yang) and that the altar of the soil be encircled by a vermilion cord (perhaps to confine and restrict its yin energy).³ The chapter ends, in 75.3, with an account of the efforts by Dong Zhongshu himself, while serving as administrator of Jiangdu, to put these procedures into practice.⁴ His efforts were apparently successful, as Sima Qian makes a point of recording:

After the present emperor assumed the throne, he appointed Dong Zhongshu to be the administrator to Jiangdu. Relying on the untoward changes such as natural disasters and strange events recorded in the Spring and Autumn, he deduced what caused yin and yang to fall into disorder. Therefore when seeking rain, he repressed yang and released yin; when stopping rain, he inverted those techniques. When he implemented those techniques in that single state, he never failed to obtain the desired results.⁵

Because of its heavy reliance on Five-Phase techniques, the long first section of chapter 74 is, in our judgment, not the work of Dong Zhongshu.⁶ But section 74.2 and all of chapter 75 appear to be authentic works by Dong himself. Section 74.1 may represent the efforts of one of Dong's disciples to develop his teacher’s rain-seeking techniques and incorporate Five-Phase correlations to keep abreast of the burgeoning popularity of Five-Phase cosmology in the later decades of the Western Han.

The chapters on procuring or stopping rain are best understood as representing Dong’s efforts to develop the Rain-Seeking Sacrifice (yu 雩) found in the Spring and Autumn in a manner compatible with the ideas of yin-yang resonance that informed his cosmological views.⁷ Thus procuring and stopping rain is not the work of the spirits, but rather harnesses man’s ability to understand and manipulate the Heaven-endowed principles that drive the cosmos itself.⁸ Like the other chapters in this group, which deal largely with the Suburban Sacrifice and the Sacrifices of the Four Seasons, the chapters on rain and the additional chapters on ritual obligations were collected at this point in the Chunqiu fanlu because they deal with rites and sacrifices recorded in the Spring and Autumn and sanctioned by the Gongyang Commentary.

Chapters 70, 72, and 73 deal with the general subject of ritual obligations. Chapter 70, “Following Orders,” clarifies the moral meritocracy implicit in the hierarchical ranking system of the Spring and Autumn and its corresponding terminology. This essay maintains that following orders is ultimately a matter of revering Heaven, and through a variety of examples, it demonstrates how the Spring and Autumn uses the “subtleties of its terminology” or patterns of notation to identify and assign lesser rank to those who fail in that obligation. Section 70.4 links the downfall of rulers and the extinction of states to ritual irregularities.

Chapter 72, “Presenting Gifts to Superiors,” describes the appropriate gifts to be offered by various members of the hierarchy to their respective superiors: the Son of Heaven offers black millet wine to Heaven and Earth, the dukes and marquises offer jade ritual regalia to the Son of Heaven when they attend a royal audience, and so on down to the great officers. This chapter is fragmentary and incomplete; fuller parallels can be found in the Liji, the Shuoyuan, and the Bohutong.⁹

Chapter 73, “Hymn to the Mountains and Rivers” (Shan chuan song 山川頌), is a song, a praise-hymn or panegyric, apparently composed as part of the liturgy of a sacrifice to the spirits of the mountains and the rivers. It may be related to the sacrifices to Mount Tai, the Yellow River, and the Sea recorded in the Spring and Autumn as the “Triple Gazing” (san wang 三望),¹⁰ in which the celebrant ritually “gazes from afar” (wang) at those conspicuous features of the topography of northern China.¹¹

Chapter 68, “The Four [Seasonal] Sacrificial Rites,” and chapter 76, “The Principles of Sacrificial Rites,” describe in similar terms a program of “first fruits” sacrifices to be performed in the ancestral temple at the beginning of each of the four seasons.¹² According to section 68.1, the spring sacrifice features scallions; the summer, wheat; the autumn, glutinous panicled millet; and the winter, newly harvested rice. Collectively, these crops are referred to (in chapter 76.1) as “Heaven’s gifts.” Up to this point, chapters 68 and 76 are quite similar. Then chapter 76 (but not 68) adds punning explanations for the names of the sacrifices and the types of bronze vessels employed in each and launches into a lengthy explanation of the principles of sacrifice, emphasizing the obligation of rulers to offer these fruits of the harvest to their ancestors before they are consumed by living humans. Sacrifice is explained as being the principal means of connecting and communing with the spirits and therefore is a solemn affair of state. Both Confucius and the Odes are quoted regarding the necessity of performing the seasonal sacrifices with the utmost gravity. As we will demonstrate later, Dong Zhongshu is using the records of these sacrifices found in the Spring and Autumn, and explicated by the Gongyang Commentary, to construct and recommend to Emperor Wu a coherent program of imperial sacrifices. Even though Emperor Wu ignored Dong’s recommendations, in the longer run Dong’s views had a significant impact on how imperial sacrifices would be conducted in the Latter Han period.

