Terminology in Dated Material

The original terminology of the texts under consideration was much more varied than their modern designations suggest.Footnote ⁶ Combining the words chen 讖 (“prediction”) and shu 書 (“writing”) was already done in the Huainanzi 淮南子, presented to Emperor Wu 武帝 (r. 141–87 b.c.e.) by Liu An 劉安 (c. 179–122) in 139 b.c.e.Footnote ⁷ Whatever documents the Huainanzi thus referred to, they must be distinguished from what would also be called “predictive writings” in the Han 漢 (206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) era. In particular, they bear no relationship with the Classics (jing 經).

In 130 b.c.e., an imperial pronouncement transcribed in the Han shu 漢書 (92 c.e.) alludes to “the chart and writ emitted by the [Yellow] River and the Luo” (He Luo chu tu shu 河洛出圖書), an early reference to the well-known River Chart (He tu 河圖) and Luo Writ (Luo shu 洛書).Footnote ⁸ In the founding work of Chinese historiography, the Shi ji 史記 (91 b.c.e.), Sima Qian 司馬遷 recounts how Shi Huangdi 始皇帝 (r. 246–210 b.c.e.) of the Qin 秦 dynasty (221–207 b.c.e.) famously misunderstood as foretelling a “barbarian” (hu 胡) menace the contents of a document (tushu 圖書, literally “a chart and a writ” or an “illustrated writ”) given him by a scholar (sheng 生) from Yan 燕 (in modern Hebei) surnamed Lu 盧, in 215, which instead prophesized the coup d’état of his son Hu Hai 胡亥, the future Second Emperor 二世皇帝 (r. 210–207 b.c.e.) and last Qin ruler.Footnote ⁹ This may well be the earliest mention of a political prediction in the imperial era, but elsewhere in the Records of the Historian, the phrase tushu usually denotes maps and administrative documents,Footnote ¹⁰ a meaning the Book of the Han and later dynastic histories would retain, except in cases of obvious reference to the aforementioned River Chart and Luo Writ. The bibliographic treatise (zhi 志) of the Book of the Han, section on “Astronomy” (“Tianwen” 天文), lists “17 volumes of secret records of charts and writs” (tushu miji shiqi pian 圖書祕記十七篇) as its last item, without further elaboration.Footnote ¹¹ At this point, it is worth remembering that, in the Han shu (and the Hou Han shu 後漢書), archives deposited in the Imperial Library, whose access was highly restricted, were commonly referred to as “secret” (mi) documents.Footnote ¹²

An early Great Peace (taiping 太平) text, reportedly revealed, appeared under the emperors Cheng 成帝 (r. 32–7 b.c.e.) and Ai 哀帝 (r. 6–1 b.c.e.), as the Han dynasty began to face difficulties. To the book, submitted by the esoteric technician Xia Heliang 夏賀良 with full support from the official Li Xun 李尋 (fl. 8–5 b.c.e.), was joined a prediction (chen) from a perfected person (zhenren 真人) named Chijing zi 赤精子, stating that the mandate of sovereignty of the Han had reached a cyclical juncture where it must be renewed. In an edict dated 5 b.c.e., Emperor Ai eagerly saw in this revelation the token of the reception of the mandate of sovereignty (shou ming zhi fu 受命之符) by the Han dynasty, only to change his mind less than two months later, rejecting it as false and punishing its proponents, under the pretext that the reforms they had advocated had proved inefficient.Footnote ¹³

In the beginning of 9 c.e., the regent Wang Mang 王莽 (45 b.c.e.–23 c.e.), who de facto held imperium during the minority of Liu Ying 劉嬰 (d. 25 c.e.), submitted a memorial to the Empress Dowager, in which he stated that the Great Peace text formerly revealed, which had been kept in the imperial archives, was a predictive writing (chenshu) announcing a change of sovereign legitimacy to his own benefit.Footnote ¹⁴ The same year, having ascended the throne, Wang had 42 volumes of writings betokening his mandate of sovereignty (fuming sishi'er pian 符命四十二篇) spread in the Empire.Footnote ¹⁵ Probably inspired by Emperor Ai's edict, the phrase fuming combines a token (fu 符), originally a “symbol” or tessera used for authentication,Footnote ¹⁶ with an order (ming 命), here denoting the mandate of sovereignty conferred by Heaven upon kings or emperors. The following year (10 c.e.), in order to put an end to abuses—after Wang's accession, anyone producing a “betokening of the mandate” had been raised to nobility—any such document differing from those already published was proscribed.Footnote ¹⁷

Numerous predictions and “betokenings of the mandate” surround the Han restoration, in what Dull rightly calls “ideological warfare,”Footnote ¹⁸ including some produced by Liu Xiu's 劉秀 (5 b.c.e.–57 c.e.) opponents—in particular Gongsun Shu 公孫述 (7–36 c.e.), who ruled as emperor in Chengdu for twelve years (25–36 c.e.) before being destroyed by Han armies. Shortly before the restoration, the expressions tuchen 圖讖 (“charts and predictions”) and Kong Qiu mijing 孔丘祕經 (“secret Classics of Confucius”) first appear in a long letter by Su Jing 蘇竟, which won Liu Xiu two allies, plus their retinue and troops.Footnote ¹⁹ In 25 c.e., the very year of his enthronement, Liu Xiu, alias Emperor Guangwu 光武帝 (r. 25–57), addressed a prayer to Heaven, in which first appears the compound chenji 讖記 (“prediction records”).Footnote ²⁰

Guangwu relied as heavily as Wang Mang on predictions. In 31 c.e., after a few years of reign, he explicitly stated his intention to decide upon the affairs of the Empire “by means of predictions.”Footnote ²¹ As soon as he had been enthroned, he had ordered scholars to collate all such documents, resulting in an official edition spread in the Empire in 56, shortly before his death.Footnote ²² From the same year dates the earliest occurrence of jingchen 經讖 (“Classics and predictions”), on a stele erected at imperial command on the occasion of Guangwu's performance of the feng 封 and shan 禪 sacrifices on Mount Tai 泰山 (in modern Shandong), whose inscription was transcribed in the Book of the Later Han, in the treatise on “Sacrifices” (“Jisi” 祭祀) probably compiled by Sima Biao 司馬彪 (c. 240–c. 306).Footnote ²³ Indeed Guangwu, against the advice of some respected high officials, had encouraged the study of predictions together with the Classics. This had been made easier by the growing popularity of recent commentaries to the Classics such as Jing Fang's 京房 (77–37 b.c.e.) interpretation of the Changes (Yi 易), en vogue throughout the Later Han dynasty.Footnote ²⁴ As a result, the contents of predictions and the so-called Current Script (jinwen 今文) trend of interpreting the Classics tended to get closer to one another.Footnote ²⁵

