"O Soul, Come Back!" A Study in The Changing Conceptions of The ...

SOUL AND AFTERLIFE 383A.D., that is before appreciable Buddhist influence on Chinese lifeand thought, we find at least four ts 'ao 1 or "departments" in thecelestial government. They are the ming-ts'ao 01 ("Department ofFate"), shou-ts'ao Xf ("Department of Longevity"), shan-ts 'ao I("Department of Good Deeds") and o-ts'ao 7,1< ("Department ofEvil Deeds").47 The term ts'ao, it may be noted, is a direct borrowingfrom the Han governmental organization. There were, for instance,four ts'ao in the office of the shang-shu M ("Masters ofDocuments") which, since the time of Emperor Wu, had become"the key organ of the state. "48 This also explains why in the HsiangerhCommentary on the Lao-tzu t=f *flT, the celestial government isalso referred to as the t'ien-ts'ao )I ("Heavenly Departments"), anidea which has been perpetuated in Chinese popular culture eversince.49 The T'ai-p'ing ching also reveals something about how thevarious departments conduct their business. Each departmentkeeps detailed personal dossiers on all living persons. When a personhas accumulated enough merits, for instance, his dossier, afterevaluation, may be transferred to the Department of Longevity.50On the other hand there is also the possibility that a person formerlyof good conduct may eventually end up in the Department of EvilDeeds, if he is later found to have committed many sins. Thus, notonly are the personal records of all living beings updated on a daily47 Wang Ming IE, ed., T'ai-p'ing ching ho-chiao ; (hereafter TPC, Peking:Chung-hua shu-chii, 1960), pp. 526, 546, 551, 552. The dating of the TPC has been highlycontroversial. See B. J. Mansvelt Beck, "The Date of the TaipingJing," TP 66.4-5 (1980):149-82. However, modern scholars generally agree that although it contains many later interpolations,parts of the work can be dated to the second century. See Ying-shih Yii, "Life andImmortality in the Mind of Han China," HJAS 25 (1964-65): 84, n. 17, and Max Kaltenmark,"The Ideology of the T'ai-p 'ing ching, " in Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel, eds., Facetsof Taoism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979), pp. 19-45. More recently, furtherefforts have been made by two Chinese scholars to establish the Han origin of the text. SeeWang Ming IE, "Lun T'ai-p'ing ching ti ch'eng-shu shih-tai ho tso-che" Fit:PThQ;*MITf, Shih-chieh tsung-chiaoyen-chiu f 1982.1:17-26 and T'ang I-chieh, &-Th "Kuan-yii T'ai-p'ing ching ch'eng-shu wen-t'i" ;k Pn:VER;M , Chung-kuo wenhuayen-chiuchi-k'an, PJ;Lff5E%fIJ, no. 1 (Fudan University Press, Shanghai, March1984): 168-186.48 Wang Yii-ch'iian, "An Outline of the Central Government of the Former Han Dynasty,"in John L. Bishop, ed., Studies of Governmental Institutions in Chinese History, (Cambridge,Mass: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1968), p. 38.49 Jao Tsung-i, Hsiang-erh chu, pp. 33, 77.50 TPC, pp. 602, 625.