The next section in chapter 68 is a brief hymn praising the sacrificial rituals. We moved this section here from chapter 70, following Su Yu’s reconstruction. But because Lau’s text includes it in chapter 70, we labeled it 70.2 here.

The final part of chapter 68 (which we labeled 68.2) appears to be a stray fragment that associates King Wen with the Suburban Sacrifice but has no direct bearing on the four seasonal sacrifices. However, it is a link to the group’s general perspective on sacrifice: despite the importance of the seasonal sacrifices, the Suburban Sacrifice takes absolute priority in the annual round of the Son of Heaven’s sacrificial obligationsL “Having received the Mandate to become king, [the king] must first sacrifice to Heaven, and only then [may he] implement the tasks of a king.”¹³ The passage’s description of the circumstances under which the Suburban Sacrifice is performed is quite different from that in the Suburban Sacrifice chapters themselves. In these chapters, the Suburban Sacrifice is an annual rite to be performed at the very beginning of each civil calendar year, whereas section 68.2 suggests that its primary purpose is to confirm the ruler’s authority at the beginning of his reign. But the key point remains that the Suburban Sacrifice, being a sacrifice to Heaven rather than to the royal ancestors, is the most important of the ruler’s ritual tasks. Here the Chunqiu fanlu ventures onto highly contested ground, a circumstance that prompts an extended examination of the Suburban Sacrifice itself.

The chapters on the Suburban Sacrifice articulate a program of worship based on Confucius’s authority, especially as expressed in the Gongyang Commentary to the Spring and Autumn and complemented by the Analects and the Classic of Odes.14 The chapters provide programmatic details concerning this sacrifice, as well as comments on their relationship to the ancestral sacrifices, based on these canonical sources. All the chapters assert that the emperor must faithfully follow the proper sequence of sacrifice. The Suburban Sacrifice is presented as the most important of all sacrificial rituals performed by the emperor because the object of worship is Heaven, the most honored of all the spirits that populate the numinous realm. This priority is literal: the yearly cycle of services performed by the Son of Heaven must begin with an offering to Heaven at the suburban altar at the new year, in the first month, on the first xin day, a prescription that faithfully follows the Gongyang Commentary.¹⁵ As chapter 67, “Sacrificial Rites of the Suburban Sacrifice” (“The Suburban Sacrifice” in Su Yu’s reconstruction), puts it, “Thus every time [the Son of Heaven] arrives at the new year, he must first perform the Suburban Sacrifice to supplicate Heaven. Only then does he dare to sacrifice to Earth.”¹⁶

The Suburban Sacrifice also must precede offerings to the ancestors:

According to the standards of the Spring and Autumn, the king once a year presents sacrificial offerings to Heaven at the suburban altar and four times presents sacrificial offerings at the ancestral temple. The [sacrificial offerings] at the ancestral temple follow the changes in the four seasons; the [sacrificial offerings] at the suburban altar follow the beginning of the new year…. This is to say that one sacrifices to the most honored at the head of the year before all others and [that] each time there is a change in the year, the Suburban offering is presented first. This is the principle of giving priority to the honorable and the Way of revering Heaven.¹⁷

Finally, the Suburban Sacrifice must precede offerings to the mountains and rivers. This is clear, chapter 69, “The Suburban Sacrifice,” argues, from the example of King Xuan of Zhou,¹⁸ conventionally considered the voice in the following stanza from the ode “Yun Han” (The River of Clouds), who, guilty and fearful, laments that his ritual failures have prompted Heaven’s disasters:

Heaven sends down death and chaos;

repeatedly there is famine and starvation.

It is not that we have not sacrificed to the spirits;

it is not that we begrudge the victims;

We have used up the jade scepters and jade disks;

how can none [of the spirits] hear us? …

We have unceasingly offered the Yin and Zi sacrifices,

[hastening between] suburban altar and ancestral temple….¹⁹

Again at Duke Xi 5.31.3, the Spring and Autumn records that the Suburban Sacrifice was not performed but that the Triple Gazing Sacrifice—a sacrifice to Mount Tai, the Yellow River, and the Sea—was performed. The Gongyang Commentary maintains that this fact was recorded to criticize the ruler for performing a lesser sacrifice while suspending the Suburban Sacrifice. Reading the Spring and Autumn through the lens of the Gongyang Commentary, Dong Zhongshu argues once again that there is never a good excuse for performing lesser sacrifices such as the Triple Gazing rite while suspending the Suburban Sacrifice.