In Han times, wei 緯 primarily meant a parallel of latitude, without any connection to predictions or the Classics. Wujing liuwei 五經六緯, a phrase from the letter, dated about 8 b.c.e., sent by Li Xun to the Commander-in-chief (da sima 大司馬) Wang Gen 王根 (d. 6 b.c.e.), in all likelihood has to do with cosmography.Footnote ²⁶ About a century later, Wang Chong's 王充 Lun heng 論衡 (c. 83 c.e.), which criticizes predictions while frequently mentioning them, still uses phrases such as chenshu miwen 讖書祕文 (“predictive writings and secret texts”).Footnote ²⁷ The earliest application of “weft” to predictions related to the Classics is sometimes ascribed to Zheng Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200 c.e.).Footnote ²⁸ From the late Han era on, the phrase tuwei 圖緯 (“charts and the weft,” or “illustrated weft”) occurs frequently to designate these documents.Footnote ²⁹

The expressions chenwei 讖緯 (“predictions and weft” or “predictive weft”) and weishu 緯書 (“weft writings”), both favored by modern scholarship, seem of comparatively late origin. In quoted material, the former does not appear before the early fourth century,Footnote ³⁰ while the first firmly datable mentions of the latter appear to date to the fifth century (c.e.).Footnote ³¹ As to the distinction between weft supplements to the Classics and predictions as pointing to two different sorts of documents, it would seem to be an invention of the Sui shu 隋書 (636 c.e.), where both are dealt with in the section on “Classics” (jing).Footnote ³² Texts belonging to either sort were kept within the Imperial Library until the Tang at least, the repeated governmental prohibitions being solely directed against private ownership of copies outside the Palace.Footnote ³³

However, most of this literature was lost by the Song 宋 dynasty (960–1279) and only a handful of texts, poorly transmitted, remain today, plus thousands of excerpts quoted in Chinese and Japanese sources. Yasui Kōzan 安居香山 (1921–89) and Nakamura Shōhachi 中村璋八 carefully collected both materials—full texts and fragments—and compiled what may be called the weft corpus, published as a six-volume critical edition under the title Isho shūsei 緯書集成.Footnote ³⁴ This edition, according to Yasui's own estimate, contains 43% of “predictions,” 46% of “weft,” and 11% of various other materials.Footnote ³⁵ No less than 176 different titles of weft texts are mentioned, including variants. The meaning of these titles is not always clear, not to mention, in some cases, the purpose of the texts themselves and the meaning of their fragments.Footnote ³⁶ Due to the thematic richness of the corpus, data of different natures naturally coexist therein—hence the Prévert inventory quoted above.

The present study is mostly based on disconnected quotations ascribed to a dozen weft sources, often examined out of their original context due to their fragmentary nature. In addition to their heterodox reputation, they are considered (and often prove to be) corrupted due to their textual history of repeated proscription, loss, unclear transmission lines, and suspected forgery. Even though the most obvious errors can be corrected, the risk of misinterpretation may never be totally excluded.

Transcendent Hierarchy and Sovereignty

In weft literature, the organization of human society is understood not as being in the first place the creation of an individual or human group, but as being consubstantial with the intrinsic hierarchical order of the universe. This is particularly clear in a few passages from a “weft of the Changes” (Yiwei 易緯) known as Regulations Chiseled by Qian (Qian zuodu 乾鑿度) [no. 5].Footnote ³⁷ Not only is Regulations Chiseled by Qian one of the earliest surviving weft texts, it is also one of the very few of them today not in a fragmentary condition—the extant version has two chapters (juan 卷).Footnote ³⁸ A commentary, ascribed to Zheng Xuan, on the first chapter exclaims:

Zheng's commentary probably owes something to the later strata of the composite Zhuangzi 莊子.Footnote ⁴⁰ But this cosmological justification of human hierarchy is also formulated in the same Regulations Chiseled by Qian, which sees it as parallel to the binary hierarchy of Yang (Heaven, above) and Yin (Earth, below) in the following terms:

On a more technical level, the vertical, six-line structure of hexagrams is described as encapsulating human hierarchy, beginning with the first (or lower) line:

After a brief commentary, the body text resumes:

The first five denominations in the opening half of the quotation refer to the official hierarchy, in ascending order, of the Zhou 周 royal dynasty (1049/1045–256 b.c.e.).Footnote ⁴⁵ According to Regulations Chiseled by Qian, the structures both of human society and of the hexagrams of the Changes share a vertical logic, expressed here in the basic context of prognostication and reversal of fortune. Interestingly, Chapter 2 of the same Weft text—as poorly transmitted as the first one, if not more corruptedFootnote ⁴⁶—proposes a variant of this passage. The text deals with a technique used to associate each hexagram line with a social rank. The mid-Qing 清 (1644–1911) dynasty exegete Zhang Huiyan 張惠言 (1761–1802) invites the reader to distinguish this technique from the usual method of pairing trigrams and hexagrams with calendar data, known as guaqi 卦氣 (“diagrams and pneumata”).Footnote ⁴⁷ During the Former Han 前漢 dynasty (206 b.c.e.–8 c.e.), “one of the leading theorists” of this method was the scholar Meng Xi 孟喜 (1st cent. b.c.e.).Footnote ⁴⁸ The text first connects the lines of the hexagrams with the duration of the tropical, or solar, year (“365 ¼ days”),Footnote ⁴⁹ then enunciates the following guideline:

The whole passage this excerpt comes from is not entirely clear and it is tempting to regard it as being textually corrupt. At any rate, the denominations again refer to the Zhou hierarchy, albeit in a slightly different order than in the preceding quotation, and with the addition of the rank of minister (qing 卿). Invariably in both renditions, human hierarchy is rooted in low-ranking civil service and topped by the ancestral temple (the past sovereigns), while the reigning sovereign occupies the penultimate rank. It should also be emphasized that all the instances above occur against the technical background of a text whose main purpose was, according to Nielsen, “[to correlate] the hexagrams of the Book of Changes with the calendars known in the first century [C.E.] in order to be able to calculate the duration of the [Han] dynasty and lend support to Emperor Guangwu's accession.”Footnote ⁵⁴

A hierarchical pattern similar to that in the second fragment above appears in another weft of the Changes, Examining the Charts (Jilan tu 稽覽圖) [no. 12], also subsisting in two chapters.Footnote ⁵⁵ Just like Regulations Chiseled by Qian, this weft text comes with a commentary ascribed to Zheng Xuan. It describes a method for distributing hexagrams in groups of five allocated to the twelve months, for a total of sixty hexagrams—leaving aside the four primary hexagrams Kan 坎, Zhen 震, Li 離 and Dui 兌. For example, hexagrams Xiaoguo 小過, Meng 蒙, Yi 益, Jian 漸, and Tai 泰 are allocated to the first month. The method uses the same hierarchical structure as in the passage just quoted to organize the hexagrams within each monthly group of five by attributing a social rank to each hexagram; in the example above, Xiaoguo corresponds to the eight hundred feudatories (babai zhuhou 八百諸侯), Meng to the twenty-seven grand masters (ershiqi dafu 二十七大夫), Yi to the nine ministers (jiu qing 九卿), Jian to the three dukes (sangong), and Tai to the son of Heaven (tianzi). Five series of twelve hexagrams are thus defined, but only the series called “son of Heaven” seems to obey an internal logic: from the hexagram Fu 復 (Yang appearing within Yin in the eleventh month) to Kun 坤 (pure Yin in the next tenth month), it clearly follows the twin fluctuation of Yin and Yang throughout a full annual cycle.Footnote ⁵⁶ Modern Chinese scholarship traces this method back to a specialist of the Changes who claimed to be a disciple of Meng Xi, Jiao Yanshou 焦延壽 (1st cent. b.c.e.).Footnote ⁵⁷ It may be noted that the figures added to the ranks—800, 27, 9, and 3—alter the reference to Zhou officialdom only in the case of the nine ministers, which Hucker documents for the entire imperial era, but not earlier.Footnote ⁵⁸ Also, the senior servicemen of the first line and the ancestral temple of the sixth line from the hierarchy in Regulations Chiseled by Qian do not appear in this fivefold pattern.

