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

364 YING-SHIH YUHo-shang Commentary on the Lao Tzu t=-?fiI, a popular Taoist textof Han origin.' For the same reason, the T'ai-p'ing ching tK H isalso an indispensable source for the study of popular beliefs concerningthe afterlife at the end of the Han period. Portions of this textare clearly traceable to the Han times and can throw important newlight on our subject, especially when they are used with caution andin combination with other newly discovered documents of provenHan date.2Finally, a word about the problem of cultural unity or diversity isalso in order. The general picture presented below reflects what allour evidence tells us, but no claim is made that the beliefs describedconstitute in any strict sense a unified belief system, much less theonly one, embraced by all the Chinese of the Han empirethroughout the four centuries of its existence. Some of the beliefsand practices discussed in this study may well have been of onlylocal sub-cultural importance. But, on the other hand, it would notbe worthwhile to attempt to identify every belief or practice with theregional culture from which it originally arose. For example, theidea of hun, though possibly of a southern origin, had alreadybecome universally accepted by the Chinese by the third centuryB.C. at the latest, and the T'ai-shan cult had also assumed a nationwidereligious significance by the second century A.D. if not earlier.Throughout this study I shall identify, whenever possible, the dateand local origin of each piece of supporting evidence. However,given our present stage of knowledge, it is not always clear whatsorts of conclusions can be drawn from such identifications.' This commentary, usually referred to as Lao Tzu Ho-shang chu 9T ??2AJ:, has been traditionallythought to be a post-Han work on account of the vulgarity of its language. See ChangHsin-ch'eng 4R,AA, Wei-shu t'ung-k'ao OYARi&, 2 vols. (Shanghai: Commercial Press,1954), 2:743-45. However, with the discovery of several Tun-huang manuscripts of earliercommentaries on the Lao Tzu, the origin of the Ho-shang text can now be traced to the secondcentury A.D or earlier. SeeJao Tsung-i 7 Lao Tzu Hsiang-erh chu chiao-chien 9tqffis_:R (Hong Kong: by the author, 1956), pp. 87-92 and Kobayashi Masayoshi 'J'itiEr,"Kaj6 shinjin shoku no shis6 to seiritsu," / Rih-A, " CD , tR L z, TJhJshakyj IV)5f 65 (May, 1985): 20-43.2 Particularly important are various kinds of inscriptions found in Han tombs. For thedating of the T'ai-p 'ing ching, see note 47 below.