In the Chunqiu fanlu’s view, then, the yearly cycle of services performed by the Son of Heaven invariably had to begin with an offering to Heaven at the suburban altar at the new year, in the first month, on the first xin day. It then would be ritually correct to offer sacrifices to Earth, to the ancestors at the beginning of each season, and to major topographical features later in the year. The Suburban Sacrifice chapters are highly attentive to the need to harmonize the ruler’s obligations to Heaven with those due his ancestors. Chapters 68 and 76 describe the four seasonal sacrifices offered to the ancestors and leave no doubt about their importance. But the text relies on the Spring and Autumn to justify the priority given to the Suburban Sacrifice over that of the ancestral sacrifices: the Son of Heaven is bound by filial piety to worship his Heavenly father before all other deities, including his deceased parents and more remote ancestors. This is true even when the ancestral sacrifices themselves must be suspended: “It is a righteous principle of the Spring and Autumn that when the state conducts the Grand Mourning [of a deceased parent], [the ruler] suspends sacrifices at the ancestral temple but does not suspend the Suburban Sacrifice, for he does not dare, on account of the funeral of his father or mother, abandon a ritual meant to serve Heaven.”²¹

Indeed, the emperor’s obligation to offer sacrifices to Heaven comes before all his familial obligations. Not only must the emperor not suspend the Suburban Sacrifice during the mourning period for his deceased parents, but his filial obligations to provide sustenance and succor for his Heavenly father preempts his fatherly responsibilities to his metaphorical sons and grandsons: the common folk who populate his empire. Even at the risk of the people’s starving, sacrificial food must be offered on the suburban altar. Moreover, these chapters also argue that the Suburban Sacrifice should be performed in accordance with the Way, which is to say, flawlessly. Even though the ruler could expect to avoid disasters should he err in performing services to the lesser gods, in the case of Heaven the disasters visited on the ruler would correspond to the degree to which he transgressed the ritual norms. All the many examples of ritual violations explicated in the Gongyang Commentary reinforce the point that service to Heaven must come before that to the lesser divinities and must be properly performed lest disasters ensue. Chapter 70.4 gives examples of the sorts of injury to, or the unsuitability of, sacrificial animals that can vitiate the power of the sacrifice. For example, the chosen bull might suffer an injury to its mouth or (in a bizarre contingency) have its horns gnawed by ground squirrels. The failure to take precautions, or an outright abandonment of the sacrifice in the face of adverse circumstances, would, the text claims, inevitably lead to disaster.

In Dong Zhongshu’s understanding of the Spring and Autumn, the Suburban Sacrifice was the prerogative—and the duty—of the Son of Heaven alone. He admits only one modification of that stance. In chapter 71, “An Official Response Regarding the Suburban Sacrifice,” Dong defends as legitimate the performance of the Suburban Sacrifice by the Duke of Zhou in his capacity as regent for King Cheng. The Duke of Zhou’s virtuous service earned him the authority to perform a rite normally reserved for the Son of Heaven alone, during the period when the king was too young to carry out the sacrifice by himself. But because of the unusual circumstances, the young king and the duke made sure that the duke’s performance of the sacrifice was ritually distinguished (by altering the color of the bull employed as a sacrificial victim) from the rite as it normally would be performed by the Son of Heaven. Building on that precedent, subsequent dukes of Lu also arrogated to themselves the right to offer the Suburban Sacrifice. Their rationale for doing so is explained in Liji 22, “Ji tong” (A Summation of the Sacrificial Rites):

Anciently, Dan, the Duke of Zhou, meritoriously exerted himself for the sake of the world. After the Duke of Zhou passed away, kings Cheng and Kang, bearing in mind how he meritoriously exerted himself, desired to honor [his home state of] Lu. Consequently they granted to its lords the right of offering the most important sacrifices…. The descendants of the Duke of Zhou have continued them, and down to the present day they have not been abandoned, thereby manifesting the virtue of the Duke of Zhou and the importance of his state.²²

In the Suburban Sacrifice chapters of the Chunqiu fanlu, however, Dong upholds the orthodox position of the Gongyang Commentary, maintaining that the Suburban Sacrifice was uniquely the prerogative and the responsibility of the Son of Heaven.²³ In taking this position, Dong continues to build his case that Han practice with respect to the Suburban Sacrifice and other imperial sacrifices should reflect the practices of the early Zhou era.