The fact that, in both weft sources, a sociological and administrative terminology was used for the purpose of calendar- and prognostication-related techniques cannot be regarded as incidental. To put it differently, the choice, by anonymous authors, of the official hierarchy as an ordering criterion in contexts otherwise unrelated to officialdom must be significant. It is tempting to interpret these data as being a clear rhetorical manifestation of the well-known interweaving of socio-political and cosmological concerns in classical China, or as reflecting “the mutual construction of cosmology and power,” to quote Aihe Wang.Footnote ⁵⁹

These prolegomena lead us to materials scattered in other weft texts, which share a fragmentary state—in sharp contrast with the two texts quoted above—and an utterly unclear origin and textual history. In these texts, not only is hierarchy immanent in mankind due to its cosmic origin and nature, the forms of sovereignty themselves basically correspond to cosmic norms. An assumed companion to the long-lost Classic of Music (Yue jing 樂經), Examination of the Glorious Blessings (Ji yaojia 稽耀嘉) [no. 7] is also regarded as belonging to the group of earliest weft texts. One of its surviving fragments describes a simple binary rule for the succession of kings (wang 王). According to this rule, the reign of a first king is rooted in the Heavenly Way (ben tiandao 本天道), whose qualities are “family closeness and substantive frugality” (qin qin er zhi sheng 親親而質省). Once these heavenly qualities are abandoned, his successor rises, who models his own reign on the Earthly Way (fa didao 法地道), whose qualities—expectedly the antitheses of those of the Heavenly Way—are “reverence for the exalted and formal over-elaboration” (zun zun er wen fan 尊尊而文煩). Once these earthly qualities in turn are lost, the next king then reverts to the former heavenly profile—an explicit case of binary cycle, which leaves out the third component we more than half expect to find next: the Human Way.Footnote ⁶⁰

That such a model leaves little room for human personality and creativity is obvious, but finds its justification in the simple fact that the person of the ruler is viewed as partaking of universal equilibrium. This is plainly stated in the following fragment attributed to the Weft of the Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing wei 孝經緯) [no. 9], a text of uncertain date, whose title probably refers to an unspecified “weft of the Book of Filial Piety”:

Variants of this motif abound in Chinese sources, describing the auspicious or inauspicious responses of Heaven and Earth to a virtuous or evil reign. Typically, these responses concern the timeliness or untimeliness and regularity or abnormality of astronomical phenomena, the abundance or paucity of harvests, and the appearance of propitious or ill-omened beasts and plants. That the idea had a great significance to the Han mind is illustrated in a proposal submitted by the respected scholar Gongsun Hong 公孫弘 (c. 200–121 b.c.e.) to the throne between 140 and 130 b.c.e., during the early years of Wudi's rule.Footnote ⁶⁴ Here is how this scholar exalts the state of harmony (he 和) in this famous composition:

Here the emphasis is not on stellar order itself, but rather on a generalized state of harmony, which encompasses all levels from the micro- to the macrocosm—the person, the family, society as a whole, remote regions, and natural as well as supernatural phenomena—and the propitious effects of the ruler's virtue (de 德) and enlightenment (ming 明).

The theme of the consubstantiality of the ruler and the astral realm is further developed in Spring and Autumn: Token of Bestirred Essences (Chun qiu ganjing fu 春秋感精符) [no. 4], a fragmentary weft companion to the Lu chronicle and one of the earliest weft texts.Footnote ⁶⁹ One of its surviving fragments explains:

Thus is the sovereign of humanity first and foremost a cosmic sovereign—a cosmocrat. Then the same source naturally understands the diachronic succession of rulers as being rooted in stellar order:

The anonymous commentator—perhaps the third-century scholar Song Jun 宋均, who is named in the majority of fragments of this text to which a commentary is attached—adds names of mythic rulers to the sequence in the following manner:

Thus commented upon in the light of the Five Agents theory, the fragment appears to unfold the following spatiotemporal sequence of sovereigns, beginning and ending in the eastern quadrant: Verdant Emperor (East), Yao 堯 (South), Shun 舜 (center), Yu 禹 (West), Tang 湯 (North), and King Wen 文王 (East again). Here again, whatever individuality and free will may have been conceded to the Verdant Emperor and his twenty-seven successors would seem to be of secondary import to (since it is totally absent from) the logic at work, which implies, for example, that a sovereign ruling by virtue of the South (agent Fire and color red) must have a successor ruling by virtue of the center (agent Soil and color yellow), and so on. However, weft sources often disagree on the correlation of a given ruler with a particular color and agent, suggesting that there did not exist a unified system. Again, what is of interest here is this peculiar notion of sovereignty not primarily defined according to the abilities of exceptional individuals, but as being part and parcel of universal mechanisms. This basically agrees with the views of the historian Ban Biao 班彪 (3–54 c.e.), who wrote his essay On the Royal Mandate (Wangming lun 王命論) in support of the Han restoration.Footnote ⁷⁷ Ban Biao, while stressing the moral qualities of the Liu 劉 clan, stated clearly that “this sacred vessel, the rule of the empire, … cannot be won either by craft or force.”Footnote ⁷⁸

Let us consider two last fragments dealing with hierarchy, sovereignty, and the crucial concept of mandate change—that is, the transfer of sovereignty from a ruling person or lineage to another one. Both fragments are attributed to the Spring and Autumn: Germ of the Primordial Mandate (Chun qiu yuanming bao 春秋元命包) [no. 1], another companion to the chronicle of the state of Lu, and also one of the earliest weft texts.Footnote ⁷⁹ The first fragment illustrates the superhuman legitimacy of political authority and the necessity to rule in accordance with the celestial realm:

The person chosen by Heaven to assume monarchical power may only ascend the throne once all the feudatories have recognized his legitimacy, thereby confirming that he is the right candidate. A living depository of political authority, the new king nevertheless must conform his governance to the will of Heaven, lest his rule be deprived of legitimacy. He must also adopt the right, new cosmic norm (yuan 元, “origin” in my translation, may refer to a ruler's regnal title as well as the epoch of a calendar system), which will enable universal cycles to resume and heavenly processes to be effective. The second fragment states:

Besides a change of regnal title, the accession of a new ruler implies many symbolic and practical adjustments designed to reflect and espouse the change of macrocosmic regimen. We find again the idea of the alternation of the substantive and the formal (zhi/wen 質/文), two opposite ruling modes we met above in a fragment of Examination of the Glorious Blessings, now in a cyclical formulation in line with the binary rhythmics of Yin and Yang. But in another fragment of the same text, binarity evolves into ternarity as each founder of the three royal dynasties (sanwang 三王) is said to have established his own guiding principle, the principles of the three dynasties being referred to as the “three moral principles” (sanjiao 三教): the Xia 夏 established loyalty (zhong 忠); the Shang/Yin 商/殷 (c. 1570–1045 b.c.e.), reverence (jing 敬); and the Zhou, formality (wen). The fragment states that the second and third principles (reverence and formality) were each born out of the limitations of their respective preceding principle (loyalty and reverence).Footnote ⁸³ This threefold system assigns King Wen's guiding principle to the lowest rank, thus perhaps departing from the traditional high Confucian regard for Zhou kingship.

