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

384 YING-SHIH YUbasis, these records are also constantly subject to transfer from onedepartment to another. Indeed, activities of this kind constitute amajor function of the celestial bureaucracy."5Now, let us turn to the idea of "underworld" in Han times. Onthis subject, fortunately, very interesting evidence has also beenfound in the Ma-wang-tui tomb no. 3. A wooden document fromthis tomb reads as follows:On the twenty fourth day, second month, the twelfth year [of Emperor Wen'sreign, 168 B.C.] Household Assistant Fen to the lang-chung PP@ in charge of thedead: A list of mortuary objects is herewith forwarded to you. Upon receiving thisdocument, please memorialize without delay to the Lord of the Grave (chu-tsangchuPn ) "52This document reveals two interesting points about Han beliefs ofan underworld. First, since the silk painting from the same tombshows that the hun-soul of the dead goes to heaven, the present documentmakes sense only if understood as dealing with the journey ofhis p 'o soul to the underworld. Second, the bureaucratic structure ofthe underworld is, like that of the heavenly world, modeled on thatof the human world. It is interesting to note that before 104 B.C.there was an office of lang-chung-ling tP'4W ("Supervisor of Attendants")whose function it was to render personal services to theemperor.53 Thus the analogy between the status of Household AssistantFen in the marquisate of Tai and the lang-chung in the underworldis unmistakable. In other words, Family Assistant Fen wasnotifying his counterpart in the court of the Underworld Lord of thearrival of the newly dead, in this case, the son of Marquis of Tai.This practice is also confirmed by two similar wooden documentsfound in the Han tombs at Feng-huang Shan [lJLL, (in ChianglingiElt, Hupei) in 1975. The first one from tomb no. 168, dated167 B.C., was issued in the name of the Assistant Magistrate ofChiang-ling and sent to the Underworld Assistant Magistrate. Theformer informed the latter of the immigration of a newly dead underhis jurisdiction to the underworld and requested the case be5TPC, p. 552.52 "Ch'ang-sha Ma-wang-tui erh-san-hao mu fa-chiieh chien-pao" Ab'$'.%E* yR%f1*, WW 1974.7, p. 43 and Plate XII, no. 11.5 Wang Yii-ch'iian, "Central Government," p. 52 (note 52) and pp. 20-21.