Why do these chapters argue so forcefully for the importance of the Suburban Sacrifice and the need to give it ritual priority over all of the Son of Heaven’s other sacrificial obligations, even those to his own ancestors? Why, when, and for whom were these chapters written?

Ban Gu’s “Biography of Dong Zhongshu” provides the background to this document. The biography notes that after a brief tenure as administrator to King Yu of Jiaoxi (Liu Duan, an elder brother of Emperor Wu), whose conduct Dong found reprehensible,26 Dong retired to his home in fear for his life. Ban Gu notes that even in retirement, Dong stayed in contact with the imperial court: “When Zhongshu was retired, if the central court held an important deliberation, [the emperor would] send emissaries, including even the Chamberlain for Law Enforcement Zhang Tang himself, to travel to his home and question him. His responses all possessed clear standards.”²⁷ As it happened, the year 123 B.C.E., when Zhang Tang interviewed Dong Zhongshu, was a momentous one for the Suburban Sacrifice. Emperor Wu resumed performing this rite after a hiatus of more than a decade. As the emperor made plans to resume the Suburban Sacrifice, it would have made sense to seek Dong’s advice on the many rites he knew intimately and had written about extensively.

Commensurate with his other writings on the Suburban Sacrifice, in Zhang Tang’s report Dong emphasized the Suburban Sacrifice to Heaven as the emperor’s most important rite of veneration. Although performed only a few times by the Han emperors who preceded Emperor Wu, and only intermittently by Emperor Wu himself, the Suburban Sacrifice had been established as reserved for the emperor alone. That this came to be very likely involved debate and a certain jostling for power. In the early decades of the Han period, much of the empire was divided into semiautonomous kingdoms ruled by imperial kinsmen of the Liu clan (such as King Yu of Jiaoxi, whom Dong Zhongshu served for a short time as administrator), who could easily have claimed that they had the right to perform the Suburban Sacrifice on their own behalf, by analogy to the performance of that sacrifice by the dukes of Lu. The relationship between the imperial throne and the regional kings was one of the most important, and most difficult, political problems of the early Han period. Dong’s position thus aligned him firmly with the imperial centralists and in opposition to the neofeudal claims of the regional kings.²⁸

Accordingly, we can be quite confident that the official exchange preserved in chapter 71 dates from the end of Dong’s career around 123 B.C.E. The other essays on the Suburban Sacrifice most likely were written earlier, during the years when Emperor Wu had suspended his performance of the Suburban Sacrifice. The content of the chapters suggest this, for they are marked by one overriding theme: the desire to reform the views of an emperor who not only was failing to attend properly to this sacrifice but also was distracted by many lesser gods of the pantheon. The content of these chapters suggests that the crucially important (to Dong) Suburban Sacrifice should have been regularly performed by the emperor. It also implies that in contemporary practice, it followed no set ritual schedule and that the justifications for and the details of the sacrifice were the subject of much debate. Clearly, Dong was just one of many would-be religious advisers to the emperor and was struggling to make his voice heard in the cacophony. Such circumstances appear to color the arguments set forth in these chapters in several ways.

Why else, for example, would the author of chapter 65 ask bluntly: “What, then, of those who abandon the rite of the Suburban Sacrifice?” And why else would he answer:

As we have seen, the author argues forcefully that the ancients did not dare suspend the Suburban Sacrifice, even in times of mourning, a sign of how deeply the ancients feared and revered Heaven. How, then, would the ruler dare abandon the Suburban Sacrifice, “[the rite that] the sages most deeply valued”? Dong does not accept the legitimacy of circumstantial excuses for suspending the sacrifice. He notes that some contemporaries have argued that “‘when the myriad commoners are so impoverished, suffering from starvation and cold, how can it suffice to perform the Suburban Sacrifice?’” Dong’s response is emphatic: “How mistaken are such claims!” Regardless of external circumstances, the ruler should no more abandon the Suburban Sacrifice to Heaven than a filial son should neglect to feed his parents. In the event that the ruler should claim—or did claim—that he could not perform the Suburban Sacrifice because he was morally unworthy, in chapter 69.2, King Xuan of Zhou’s response to a drought that ruined the harvest is used to demonstrate that for the Spring and Autumn, the issue is never whether the virtue of the ruler is sufficient to sacrifice but whether the ruler is willing to place Heaven before all other spirits. In fact, nearly every one of the Suburban Sacrifice chapters addresses this potential violation of ritual norms, arguing that the Suburban Sacrifice to Heaven must come before those to the lesser gods.