The same system was used in the Records of the Historian to expel the Qin dynasty from the normal ternary succession cycle, to the benefit of the Han house. In the “Basic Annals of Gaozu” (“Gaozu benji” 高祖本紀), Sima Qian quotes his father Sima Tan 司馬談 as stating that the dynastic guiding principle of the Qin was penal laws (xingfa 刑法), which de facto discarded the Qin as embodying any of the three moral principles above. Thus was justified the congruence of the Han dynasty with loyalty—the highest rank, corresponding to the unifying principle of Heaven (tiantong 天統).Footnote ⁸⁴

Epiphanies of Sovereign Legitimacy

It is well known that political legitimacy and the succession of sovereigns are at the core of weft ideology, and that the authors of weft texts singled out every new ruler by means of extraordinary conception or birth and peculiar bodily features, and constructed a concept of sovereignty based on stories of supernatural appointment and of post-enthronement thanksgiving performances to the highest cosmic entities.Footnote ⁸⁵ In this section I focus on the narratives used by the authors of weft literature to account for the succession of early Chinese rulers, and on how the concept of sovereignty—including social hierarchy and political legitimacy as described in the preceding section—was dealt with in these narratives. Let it be clear that discussing the historicity of the “mythical” figures and earliest dynasties mentioned hereafter does not come into the scope of this work.Footnote ⁸⁶

Our survey naturally begins with Fu Xi 伏羲, the first of the Three August Ones (sanhuang 三皇) in most of the sources of traditional Chinese historiography.Footnote ⁸⁷ Our first source is a weft companion to the Venerable Documents (Shang shu 尚書) bearing the title Venerable Documents: Accurate Observations (Shang shu zhonghou 尚書中候) [no. 10].Footnote ⁸⁸ This work contained the following passage describing Fu Xi's enthronement:

The fragment recounts how, as soon as Fu Xi acceded to the throne, two supernatural beasts sprang out of the two central rivers, emissaries sent to reveal to Fu Xi two esoteric documents, the famous River Chart and Luo Writ. Fu Xi used the former as a model to conceive the eight trigrams, which could not have been possible without the prior dragon-horse epiphany. Just as Fu Xi's emperorship descends from above, one of the most famed achievements Chinese tradition ascribes to him basically hinges upon revelation.

Another fragment of the same text introduces Huang Di, the Yellow Emperor, who is either the last of the Three August Ones or the first of the Five Emperors (wudi 五帝) according to the sources:Footnote ⁹⁰

Versions of the same episode in (a) the late fifth-century treatise on “Auspicious Phenomena as Tokens” (“Furui” 符瑞) of the Book of the Song Footnote ⁹⁴ and (b) the anonymous commentary on the document known as the Annals Written on Bamboo (Zhushu jinian 竹書紀年), a Wei 魏 state (403–225 b.c.e.) official chronicle recovered from a burial site around 280 c.e. and whose authenticity remains debated, both read “seal characters” (zhuanzi 篆字).Footnote ⁹⁵ In the Accurate Observations version, it is interesting to note that the attached (and anonymous) commentary suggests that the Yellow Emperor conformed his governance to stellar order. Contrary to this very Han-time political urge, my rendering assumes that the Yellow Emperor as depicted here takes up the construction of stellar order, which matches his cosmic function as the god of the center and of the planet Saturn (Zhen xing 鎮星).Footnote ⁹⁶ In this regard, the locus classicus is Chapter 3, “On the Patterns of Heaven” (“Tianwen xun” 天文訓), of the Huainanzi.Footnote ⁹⁷

Germ of the Primordial Mandate gives a different version of the epiphany experienced by the Yellow Emperor. A first fragment recounts how a phoenix released a chart (tu) it carried in its mouth in front of the Yellow Emperor, who kowtowed twice before accepting it.Footnote ⁹⁸ The contents of the revealed chart is divulged in a separate fragment:

Again the revelation is of crucial import to the chosen recipient. The Five Beginnings it discloses concern, in this order, (1) cosmogony, (2) the yearly cycle, (3) royal sovereignty, (4) political action in accord with the calendar norm, and (5) territorial or dynastic unity—in other words, the paraphernalia of early Chinese rulers. A recurring theme in the exegesis of the opening entry of the Spring and Autumn chronicle of Lu,Footnote ¹⁰¹ these Five Beginnings owe perhaps something to the ideas ascribed to Dong Zhongshu.Footnote ¹⁰² But a fragment of another lost weft text, Analects: Prophecies (Lunyu chen 論語讖) [no. 8], also describes the fivefold contents of a revealed document explicitly called River Chart. In a variant of the fragment, Confucius (“Zhongni” 仲尼) in person tells the story, saying: “I heard that” (wu wen 吾聞)

In this latter fragment, the River Chart will (1) give the future emperor foreknowledge of the appointed time of his reign—or perhaps of the dates of all imperial reigns, including the last one of his dynasty—together with (2) his governmental roadmap, which increases our feeling that early Chinese cosmocrats were granted little freedom of action. Unless both characters actually refer to the Luo Writ and River Chart, the otherwise unspecified (3) writs and (4) charts must be documents of heavenly nature, which, just like (5) the tokens (fu), attest the conformity and timeliness of the transfer of sovereign legitimacy from Yao to Shun.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ In the Annals Written on Bamboo as well as in the treatise on “Auspicious Phenomena as Tokens” of the Book of the Song, a commentary explains that the five old men “probably are the essences of the five planets” (gai wuxing zhi jing ye 蓋五星之精也); in other words, celestial messengers.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

Accurate Observations then introduces the fifth ruler mentioned in the opening chapter of the Records of the Historian,Footnote ¹⁰⁷ Yao. A fragment explains that Emperor Yao (Di Yao 帝堯) ruled for seventy years, and that auspicious stars appeared in the Wing (L27).Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Two further fragments add:

Thus Yao, the celestial instances having signified their approval of his long rule by a series of rare and auspicious events, decided to erect, next to the Yellow River and the river Luo, or at their confluence point perhaps, an “altar,” tan 壇, defined by Xu Shen 許慎 as a “sacrificial space,” ji chang 祭場, in his Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 (c. 100 c.e.).Footnote ¹¹¹ On this newly erected religious site, peculiar meteorological phenomena then introduced the appearing of a supernatural creature carrying in its mouth a solid, shell-shaped document. Other fragments give variant accounts of the event, including the following one, which discloses further information concerning the object thus brought to Yao:

The object granted Yao had the shape of a large back half of a turtle shell—reminiscent perhaps of the heat-fissured front half (plastron) used by diviners—covered with symbolically colored signs revealing crucial knowledge concerning astronomy, the calendar, historiography, and how to predict the fate of kings, in all likeliness including Yao's own.

