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

SOUL AND AFTERLIFE 391of Mount T'ai reigns supreme. The hun-soul is said to be either "returning"or "belonging" to Mount T'ai.72 It may be recalled thatheaven was now populated by the hsien immortals; it was no longera place to which the hun-souls could return. For the Han Chinese,therefore, Mount T'ai was the highest place imaginable, secondonly to heaven. Strictly speaking, however, the hun-souls could noteven ascend the central peak of that sacred mountain because it hadalso been transformed into a meeting place between the emperorand the hsien immortals. The hun-souls could only travel to Liangfu,the capital of the underworld in which the Lord of Mount T'aioperated his central administration. It may be further noted that inHan popular culture, Mount T'ai itself, especially its peak, was asymbol of life and immortality whereas Liang-fu was that of death.However, the simple fact that Liang-fu was not only located in thevicinity of Mount T'ai but also fell under the jurisdiction of the provincebearing the name of the holy mountain gradually gave rise towidespread confusion in Han popular beliefs about the afterlife.With the province bearing the name of Mount T'ai inextricably confusedwith the mountain itself, texts from the second century A.D. onoften speak of the departed hun-souls as if they were to "return" tothe holy mountain. But it is important to point out that in allprobability the original conception was that the hun-soul of the newlydead would go to the Liang-fu hill in T'ai-shan province, in orderto register its name with the underworld government.Finally, a word about the p 'o soul is in order. Since the hun-soulnow went to the underworld instead of heaven, what happened tothe p 'o? It is interesting to observe that the p 'o was under the care ofa separate department of the underworld government. According toTung-fang Shuo, the court jester of Emperor Wu's time, the officein charge of the dead is called po tM. Clearly, p'o and po share thesame etymological root; the name po may well have been derived72Hou Han shu &fi (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chui, 1965), 90.2980. It is important topoint out that here the fragment of the Hsiao-chingyiuan-shen ch'i preserved in the Po-wu chih(see note 69 above) is also quoted by the T'ang commentator to support the statement of theHou Han shu. The Hou Han shu text says: "The hun-soul (hun-shen 4Et) of the dead returns toMount T'ai, " and the commentary, quoting Po-wu chih, says: "Mount T'ai, the Grandson ofthe Heavenly God, is responsible for summoning the human hun-souls" (90.2981). The twopassages agree with each other exactly.