Citing the practices of the sage kings of antiquity, chapter 67.2 (now part of chapter 65, in Su Yu’s reconstruction) maintains that none among the kings of the former ages failed to perform the Suburban Sacrifice and attach great importance to it. The Qin alone neglected and abandoned it. The Zhou dynasty stood at one end of the spectrum, embodying the ideal of the Suburban Sacrifice in all its perfection, while the Qin stood at the other end, failing to offer the sacrifice at all. With this example, the author argues that although the emperor may offer sacrifice to all the spirits of the realm, if he fails to serve Heaven, service to these lesser spirits will not make his realm prosperous.

The tone of these chapters strongly suggests that they were written when the Suburban Sacrifice had been neglected by the Han emperors for some time and when Emperor Wu showed no inclination to reinstitute the rite on a regular basis. Perhaps some scholars and officials at court argued that there was simply too much poverty among the common folk to support such an expensive ritual. Possibly Emperor Wu himself contended that his reputation as a virtuous sovereign had not yet been confirmed by Heaven. Whatever the case, Dong Zhongshu is quite insistent here about the need to offer the Suburban Sacrifice to Heaven to lead off the annual cycle of sacrifices. What could this be a response to, other than an emperor who was sacrificing to many other spirits and who had abandoned the Suburban Sacrifice? As it happens, Emperor Wu appears to have done just that.

The history of imperially sponsored religion in the Western Han period is confused and somewhat chaotic.30 Under Emperor Wu especially, but under other emperors as well, worship of various deities was instituted, continued, neglected, or abolished, apparently depending on the whims and attention spans of the emperors themselves and on which advisers were in favor at the time. The Suburban Sacrifice was performed on a number of occasions, but with no uniformity; indeed, every aspect of the sacrifice was in dispute. Contested issues included in what month of the year the sacrifice should be performed, how frequently it should be performed, who should perform it (the emperor personally or ritual stewards acting on his behalf), where the sacrifice should be performed, which deity or deities should receive the offerings, what sacrificial victim should be offered, what ritual or liturgical procedures should be followed, and how the sacrifice should be understood in relation to services for the emperor’s deceased parents and more remote ancestors, as well as for other spirits. Dong Zhongshu was apparently only one of many advisers offering opinions about these matters, and his voice—as usual in the context of Emperor Wu’s court—was by no means the decisive one.

In the “Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices” (Shiji 28), Sima Qian quotes the Zhouli as saying that the purpose of the Suburban Sacrifice was to welcome the lengthening of the days: “At the winter solstice a sacrifice shall be made to Heaven in the southern suburbs in order to greet the arrival of lengthening days. At the summer solstice a sacrifice shall be made to the Earth God. At both ceremonies music and dances shall be performed. Thus one may pay respect to the spirits.”³¹ This accords with the view expressed in the Liji: “At the [Great] Border [i.e., Suburban] Sacrifice, [the Son of Heaven] welcomed the arrival of the longest day.”³² Sima Qian also states that during the Qin dynasty, “the Suburban Sacrifice was performed once every three years. Since the Qin dynasty had designated the tenth month as the beginning of its [civil] year, it was always in the tenth month that the emperor fasted and journeyed to the suburbs to visit the deity.”³³

The founding Han emperor, Gaozu, continued Qin ritual practices with little change. There is no record of his having performed the Suburban Sacrifice or of his having caused it to be performed, but he did institute worship of the Five Thearchs, considered as personifications of the five directions. Emperor Wen performed what was explicitly called the Suburban Sacrifice in the suburb of Yong in 165 B.C.E. and again at a new shrine at Weiyang in 164 B.C.E. After discussion with his ritual specialists, he performed the rite in the fourth month of each of those two years; the object of worship was the Five Thearchs.

Of Emperor Jing it is said that “during the sixteen years of his reign the officials in charge of sacrifices continued to perform their various duties at the appropriate seasons but no new forms of worship were introduced.”³⁴ He carried out the Suburban Sacrifice at Yong in 144 B.C.E., again directed at the Five Thearchs.