In Germ of the Primordial Mandate, the story is told quite differently, though still in a fluvial context. It is preceded by another comparable fragment in the Japanese critical edition, recounting how, as Yao was sitting in a boat with his generalissimo, then Defender-in-Chief (taiwei 太尉)Footnote ¹¹⁴ Shun, a phoenix (fenghuang 風皇) came by carrying a chart on its back.Footnote ¹¹⁵ Unfortunately, no surviving fragment documents the nature of the chart. The next fragment partly compensates for the loss, even though the change of divine emissary could indicate a distinct revelation:

The epiphanic beast matches the draconic nature of Yao, whose mother, named Qing Du 慶都, is said to have conceived him after intercourse with a red dragon, in a long fragment of a weft text dealing with the legitimacy of the Han, Spring and Autumn: Chart of Concord and Sincerity (Chun qiu hecheng tu 春秋合誠圖) [no. 6].Footnote ¹²⁰ In the same fragment, the dragon first appeared to Yao's mother bearing on its back a chart (tu) prophesizing the birth, with a graphic depiction (tu) of Yao's future bodily appearance.Footnote ¹²¹ The symbolic load of the object is patent, although it lacks the color green to fully embody the Five Agents while scarlet red (chi 赤) appears no less than three times.

Traditional historiography regards Shun's successor, Yu or Yu the Great 大禹, as the first ruler of the Xia dynasty, which is regarded as marking the beginning of hereditary monarchy in China. According to the well-known account in the Records of the Historian, Yao had ordered Yu's father, Gun 鯀, to find a means to control the repeated flooding of the Yellow River. Gun had attempted for nine years to confine the waters within stone embankments but had eventually failed and been executed. Having succeeded Yao, Shun ordered Yu to resume his father's assignment. Yu agreed. However, rather than trying to block the waters as his father had unsuccessfully done, Yu designed a network of canals to be dug out at strategic positions so as to direct the overflow towards the sea. Work lasted thirteen years and proved successful.Footnote ¹²² After the death of Shun, whose son Shang Jun 商均 did not seem capable of ruling the empire, the feudatories turned to Yu instead, who had earned the gratitude of the relieved populations. Yu peacefully ascended the throne.Footnote ¹²³

Accurate Observations fragments recount a different version of the story. Initially, Yao, not Shun, charges Yu with the task of regulating waters. Yu at first refuses, arguing that the emperor may not assign a task of cosmic (“Heaven-and-Earth”) magnitude to a human being. Yao retorts that the order does not come from him, but from Heaven. Yu then approaches the Yellow River and, as he stares at the water:

Yu's first-person variant of the anecdote ends with his accepting the assignment. Here again, a key figure in the construction of Chinese sovereignty needs an epiphanic injunction before taking the right and expected course of action. Here as in other fragments, the fish is a mediator between the divine and human realms.Footnote ¹²⁶

But sovereignty sanctioned from above is a double-edged weapon, for Heaven may signify its taking back of the mandate as authoritatively as it had conferred it. The first example of such deprivation of divine right is the last ruler of the Xia dynasty, Jie 桀 (or Di Gui 帝癸).Footnote ¹²⁷ In Accurate Observations, Jie's fate is foreboded by the appearance of a baleful comet by the name of Wry Arrow (Wangshi 枉矢).Footnote ¹²⁸ Jie is remembered chiefly for his wickedness or immorality (wudao 無道). He “murdered Guan Longfeng 關龍逢 (a worthy official who dared to remonstrate with him), extinguished the dynasty, ruined the calendar and the annals, and devastated the world. Sages ran away from licentiousness and slackness, and the ancestral cult was unattended.”Footnote ¹²⁹ Expectedly, such a governmentally and morally deficient virtue soon provoked cosmic discontentment, which became manifest as “Earth poured out a yellow mist,” “Heaven rained blood,” and “mountains collapsed.”Footnote ¹³⁰ As we shall see further on, Jie was eventually removed and the heavenly mandate passed on to the house of Shang/Yin. But the royal virtue of the latter would also decline and become exhausted. Like Jie at the end of the Xia, the last Shang/Yin king Di Xin 帝辛 (r. 1086–1045 b.c.e.), called Zhou 紂 by his contemporaries, was a sort of Caligula or Nero. To the atrocities ascribed to him in the Records of the Historian,Footnote ¹³¹Accurate Observations adds abnormal phenomena, which were interpreted as portents of divine displeasure and manifestations of a state of general cosmic dysfunction. During Di Xin's rule, “ten suns conflicted and earth rained on Bo 亳,” the Shang/Yin capital.Footnote ¹³² Di Xin is said to have finally committed suicide, “burning” while “[his] dynasty was annihilated.”Footnote ¹³³ According to another fragment, “it rained stones, all as big as jars,” during the last years of his rule.Footnote ¹³⁴ The dramatic emphasis is naturally proportional to the excessive deportment of the decadent prince.

After Di Xin, Heaven's mandate passed on to the house of Zhou. Ji Chang 姬昌 of Zhou is commonly referred to as King Wen 文王, although he did not officially hold supreme power but laid the ground for his descendants’ effective kingship by expanding his territorial control at the expense of Shang/Yin suzerainty. A fragment from Accurate Observations deals with the notification he received from divine powers concerning the part he was expected to play in the forthcoming dynastic change:

This new epiphany was scheduled to occur on a Jiazi 甲子 (S1/B1) day, which, since it marks the beginning of a new sexagesimal cycle, also symbolizes cosmic regeneration. As to the color of the celestial writ brought to Ji Chang, it may remind us that, in 5 c.e., Wang Mang opportunely received a white stone retrieved from a well, round above (as Heaven) and square below (as Earth), bearing a composition in cinnabar-red writing (danshu 丹書) saying that he should become the new emperor.Footnote ¹³⁸

Meanwhile, another divine notification was sent to Jiang Ziya 姜子牙, an official who had left the tyrant's service and was awaiting a chance to partake in his overthrow. According to Accurate Observations, the Elder Duke (taigong 太公)—Jiang's later honorific title as a renowned strategistFootnote ¹³⁹—went fishing by the Pan stream 磻溪 (a tributary of the river Wei 渭 in modern Shaanxi). In a nightly dream, the god of the Northern Dipper (Beidou shen 北斗神) suggested to him the idea of attacking Di Xin.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Jiang's meeting with Ji Chang, whatever its historicity, must have taken place soon after the omen in our narratives. It is recounted as follows in a fragment from Accurate Observations:

Not only did King Wen receive a revelation, so did the worthy figure destined to become the most valuable ally of the early Zhou rulers. An inscription on the revealed item transmits the orders from above. Interestingly, this revelation bestowed upon Jiang Ziya included the statement of his future reward—to be enfeoffed with the state of Qi—and Jiang explicitly put forth this claim when he met with King Wen. The worthy Jiang was doubtlessly ready to compromise himself in a political venture, but we are left to wonder if he would have joined King Wen's cause without this substantial compensation.

