Sichuan Culture Research

Author: / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2004-05-01
Features: Earlier than the ancient Shu history works by Chang Qin, according to the "Preface to the Records of Huayang" in the Huayang Guo Zhi, there were originally eight such works during the Han and Jin dynasties, but only Yang Xiong's Records of the Shu King survived due to Qing Dynasty compilations, though it is now fragmented. The remaining seven have been lost (only one passage from Qiao Zhou's Records of Shu cited in the notes to the Sichuan Biography in the Records of the Three Kingdoms has been passed down), making it difficult to verify in detail. However, all eight Records of the King were personally seen by Chang Qin and he "briefly summarized their essence." From the examples cited in the "Preface to the Records of Huayang," the eight Records of the King were filled with descriptions of sorcery and immortal lore, such as "the Three Emperors riding divine chariots out of the valley," "the Shu King reigned for three thousand years," "the corpse of the Jing person Bi Ling transformed into the west and became a Shu king," and "Zhou Changhong's blood turned into jade beads, and Du Yu's spirit became the." Chang Qin criticized these as "irrational and baseless accounts of Shu." Yet these events were all crucial to the ancient Shu history and culture, and the authors of the eight Records of the King were all renowned scholars of Bashu during the Han and Jin dynasties. This means that, during the Han and Wei-Jin periods, scholars in Shu fundamentally understood ancient Shu history and culture in a religious context—essentially layers of events woven together by sorcery and immortal lore, an extension of religious history.
In addition to the eight Records of Shu mentioned by Chang Qin, other scholars discussed ancient Shu history during the late Han and Three Kingdoms periods. Notable figures include Lai Min of the late Han Dynasty and Qin Mi and Chen Shou of the Wei-Jin period. Lai Min, a guest of Liu Yan, wrote On Shu, which documented the origins of the Shu kings. The book is now lost, but fragments were cited in the Jiangshui Notes and the Mianshui Notes of the Shui Jing, one describing the stories of the Emperor Wang and Bi Ling, and the other the story of the stone ox turning into gold. These accounts largely mirrored Yang Xiong's Records of the Shu King. The accounts of Qin Mi have been discussed earlier. Chen Shou's work, cited in the Jiangshui Notes as Biographies of the Elders of Bashu, tells the story of ordinary Bashu couples who were resurrected. These were the "vulgar and unrefined" tales that Chang Qin criticized.
However, during the Han Dynasty and the Wei-Jin period, the ancient Shu history woven with immortal lore was repeatedly revived and passed down among Bashu scholars, which only underscores that the ancient Shu cultural history system, whether in the pre-Qin or Han-Wei era, was bound together by the adhesive of religion. Despite Chang Qin's fierce criticism of these "irrational and baseless accounts of Shu," as a native of Jiangyuan in Shu Commandery, he could not have been entirely unaffected by the generations of immortal lore in Bashu. Thus, even when compiling the Huayang Guo Zhi, though he used the Book of Han as a standard for selection and revision, the influence of immortal lore remained evident throughout the book. This indicates that, even by the Wei-Jin period, Shu culture was still permeated with a strong aura of sorcery and immortality, a spirit so deeply ingrained in the hearts of the Shu people that even Chang Qin, who proclaimed orthodoxy and was known as the "Shu historian," could not escape its confines. This reveals the profound degree to which Shu culture was religiousized.
During the Han Dynasty, tales of sorcery were widely circulated, among the most famous being Changhong and his deeds. Changhong, a minister of Zhou during the late Spring and Autumn period, was renowned for his expertise in astronomy and divination. The Tian Gong Shu of the Records of the Grand Historian calls him "a former master of astronomical calculations," and the Huainanzi states: "Changhong was the master of divination in Zhou, and the qi of heaven and earth, the movements of the sun and moon, the changes of wind and rain, and the calculations of the lüli were all within his grasp."