Emperor Wu is first recorded as having performed the Suburban Sacrifice in 134 B.C.E. The Shiji states that in that year, the emperor “journeyed to Yong for the first time to perform the Suburban Sacrifice at the Five Altars.” It also claims that “from that time on he invariably performed the Suburban Sacrifice once every three years.”35 The reference to the Five Altars indicates that the sacrifices were again devoted to the Five Thearchs. The statement that the emperor then performed the Suburban Sacrifice every three years is not, however, confirmed by what follows in either the Shiji or the Han shu. The “Basic Annals of Emperor Wu” notes that Emperor Wu performed the Suburban Sacrifice in 123 B.C.E. Thereafter, he is recorded as having performed the sacrifice six additional times: in 122, 114, 113, 110, 108, and 92 B.C.E.³⁶

The history of Emperor Wu’s religious practices during the decade-long hiatus between the first recorded performance of the Suburban Sacrifice in 134 B.C.E. and the second in 123 B.C.E., as described in the “Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices,” is essentially an account of the emperor’s coming under the influence of a motley succession of men who persuaded him to worship various gods that they proposed in turn. This began with a man named Li Shaojun, who persuaded Emperor Wu to worship the god of the hearth while following Li’s theories on how to achieve immortality through a dietary regimen. When Li Shaojun died, the emperor almost immediately fell under the influence of a magician named Miu Ji, who persuaded the emperor to institute sacrifices to the star divinity Great Unity (Tai yi), maintaining that this deity was “the most honored of all the spirits of Heaven.” He described the Five Thearchs, formerly the objects of the Suburban Sacrifice, as Grand Unity’s “helpers.” Emperor Wu carried out the recommendation and ordered the master of invocations to establish a place of worship southeast of Chang’an. The emperor performed the rites to Tai yi there in 113 B.C.E. The rituals included sacrifices to the sun and the moon, and the worship of Tai yi continued sporadically during the reigns of Emperor Wu and several of his successors. Emperor Wu inaugurated a variety of other imperially sponsored altars and cults, depending on which self-styled ritual authority currently had the emperor’s ear. A notable example was the establishment in 114 B.C.E. of an altar to the Earth Queen (Hou tu) at Fenyin, Hedong Commandery, at the direct command of the emperor (and presumably at the suggestion of one of his fangshi advisers). Emperor Wu apparently took this cult seriously, as he performed rites to the Earth Queen again in 107, 105, 104, 103, and 100 B.C.E.37 (His successors Emperors Xuan and Yuan revived the cult, worshipping at the altar of the Earth Queen in 61, 55, 41, 39, and 37 B.C.E.)

The performance of the Suburban Sacrifice by Emperor Wu in 123 B.C.E. took place late in the year, during the tenth month, and was devoted to the Five Thearchs. Some ambiguity surrounds the performance of the ritual in the following year (again in the tenth month). The Shiji describes it as having been devoted to the High Thearch, a divinity that could be equated to Heaven, and remarks specifically that the rite was paired with another sacrifice devoted to Earth. The Han shu records, however, that the object of worship was once again the Five Thearchs.³⁸ The Suburban Sacrifices of 114, 113, 110, 108, and 92 B.C.E. all were late-year rituals devoted to the Five Thearchs. The only variants reported in the sources suggest that the sacrifice of 113 B.C.E. was paired or coordinated with (or possibly replaced by) a rite devoted to Grand Unity, held in 110 B.C.E. Emperor Wu also journeyed to Mount Tai to celebrate the Feng and Shan Sacrifices, rites explicitly devoted to Heaven and designed to affirm that the reigning dynasty was securely in possession of the Mandate of Heaven.

In all of this there is no attention to Dong Zhongshu’s position: that the Suburban Sacrifice should be the first imperial sacrifice of the civil calendar year, that it should be devoted to the worship of Heaven, and that it should take precedence over all other imperial sacrificial rites. It appears that the position so forcefully argued in the Suburban Sacrifice chapters of the Chunqiu fanlu found no favor with the emperor himself.

After the Suburban Sacrifice of 92 B.C.E., near the end of Emperor Wu’s long reign, the Suburban Sacrifice was neglected for many years. There was a long hiatus through the reign of Emperor Zhao and into that of Emperor Xuan. The latter finally resumed the rite in 56 B.C.E. as a first-month ritual (as Dong Zhongshu had recommended all along): “In the second year, in the spring, the first month, [the Emperor] traveled and favored Yong [with a visit where he] sacrificed at the altars to the Five [Thearchs].” Emperor Yuan performed the sacrifice in 46 B.C.E., again in the first month, but no longer at Yong (where the Suburban Altar had been since Emperor Wu’s time), and devoted to Grand Unity rather than to the Five Thearchs: “In the fourth year, in the spring, the first month, [the Emperor] traveled and favored Ganquan [with a visit, where he performed] the Suburban Sacrifice at the altar of Grand Unity.” Six years later, in 40 B.C.E., Emperor Yuan again performed the sacrifice, this time in the third month of the year, back at Yong, and once again devoted to the Five Thearchs. He repeated the performance two years later: “In the [reign-period] jianzhao (Establishing Brightness, 38–33 B.C.E.), the first year, in the spring, the third month, [the Emperor] favored Yong [with a visit, where he sacrificed] at the altars to the Five [Thearchs].”39