In Germ of the Primordial Mandate, an abridged rendition of Ji Chang's reception of the mandate retains only four elements: (a) the cinnabar writ (danshu); (b) the proclamation of Zhou kingship; (c) calendar reform; and (d) the execution of the perfidious Marquis (hou 侯)Footnote ¹⁴⁵ of Chong 崇, named Hu 虎, whose defamation had caused Ji Chang to be briefly imprisoned by Di Xin.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ But King Wen never ruled. He died while the Shang/Yin still clung to power, and the responsibility for dealing the final blow to Di Xin devolved upon his son Fa 發, the future King Wu 武王 (r. 1049/1045–1043 b.c.e.), the first effective ruler of the Zhou dynasty. Here is how a fragment of the Accurate Observations reports Fa's actions:

According to this account, even though the royal mandate had formally been passed on to him, Fa was careful not to take any action of his own will for some time. Only when pressed by all the feudatories did he eventually accept the title of king, but even then he waited for a clear manifestation of Heaven's will before deciding on a course of action. The expected epiphany turned out to be a fluvial revelation, which involved a fish bearing readable writings, followed by a a scarlet red crow made of heavenly fire. The final allusion to the “writ of the sparrow” (queshu 雀書) suggests that the whole experience was a reenactment, or a direct extension, of King Wen's past investiture. The designs of Heaven could hardly have been made clearer to the cautious or hesitating King Wu.

What remains of the whole process of political transition from Wen to Wu in Germ of the Primordial Mandate boils down to this single fragment:

At least for the author of the text the fragment derives from, the most important feature of the story is unquestionably the epiphanic transfer of a revealed document from one ruler to the next. Furthermore, the supernatural intercessor has become a phoenix (in lieu of the red sparrow or crow) in this abridged rendition, the same beast which appeared in the narratives of the revelations bestowed upon the Yellow Emperor and Shun.

Accurate Observations fragments offer several variants of a story involving Duke Mu of Qin 秦穆公 (r. 659–621 b.c.e.), who ruled one of the most powerful political entities of the Spring and Autumn era and is included in the Five Hegemons (wuba 五霸) nomenclature. Here is one of these fragments:

As in the case of King Wen of Zhou above, the heavenly messenger takes the guise of a sparrow, only it is now white, not red. Indeed, even though historical evidence from the Records of the Historian states that the Qin dynasty ruled by virtue of agent Water (color black),Footnote ¹⁵⁹ during the Later Han 後漢 (25–220 c.e.) another theory, attested in weft remnants, regarded Qin's emblematic agent as having been Metal (color white). This theory considered that Fire (Han) had supplanted Metal (Qin) according to the mutual conquest (xiangsheng 相勝 or xiangke 相剋) succession order of the Five Agents sometimes ascribed to Zou Yan 鄒衍 (305–240 b.c.e.).Footnote ¹⁶⁰ Although in this instance cinnabar red fails to correspond to the sparrow's color, the revealed register explicitly belongs to the “cinnabar writ” category, which we have met in relation to King Wen. Not only does this document announce its recipient's forthcoming hegemony, it also foretells the succession of all Qin rulers down to the Second Emperor of the dynasty bearing the same name. We may surmise that the document also discloses the future rise of the house of Qin from kingship to emperorship.

The last fragment of this section is ascribed to the Spring and Autumn Weft (Chun qiu wei 春秋緯) [no. 11], a phrase sometimes appearing by itself, sometimes followed by an additional book title, and which should perhaps be understood as a generic reference to unspecified Spring and Autumn weft companions rather than to a single text.Footnote ¹⁶¹ In this fragment, we meet Confucius and yet another cinnabar writ:

Importantly, even though he never was a political ruler, Confucius himself was conferred a tangible revelation of sovereignty. But this is not surprising, considering he was the Uncrowned King (suwang 素王) or Dark Sage (xuansheng 玄聖) laying the ground for the advent of Han emperorship:Footnote ¹⁶⁴ the color both of the epiphanic agent and of the writ matches that of Fire, which was the official Han emblematic agent since the Guangwu restoration.

Ritual Jade Disc Immersion

In the treatise on “Auspicious Phenomena as Tokens” of the Book of the Song as well as in the anonymous commentary on the Annals Written on Bamboo, the transfer of power from Yao to Shun is given a more detailed treatment combining the narratives from the fragments of Germ of the Primordial Mandate and Accurate Observations discussed in the preceding section. In the versions from Shen Yue's treatise and the Annals Written on Bamboo, Yao wishes to resign in favor of Shun.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ Together with Shun and his ministers, he then returns to the riverside altar for a performance depicted as follows in Accurate Observations:

By throwing a disc into the Luo, Yao, hoping to receive directions concerning his succession, intentionally provokes a new epiphany. The motif of the inscribed carapace returns, only now the item is not conveyed by a dragon-horse but by a turtle of dark color, xuan 玄, the color of the agent Water and of the northern sky, and the symbol of Heaven. The writ on the back of the beast enjoins Yao to abdicate in favor of Shun. Another Accurate Observations fragment ascribes the same performance to Shun, in a similar context of fin de règne and successional incertitude. Shun sinks a jade disc in the river, provoking a flash of bright light, then a yellow dragon comes out of the water, next to the altar (the parallel passage in the Annals Written on Bamboo and the treatise on “Auspicious Phenomena as Tokens” explains that, beforehand, Shun sets up an altar similar to the one formerly built by Yao), bearing on its back a chart rolled up into a scroll. The revealed document bears an inscription made of “scarlet red signs and emerald characters” (chiwen lüzi 赤文綠字), a reiteration of the type of writings found on some of the tangible revelations encountered above.Footnote ¹⁶⁹

Later on, when it is clear that the tyrant Jie, last ruler of the Xia, must be removed, we are to understand that nobody would ever rebel against him without a proper commission from Heaven. The eventual celestial nominee is Tang 湯, lord of Shang, one of Xia's vassal states, who will found the Shang/Yin dynasty and be known as Tian Yi 天乙.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ A few fragments from the Accurate Observations report how the awaited command from above is eventually transmitted to him:

The future Tianyi, emulating his illustrious predecessors, performs what has now explicitly become a rite (li 禮) consisting in sinking a jade disc, or several, in the river Luo. This time, though, three such artifacts (corresponding perhaps to three consecutive performances) are required for the supernatural experience to begin. Possibly to Tianyi's disappointment, the epiphany does not involve a dragon, a dragon-horse, a phoenix or a turtle, but fishes, then a bird, of the color of Earth (yellow) and Heaven (xuan 玄) respectively. But the divine order these beasts reveal certainly meets his expectation, for he knows by now that he will soon ascend the throne and found his own dynasty.

