The Power of an Alleged Tradition - CHINA Buchservice

and inscriptions. 41 Gongsun Qing continues by talking of tens of thousands of feudal
lords of whom seven thousand 42 had performed the Feng sacrifi ces before. He then
turns to the sacred mountains. There were, he explains, altogether eight, of which
three lay in the realm of the Man and Yi barbarians and fi ve in that of the Center. 43
Huangdi (Gongsun Qing continues) regularly traveled to the sacred mountains, as a
means of entering into communication with the various deities (shen��). Finally, we
learn more details about Huangdi, including the way he ascended to Heaven after
having cast a tripod of copper from Mount Shou. The account ends:
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Upon this, the Son of Heaven said: “Alas! Indeed, if only I could become like the
Yellow Thearch, I would regard [the thought of] quitting my wife and children
as being no more than casting off ones slippers.” He then made [Gongsun] Qing
a palace attendant and sent him to the east in order to maintain a watch for the
gods at [Mount] Taishi. 44
To judge from the emperor’s enthusiastic reaction, it seems to have been primarily
the prospect of achieving immortality that led to the emperor’s acceptance of Gongsun
Qing’s message. It thus seems as if this prospect was the one major motivation
for the emperor to put Gongsun Qing’s proposals into practice. We will have to see
whether this suggestion is confi rmed by other accounts.
Apart from giving Gongsun Qing the position of a Palace Attendant (lang��),
the emperor sent him on an important mission: he was charged to travel to Mount
Taishi, one of the sacred mountains, to watch for the immortals who Gongsun Qing
had suggested might communicate with the emperor. Obviously, the search for
ghosts and similar obscure practices, such as looking for a giant’s footprint (for which
the emperor even rewarded him with the post of a Palace Councilor [zhong dafu��
��]), seems to have become Gongsun Qing’s major and overriding concern in the
years to follow. However, as the author of the Shiji emphasizes several times in the
remainder of this chapter, all his endeavors to provide the emperor with this longdesired
contact failed in the end. 45 Thus, by reading the Shiji “Treatise on the Feng
41 The strong inclination toward oral traditions as well as toward traditions beyond those of the canonized scriptures
which becomes plain in many passages of the Shiji is an important aspect which, as far as I know, has not received
much attention. First steps toward an analysis on the background of this priority given in the Shiji have been taken
in my paper “Die vielen Stimmen aus der Vergangenheit: Sima Qians Eintreten für Meinungsvielfalt,” prepared
for the annual conference of the DVCS in Köln, 14–16 November 2003. For an interpretation of the passage at
the beginning of the chapter on Boyi �� where the ru are referred to as scholars who maintain that the question
of reliability (xin��) can only be solved by drawing on the six canonical scriptures, see also my study “Sima
Qian’s Huo-Zweifel in Kapitel 61 des Shiji,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 153 (2003),
115.
42 The Suoyin commentator Sima Zhen ����(8th cent.) here cites Wei Zhao �� here who supposes that the
number must have been 70 rather than 7000. See Shiji 28/1394.
43 According to Gongsun Qing, the Five Sacred Mountains lying within the realm of the Center, Zhongguo ����
as contrasted to the Three Sacred Mountains in the area belonging to the Man and Yi �� (barbarians), were:
Huashan ��, Shoushan ��, Taishi ��, Taishan �� and Donglai ��. He does not enumerate the other
three.
44 Shiji 28/1394; 12/468.
45 On Gongsun Qing’s manifold activities to summon ghosts, immortals and his claim to have found the footprints
of a giant see Shiji 28/1397; 12/473–4; 28/1399; 12/477; 28/1402; 12/485 and 28/1403; 12/485.
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