Generally, during the first century and a half of the Western Han, the Suburban Sacrifice seems consistently to have been worship of the Five Thearchs, usually performed at the Suburban Altar at Yong, but with some disagreement over the appropriate season. Although Dong Zhongshu’s arguments for a Heaven-centered sacrificial system fell on deaf ears during the reign of Emperor Wu, it appears that ultimately they may have been influential in the later debates over religious reform under Emperors Cheng, Ai, and, finally, Ping. In 31 B.C.E., the imperial counselors Kuang Heng and Zheng Tan presented to Emperor Cheng a severe critique of Emperor Wu’s religious innovations. They apparently were persuasive, for in that year Emperor Cheng instituted a Suburban Sacrifice to Heaven at an altar south of Chang’an. He went on to abolish a number of sacrifices initiated by Emperor Wu. Subsequently, however, the famous official Liu Xiang argued, in opposition to Kuang Heng and Zheng Tan, that the emperor should restore the sacrificial system established under Emperor Wu. The emperor then reversed course and followed Liu Xiang’s advice. Dissension, confusion, and further changes in direction continued through the reign of Emperor Ai. At last, however, Emperor Ping, in response to Wang Mang’s memorials, decisively implemented the reforms suggested by Kuang Heng in 31 B.C.E., and chief among those reforms was the establishment of sacrifices to Heaven and to Earth.⁴⁰ Change and counterchange followed until the reign of Wang Mang, when finally it was “firmly determined that worship should be addressed to Heaven, and that the services should take place at sites near the capital. From then (5 C.E.) until the end of the imperial period, Chinese emperors have worshiped Heaven as their first duty.”⁴¹ It took a century or so, but Dong Zhongshu’s position on these matters was finally, at least to some extent, vindicated.

1. See, especially, Michael Loewe, “The Cult of the Dragon and the Invocation for Rain,” in Chinese Ideas About Nature and Society: Essays in Honour of Derk Bodde, ed. Charles Le Blanc and Susan Blader (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987), 195–213, revised and reprinted in Michael Loewe, Divination, Mythology and Monarchy in Han China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 142–59. The structure, content, and authenticity of chapters 74 and 75 have been analyzed in detail in Sarah A. Queen, From Chronicle to Canon: The Hermeneutics of the “Spring and Autumn” According to Tung Chung-shu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 106–11, to which we refer the reader for a more extensive discussion of these chapters. See also Gary Arbuckle, “Restoring Dong Zhongshu (BCE 195–115): An Experiment in Historical and Philosophical Reconstruction” (Ph.D. diss., University of British Columbia, 1991), 218–62, 499–537.

Readers may recall that rain-procuring and rain-stopping procedures also are described in the second section of chapter 5, “The Quintessential and the Ornamental.” That passage avers that since yang naturally dominates yin, a drought (caused by an excess of yang) is merely an exaggeration of the normative order and that all that is required is to restore the proper balance. Excessive rain, however, indicates that yin is dominating yang, a reversal of the normative order. In restoring the natural balance, it is necessary to punish the crime of “the inferior defying the superior.” Therefore, chapter 5.2 proposes that to stop excessive rainfall, aggressive procedures are needed that involve beating drums and physically assaulting, chastising, and intimidating the altar of Earth. Procedures of that sort do not appear in chapters 74 and 75.

Dong Zhongshu developed the Yu sacrifice of the Spring and Autumn. He erected a clay dragon to attract the rain. His intention was to rely on the clouds and the dragon to summon each other. The Changes states: “The clouds follow the dragon; the winds follow the tiger.” He sought rain by relying on things of the same category. Therefore he erected a clay dragon, yin and yang followed their kind, and clouds and rain spontaneously arrived. (Lunheng 22/86/5–10; compare 45/206/3–9, 47/213/24–25, 55/243/23–27, 55/244/18–22, and 63/274/23–25)

8. Likewise, chapter 52.2 says that Yu’s flood and Tang’s drought were of human origin and not the product of the “constant regularities of Heaven.” When Yao died, the people’s mourning created so much yin energy that a flood ensued; the tyrant Jie, last ruler of the Xia, created so much baleful yang energy that the reign of his virtuous conqueror Tang was marred at first by a great drought. See the note at the beginning of chapter 52.