Remarkably, Tianyi is also the name of a star located next to the Northern Dipper and belonging to the tail of the western circumpolar constellation of Draco, the Dragon (10 Dra). Astronomers have noted that this star was the closest celestial body to the apparent northern pole during most of the third and the beginning of the second millennia b.c.e., possibly making it a Polar Star by default.Footnote ¹⁷³ Just like the correlation between mythic rulers and constellations, Tang's title exemplifies not only the congruence between human society and stellar (heavenly) order, but also the transcendent nature of Chinese sovereignty.

Zhou rule being firmly established from King Wu onwards, one would expect celestial involvement in human affairs to recede until the next dynastic change. But the sphere of divine intervention seems to also include critical conjunctions, such as a king's minority. The Duke of Zhou 周公, younger brother of the deceased King Wu, had to assume the regency for seven years until the coming of age of his nephew, King Cheng 成王 (r. 1042/1035–1006 b.c.e.). Here is how the regency ended according to a fragment of Accurate Observations:

An even more explicit account, ascribed to the same source, confirms that King Cheng is knowingly reenacting the epiphanic experience originally initiated by Yao and which, since the time of Tianyi, may have developed into a full liturgical office:

King Cheng performs Yao's rite next to both rivers, gaining revelation of the Luo Writ and of the River Chart. In variants of the fragment ascribed to the same text, both rites are conflated into a single one, King Cheng being granted revelation of a single document, named “Chart of the Dark Shell” (Xuanjia zhi tu (元) [玄] 甲之圖), by a dragon.Footnote ¹⁷⁶ The “dark shell” is likely a reminiscence of the object conveyed to Yao. The efficient and loyal Duke of Zhou—whom Wang Mang would try to emulate when, himself regent, he carefully prepared his takeover—having returned effective power to its rightful holder King Cheng, the empire knows Great Peace (taiping 太平) and auspicious beasts such as phoenixes and the fabulous luan 鸞 bird are observed near the Palace.Footnote ¹⁷⁷

A last fragment, ascribed to Venerable Documents: Investigating the Numinous Effulgent Ones (Shang shu kao lingyao 尚書考靈曜) [no. 3],Footnote ¹⁷⁸ reports the following story, which involves the founder of the Qin dynasty, the First Emperor:

Weft literature also ascribes a performance of Yao's rite to the founder of the first Chinese empire. Although the scriptural contents of the jade tablet are missing, the narrative structure of the fragment is evidently based on the same pattern as those dealt with above. The mention of a supernatural beast does not apply here to a heavenly emissary conveying a revelation, but is probably a reminiscence of a black dragon (heilong 黑龍) the First Emperor claimed his ancestor Duke Wen of Qin 秦文公 (r. 765–716 b.c.e.) had captured on a hunting expedition.Footnote ¹⁸² The Black Duke, whom I cannot otherwise identify, is probably an embodiment of agent Water and the North. The era of the First Emperor is beyond the scope of the Annals Written on Bamboo. As for Shen Yue, he omits the episode in his treatise on “Auspicious Phenomena as Tokens” in the Book of the Song.

Implications and Hypotheses

It has been argued that dynastic legitimacy in ancient China was, under Zhou kingship, based on the direct observation of astronomical phenomena and on their interpretation as obeying a ternary cycle (Xia, Shang/Yin, Zhou), and that the quinary cycle based on the theory of the Five Agents which had supplanted it by Han times was an arrangement of the former ternary pattern.Footnote ¹⁸³ Weft fragments challenge the received understanding of these successive systems as being fixed and of occurrences not fitting in them as betraying later interpolations. Loewe's remarkable efforts at sketching out a clear chronology of emblematic agent changes during the Han era shows that debates on the matter took place quite often, and that scholarly consensus was hardly ever reached.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ Importantly, dissenting theories did not simply vanish whenever an imperial edict announced the new official ruling agent. These theories and others, disregarded by later mainstream ideology, survived in particular in weft texts, which were based, among other materials, on pre-imperial and early Han works such as the Chunqiu fanlu 春秋繁露,Footnote ¹⁸⁵ parts of which are ascribable to Dong Zhongshu,Footnote ¹⁸⁶ the Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 (c. 239 b.c.e.),Footnote ¹⁸⁷ and the Huainanzi—or at least shared sources with them.

Astronomical references as well as allusions to portents and the heavenly mandate may be found in such an influential early work of historiography as the Records of the Historian, but not detailed narratives of epiphanies and revelations comparable to those reviewed above. This, in part, must reflect the multifaceted specialization of Sima Qian, who held the office of Grand Astrologer (taishiling 太史令)Footnote ¹⁸⁸ like his father before him and had been involved in the preparation of the “Great Inception” astronomical system (Taichu li 太初曆) reform, enacted in 104 b.c.e.Footnote ¹⁸⁹ Prophecy still belonged to the lore of the technicians in Sima Qian's time, and the climactic production of political predictions and “betokenings of the mandate” under Wang Mang and Guangwu was still to come. And yet, even though Sima Qian did not include detailed accounts of ancient traditions of esoteric experiences with direct political implications in the openings chapters of his work, such material existed in his time. Evidence for this is provided by the story of the First Emperor's sinking of the jade disc, which we have seen above in a fragment of Investigating the Numinous Effulgent Ones. A retrospective allusion to this episode appears in Sima Qian's work. In 211 B.c.e., the year before the First Emperor's death, a messenger brought him a jade disc obtained under strange circumstances. Upon closer examination at the Palace Wardrobe (yufu 御府),Footnote ¹⁹⁰ the disc proved to be the very same one the First Emperor had cast into the river Jiang 江 only a few years ago, in 219 b.c.e., while he was touring the empire.Footnote ¹⁹¹ Indeed, an earlier passage in the Records of the Historian does report the First Emperor's fluvial trip on the Jiang that year, but not that a jade disc was immersed on that special occasion.Footnote ¹⁹² The historicity of the episode is strengthened by its internal and chronological coherence, beyond the known fact that Qin archives have been used to compile the Records of the Historian. It proves not only that weft narratives of sovereignty and legitimacy—including the epiphanic rite of jade disc immersion—already existed during the early years of the empire, but also that these narratives were more than literary motifs or discarded myths. Their ideological pregnancy was such as to compel the first ruler of unified China to reenact an archaic rite on their basis, certainly in the hope of experiencing some auspicious manifestation.

