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

SOUL AND AFTERLIFE 365THE RITUALOF FUIn Han China there was an important death ritual called fu,"The Summons of the Soul." It was the first of a series of rituals tobe performed to the newly dead. Although thisfu ritual, as variouslyreported in the Chou-li N I-li fW, and Li-chi is a highly complexone, it may nevertheless be briefly described. As soon as a persondies, a "summoner" (fu-che ) normally a member of the familyclimbs from the east eaves to the top of the roof with a set of clothesbelonging to the deceased. The summoner faces the north, wavesthe clothes of the deceased, and calls him by name aloud- "O!Thou so-and-so, come back! " After the call has been repeated threetimes, the summoner throws down the clothes, which are receivedby another person on the ground. The receiver then spreads theclothes over the body of the dead. Afterwards, the summonerdescends from the west eaves. Thus the ritual offu is completed.According to the Han commentator Cheng Hsuan *A (127-200)the purpose of thefu ritual is "to summon the hun-soul of the deadback to reunite with its p 'o soul" (chao-hunfu-p'o TBAMR). In fact,the ritual is predicated on the belief that when the hun separatesfrom the p 'o and leaves the human body, life comes to an end. However,at the moment when death first occurs, the living cannot bearto believe that their beloved one has really left them for good. Theliving must first assume that the departure of the hun-soul is onlytemporary. It is possible, then, that if the departed soul can be summonedback the dead may be brought back to life. A person can bepronounced dead only when the fu ritual has failed to achieve itspurpose, after which the body of the dead will be placed on the bedin his or her own chamber and covered with a burial shroud calledhu orfu W.3Remarkably, this Han ritual practice has been confirmed by recentarchaeological discoveries. In 1972-74, three Han tombs were3 On the ritual offu T, see Li-chi chu-su lliffItg (Shih-san ching chu-su ++j:,, 1815edition), 4.20b, 21.9b-lla, 44.3a-5a; Hu P'ei-hui iI, I-li cheng-i 'IEI (Kuo-hsuehchi-pen ts'ung-shu RWJ 4,4: edition, hereafter KHCP), 26.2-6; Sun I-jang N ,W Chou-licheng-i Wi10IE4 (KHCP), 5.16.20-22. Consult also James Legge, tr., The Texts of ConfucianismPart III: The Li Ki, 2 vols. (Sacred Books of the East, ed. F. Max Muller), 1:368-69; JohnSteele, tr. The I-li or Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial (London: Probsthain & Co., 1917), 1:45.