9. For example, the “Qu li” (Summary of Ritual) chapter of Liji (James Legge, trans., Li Chi: Book of Rites, ed. Ch’u Chai and Winberg Chai [New Hyde Park, N.Y.: University Books, 1967], 1:119); the “Xiu wen” (Promoting Civility) chapter of the Shuoyuan; and the “Rui zhi” (Ritual Presents) of the Bohutong (Tjan Tjoe Som, trans., Po Hu T’ong: The Comprehensive Discussions in the White Tiger Hall, 2 vols. [Leiden: Brill, 1949, 1952], 2:543–45).

What does “Triple Gazing” mean? It is the Gazing sacrifice. Who then received the sacrifice? It was a sacrifice to Mount Tai, the rivers and the seas. Why were sacrifices to Mount Tai, the rivers, and the seas performed? The mountain waters can enrich things for a hundred li. The Son of Heaven, in an orderly fashion, offers sacrifice accordingly. [The clouds] touch its stones and disperse, spread over every inch [of the land] and gather and in the space of one morning bring rain to the whole world. [This happens] only on Mount Tai. The rivers and the seas enrich things for a thousand li. Why the term “still”? … It was a criticism because the Suburban Sacrifice was not performed yet the Triple Gazing sacrifice was performed.

What is implied by the term Zheng? It was a winter sacrifice. The spring [sacrifice] was called Zi; the summer [sacrifice] was called Yue; the autumn [sacrifice] was called Chang; and the winter [sacrifice] was called Zheng. Regular events were not recorded. Why did [the Spring and Autumn] make a record here? In order to criticize. What was there to criticize? [The Spring and Autumn] criticized its frequency. [If a sacrifice is presented too] frequently, [the one who offers sacrifice] becomes negligent. [If one becomes] negligent, [one grows] disrespectful. When the Superior Man offers sacrifice, he is respectful and not negligent. If a sacrifice is presented too seldom, then the one who presents the sacrifice becomes idle. If one becomes idle, one becomes forgetful. If an officer is prevented from attending these four [seasonal sacrifices], he must not wear a fur coat in winter, nor a light dress in summer. (Adapted from Göran Malmqvist, “Studies on the Gongyang and Guliang Commentaries,” Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 43 [1971]: 103)

The “Wang zhi” (Royal Regulations) chapter of the Liji states: “The sacrifices in the ancestral temples of the Son of Heaven and the Lords of the Land were that of spring, called Yue; that of summer, called Di; that of autumn, called Chang; and that of winter, called Zheng” (Legge, Li Chi, 1:224–25).

15. Duke Cheng 8.17.6: “The ninth month. Xinchou. We made use of the Suburban Sacrifice 九月辛丑用郊.” In explicating these lines, the Gongyang Commentary explains: “The Suburban Sacrifice should be made use of in the first month on the first xin day.” The Gongyang Commentary explicitly regards performing the Suburban Sacrifice in the ninth month as a violation of ritual norms.

The Lu performance of the Suburban Sacrifice violated ritual norms. Why did the Lu performance of the Suburban Sacrifice violate ritual norms? The Son of Heaven sacrifices to Heaven; the regional lords sacrifice to [the God of] the Soil. The Son of Heaven presides over matters in all directions as far as the eye can see, there is no place where he does not penetrate. In the case of the regional lords, the mountains and rivers that do not lie within their territorial allotment do not receive [their] sacrifice.

Thus while Dong Zhongshu accepted the performance of the Suburban Sacrifice by the Duke of Zhou in his capacity as regent for King Cheng, he did not accept that the performance of that sacrifice then descended by hereditary right to the subsequent dukes of Lu.

25. For example, in the opening line, Zhang Tang employs the phrase “risking death for daring to report [to your Majesty].” As Enno Giele noted, the phrase “risking death” was actually an abbreviation of “risk committing a crime that merits capital punishment, a Qin convention employed by officials when submitting letters to the throne that continued in use under the Han” (Imperial Decision-Making and Communication in Early China: A Study of Cai Yong’s “Duduan” [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2006], 92). See also Queen, “Rhetoric of Dong Zhongshu’s Imperial Communications.”

30. Sources for the events and issues discussed in this subsection are SJ 28, “Treatise on the Feng and Shan Sacrifices”; HS 25/5, “The Suburban Sacrifice,” which is heavily based on the Shiji; and the Han shu annals of the various Western Han emperors. Relevant studies include Michael Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice, and Self-Divinization in Early China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 287–315; and Michael Loewe, “K’uang Heng and the Reform of Religious Practices—31 BC,” in Crisis and Conflict in Han China, 104 BC to AD 9 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1974), 154–92.