This still held true centuries later, during the Six Dynasties period, when ritual dynastic transition “was patterned on the peaceful yielding of the throne as dramatized in the early accounts of Yao and Shun.”Footnote ¹⁹³ The warlord Cao Cao 曹操 (165–220 c.e.) himself was so careful in laying out the conditions for such a “peaceful yielding” to his own profit that he delayed the factual termination of the agonizing Han rule to the point that he passed away before achieving his goal, leaving the throne of the Wei 魏 dynasty (220–65 c.e.) to his son Cao Pi 曹丕 (187–226 c.e.) who, as Emperor Wen 文帝 (r. 220–26 c.e.), became the first effective Wei ruler.Footnote ¹⁹⁴ In 219, the year preceding his death, Cao Cao even premonitorily likened himself to King Wen of the Zhou, who—indeed just like him—never actually ruled but had made the accession of his son Fa (King Wu) possible.Footnote ¹⁹⁵

When Ban Biao composed his essay On the Royal Mandate, he was not creating ex nihilo a new theory of transcendent sovereignty but reformulating earlier ideas such as those found in weft fragments—including that “the sacred vessel of rule must be given from on high” and the need for omens to testify to one's having been chosen.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ Dull, who surveyed some of these narratives, understood them primarily as illustrating Han views of the origins of weft literature, thus missing their ideological significance.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ The wondrous animals coming mainly out of rivers function as celestial envoys descending and ascending between Heaven and mankind.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ Auspicious appearances of such divine messengers were often reported to the throne,Footnote ¹⁹⁹ and many regnal titles throughout the imperial era were chosen in direct reference to this epiphanic bestiary.Footnote ²⁰⁰

The purpose of these epiphanic agents in the narrative format of weft fragments is always to deliver to the newly elected cosmocrat the transcendent credentials sanctioning his sovereign legitimacy. Contrary to Dull's assumption, weft literature itself is not the central topic of these narratives, but a concept of sovereignty having quite a lot in common with the ideology of Divine Right in Medieval Europe. Of course, one will not find in weft remnants—or in Ban Biao's essay for that matter—exactly the same propositions as those defined by John Neville Figgis (1866–1919) on the basis of the Salic Law in France (1561) and such manifestos as the True Laws of Free Monarchies in England (1598).Footnote ²⁰¹ It is nevertheless clear that monarchy was a heavenly ordained institution in imperial China, just as it was “a divinely ordained institution” in Western Europe. Furthermore, if “hereditary right” was “indefeasible” in both France and England, in China the monarch could not freely transmit the Empire to a person of his own choice, for, as Mencius famously told Wan Zhang 萬章, it is Heaven, not men, who gives the Empire.Footnote ²⁰² Has this definition of transcendent sovereignty ever been challenged during the imperial era—at least before the twilight of monarchy at the very end of the Qing 清 dynasty (1644–1912)? “The idea,” wrote Vandermeersch, “that there may be a variety of forms of government never entered the mind of any Chinese author.”Footnote ²⁰³ The basic definition of sovereignty in imperial China was theocratic, or more accurately cosmocratic, and therefore, calling any specific political entity in Chinese imperial history a “theocracy” is tautological.Footnote ²⁰⁴ A transcendent, hence unquestionable legitimacy was thus conferred upon the monarch, especially useful in contexts of instability and competition. Long before Ban Biao wrote his short essay On the Mandate of Kings, the ideas which later crystallized into the weft narratives of sovereignty contributed to the formation of a concept of political legitimacy as depending solely on cosmic mechanisms and therefore—at least in theory—unchallengeable by human designs. But this never implied, as Hegel mistakenly believed, that China would drift through a perpetual state of historical infancy and that, during more than two millennia, Chinese society, politics, and government would never evolve from primitive despotism.

Interestingly, in this essay, Ban Biao traced the ancestry of the Han house back to Yao. This fact is probably not unrelated to Yao being ascribed the earliest performance of the epiphanic rite of jade disc immersion, repeatedly executed by later figures, either mythical or historical, always at critical junctures. There is no doubt that Yao's prestigious precedent authorized any imperial contender with the surname Liu 劉 (including Liu Xiu, the future Guangwu) to produce tangible revelations of claimed epiphanic provenance asserting the legitimacy of his claim. Excessive counterexamples of rulership such as Jie (Di Gui) and Zhou (Di Xin) could inspire imperial hopefuls and provide them with adequate propaganda tools to justify the cosmic need for a dynastic change. But only tangible revealed items—pragmatic vehicles of revelation, which could be displayed to sustain a claim and their contents, transcribed then circulated—could prove decisive in legitimating the termination of the current dynasty and the founding of a new one (Wang Mang), or the restoration of a former one (Guangwu). But epiphanic revelations, political predictions and weft narratives were at the same time becoming political tools potentially threatening any established dynasty, especially in times of trouble. Understandably, later emperors realized that these tools could easily be used against them to justify their overthrow.Footnote ²⁰⁵ Consequently, even though scholars had soon condemned their heterodoxy, it was naturally for political motives that weft texts came to be repeatedly prohibited.

Despite the bans, weft narratives resurfaced in later sources, including dynastic histories and the exegetical apparatus of the Classics—sometimes as literary or rhetoric motifs set in ideological context to exalt an idealized past, sometimes as primary material for monographic accounts—as well as in works of historiography sponsored by the emperor, such as the late third-century editing of the Annals Written on Bamboo.Footnote ²⁰⁶ As noted above, a cluster of weft fragments is almost identical to a commentarial stratum of the Annals Written on Bamboo and entire sections in the treatise on “Auspicious Phenomena as Tokens” of the Book of the Song.Footnote ²⁰⁷ This points to the existence of an intertextual relationship between weft texts, this treatise, and the bamboo annals commentary—or at least that these three works derived their materials from common sources. That Shen Yue was involved with both latter texts cannot be mere coincidence.Footnote ²⁰⁸ His acquaintance with weft material is manifest throughout this treatise, in which he names only about a dozen sources, seven of which are weft texts.Footnote ²⁰⁹ Any attempt at a comparative study of these three materials will eventually have to face the issue of the sources used by the Western Jin 西晉 (265–320 c.e.) editors to compile their commentary on the original Annals Written on Bamboo.Footnote ²¹⁰ In 268, a dozen years before the original bamboo strips were unearthed, “the study of stellar pneumata, predictions and weft” (xingqi chenwei zhi xue 星氣讖緯之學) had been prohibited,Footnote ²¹¹ and we may speculate how dangerous it would have been for scholars commissioned with an imperial assignment to refer explicitly to recently prohibited material in their work. By contrast, Shen Yue may have enjoyed full and open access to his weft sources, since he compiled his treatise under the Qi 齊 dynasty (479–502 c.e.), which, unlike most other early medieval dynasties, did not prohibit weft texts.Footnote ²¹²

The ritual immersion of a jade disc doubtless prefigures a similar rite performed by the emperor during the feng and shan ceremony and may have inspired two later distinct rites: the casting of a fish, in the Great Clarity (Taiqing 太清) alchemical tradition as well as in early Upper Clarity (Shangqing 上清) texts, and the Casting of Dragons and Tablets (tou longjian 投龍簡), which perhaps coexisted at the beginning of a period extending from the fourth to the fourteenth century.Footnote ²¹³ Rather than a jade disc sunk in the hope of provoking an epiphany, both Taoist rites were a form of divine petitioning probably connected with the ritual petition to the Three Offices (sanguan 三官) of Heaven, Earth, and Water of the Celestial Master (tianshi 天師) church.Footnote ²¹⁴ Simply put, small golden figures of a fish and a man in the first case, of a dragon in the second case, which functioned as messengers dispatched to the divinities, were cast into designated watery places. Beyond evident differences in scope and nature, all these liturgical programs, by reenacting a pattern of ritual behavior anciently leading to the transcendent experience of epiphany, shared a common yearning for the activation or reactivation of mediated individual contacts with the divine realm.