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

388 YING-SHIH YUMount T'ai 4[ti, the sacred mountain in ancient China, as apreparation for his final ascension to heaven. At this time a storyhad been fabricated that the legendary Yellow Emperor did not reallydie but flew to heaven on a dragon's back together with hiscourt assistants and palace ladies after having performed imperialsacrifices to Heaven and Earth at the central peak of Mount T'ai.Taken in by this story, Emperor Wu made his imperial pilgrimageto Mount T'ai in 110 B.C. and carried out all the religious ritualssupposedly in the tradition of the Yellow Emperor. He returned tothe capital assured that he would eventually join the YellowEmperor in heaven as a hsien immortal. By the turn of the first centuryA.D., at the latest, the cult of hsien immortality had alreadyspread from royal and aristocratic circles to the common people. AHan stone inscription relates that, in A.D. 7, a yamen underling inthe local government of Han-chung iMv (in modern Shensi) namedT'ang Kung-fang )AK2f succeeded in his pursuit of hsien immortality.Consequently, he ascended heaven not only with his whole familybut also his house and domestic animals.The great popularity of this cult transformed the Han conceptionof the afterlife in a fundamental way. According to the T'ai-p'ingching, only the hsien immortals who had embodied the great Taowere admitted to heaven.64 Since the immortal hsien and thedissolvable hun were conceived as belonging to two completelydifferent categories of beings, they were not supposed to mix in thesame heaven. As a result, a new abode had to be found to accommodatethe hun souls. Thus, the governmental structure of theunderworld was expanded. Based on a variety of historical and archaeologicalevidence, this new conception of the underworld maybe briefly reconstructed as follows: First, from around the end of thefirst century B.C. a belief gradually arose that there was a supremeruler called Lord of Mount T'ai (T'ai-shanfu-chuin *[UffEr) whosecapital was located in a place named Liang-fu 3 a small hill nearMount T'ai.65 Liang-fu, it may be noted, was traditionally the place64TPC, p. 138.65For the development of the cult of Mount T'ai as a place for the dead, see also Chao I kLI, Kai-yii ts'ung-k'ao PPW ; (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1957), 35.751-52; EdouardChavannes, Le T'at Ch 'an (Paris: Leroux, 1910), chapter six; Sakai Tadao i"Taizan shink6 no kenkyu " *OA {fA V fi A, Shicho 7.2 (June 1937).