The Power of an Alleged Tradition - CHINA Buchservice

ecorded to have been excavated at the sacred site of Fenyin, again perfectly matches
with Gongsun Qing’s prophecy, according to which the exceptional calendrical constellation
would take place in precisely the year during which a tripod was found. 82
As Gongsun Qing had emphasized in his message, all these coincidences – the
discovery of the tripod and the exceptional astral confi guration – were something
that had occurred only once before, during Huangdi’s age, and would now recur for
the fi rst time during the Han.The conclusion to be drawn from this is anticipated by
Gongsun Qing, namely that the times of Huangdi and that of the Han dynasty were
located on parallel positions within the time cycles.
It is not so diffi cult to guess who was responsible for the choice of precisely the
xinsi day of the winter of the year 113 B.C. for the inauguration of the sacrifi ces for
Taiyi. As we learned from the Hou Han shu account cited above, it was one of the
major duties of the taishiling to recommend auspicious days appropriate for state
ceremonials, such as sacrifi ces to the throne. 83 The taishiling at that time, as I argued
above, was Sima Tan. Thus it may not be too farfetched to assume that the choice of
this xinsi day as the day on which the sacrifi ce in honor of Taiyi was performed for
the fi rst time was made by someone who closely collaborated with Gongsun Qing,
or at least by a person who operated within a strikingly similar ideological milieu in
which specialist knowledge on calendrical calculations played a pre-eminent role.
Apart from the two instances referred to above, there is also a third passage in
chapter 28 of the Shiji in which the activity of a Grand Scribe (taishi) is mentioned.
Although for this passage no Shiji commentary discusses whether the taishi here
might be identifi ed with Sima Tan, and although Ban Gu in the Han shu parallel
text does not make that identifi cation, it will nevertheless be so rendered here, as it
reveals the manifold responsibilities of the taishi which seems to have even included
services meant to ban or manipulate ghosts, as well as services related to events of
war.
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In the autumn of this [year], before launching an attack on the state of Southern
Yue, an announcement was made to the Grand Unity, along with prayers
for success. A banner was made, fi xed to a handle of thorn wood, and painted
with representations of the sun, the moon, the Big Dipper, and an ascending
dragon. These represented the Spear of the Grand Unity. 84 It was called Spirit
Banner, and when the announcement and prayers for the soldiers were offered,
the Grand Scribe took it in his hand and pointed it at the country that was going
to be attacked. 85
82 Cf. the report of the discovery of the tripod at Fenyin summarized on p. 248.
83 See the translation on p. 259–60.
84 Here, the Grand Unity alluded to is a star constellation, namely the three stars in the mouth of the Big Dipper.
For the position of the Taiyi constellation, see Shiji 27/1289.
85 Shiji 28/1395; 12/471; cf. Han shu 25A/1231 (no identifi cation with Tan given in the commentary). Cf. B.
Watson, Records II, 54. The astrological method alluded here has elsewhere in Han texts been called fenye���
(Field Division). On the astrological implication of this method see Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in
China, vol. 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (Cambridge: University Press, 1959),
545. A table on the correlation between the regional states and the lunar mansions (xiu��) according to the
geographical chapter of Han shu has been given by Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker, The Chinese Sky during
the Han: Constellating Stars and Society (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 106.
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