Shuanggudui
Encyclopedia
Shuanggudui is an archeological site located near Fuyang
in China
's Anhui
province. Shuanggudui grave no. 1, which belongs to Xiahou Zao (夏侯灶), the second marquis of Ruyin (汝陰侯), was sealed in 165 BCE in the early Han Dynasty
and excavated in 1977. It was found to contain a large number of texts written on bamboo strips, including fragments of the Classic of Poetry and the Songs of the South, a text on breathing exercises, a "year table" (年表) recounting historical events, a manual on dogs, a version of the I Ching
(Yijing) that differs from the received one, and artifacts including the oldest known cosmic board, a divinatory instrument. Like Mawangdui and Guodian
, two other tombs from the area of the old state of Chu
, the Shuanggudui find has shed great light on the culture and practices of the early Han dynasty.
instrument that was widely used during the Han Dynasty
. This lacquer
ed astrological
board consists of a movable disk (9.5 cm in diameter) representing the Heavens mounted on a square base (13.5 x 13.5 cm) representing Earth. The center of the circular top depicts the seven stars of the Northern Dipper (which was considered to be a powerful astral deity), whereas the rim of both the disk and the square base are inscribed with astro-calenderical signs that helped to perform divination.
The use of such boards is described or alluded to in many ancient Chinese texts like the Chu Ci
, Han Feizi
, Huainanzi
, and some military texts. The diviner would rotate the disk until the Dipper pointed in a chosen direction, usually corresponding to the current date. He would then find an answer to his question by means of numerological
calculations. Manipulation of this miniature model of the cosmos
was supposed to bring power to its user.
Nearly two thirds of this Shuanggudui Yijing consists in "formulaic divination statements" that are present neither in the received Yijing, nor in the version that was found in a Mawangdui tomb that was also sealed in the 160s BCE. Historian Edward Shaughnessy has hypothesized that the line statements of the received Book of Changes may have originated in similar but older divination statements.
(tomb sealed around 300 BCE) and Mawangdui (168 BCE).
The Shuanggudui version contains portions of 65 songs from the "Airs of States" (Guofeng 國風) section and 4 from the "Xiaoya" 小雅 section. Although the song titles are the same as those of the received version, its text varies substantially from the other early Han
versions. Since each strip contained one stanza (zhang 章), characters were written smaller when a long stanza had to fit on a single strip.
of Chinese characters. It was compiled by Li Si
(280-208 BCE), an important statesman of the Qin Dynasty
, who wanted to use it to support his policies of language unification. This book has long been lost, but fragments of it have been found in Shuanggudui, in Juyan 居延 (at the confines of Inner Mongolia
and Gansu
), and among the Dunhuang manuscripts
. The Shuanggudui version count 541 characters.
, or literature on materia medica
like the Shennong bencao jing. It explains how to use some substances for healing purposes, but also contains technical information on how to catch animals or expel vermin. In the words of historian Donald Harper, this work "catalogues human curiosity about the products of nature," noting among other things that pinellia
can fatten pigs and that "a horse-gullet tube can be used to breathe under water." The names of drugs and illnesses found in Wanwu correspond with those found in the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments, a text dating from about 200 BCE that was buried in a tomb in Mawangdui in 168 BCE. These and other correspondences between the two texts show that the same knowledge of drugs was circulating in both the southern Chu region
(Mawangdui) and the Yangzi River valley (Shuanggudui).
compilation of events from about 850 to the end of the third century BCE, that is, from the late Western Zhou
through the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States. Some of the strips still carry the horizontal markers that divided the text into rows. The existence of this chronological "Table" in the early second century BCE shows that Sima Qian
did not invent this mode of historical representation, as he often gave the impression in his magnum opus
the Shiji.
of horses that was excavated from a grave in Mawangdui (sealed in 168 BCE).
Fuyang
Fuyang may refer to:*Fuyang, Anhui , prefecture-level city in Anhui, China** the Fuyang meteorite of 1977, which fell in Anhui, China *Fuyang, Zhejiang , county-level city in Zhejiang, China...
in China
People's Republic of China
China , officially the People's Republic of China , is the most populous country in the world, with over 1.3 billion citizens. Located in East Asia, the country covers approximately 9.6 million square kilometres...
's Anhui
Anhui
Anhui is a province in the People's Republic of China. Located in eastern China across the basins of the Yangtze River and the Huai River, it borders Jiangsu to the east, Zhejiang to the southeast, Jiangxi to the south, Hubei to the southwest, Henan to the northwest, and Shandong for a tiny...
province. Shuanggudui grave no. 1, which belongs to Xiahou Zao (夏侯灶), the second marquis of Ruyin (汝陰侯), was sealed in 165 BCE in the early Han Dynasty
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
and excavated in 1977. It was found to contain a large number of texts written on bamboo strips, including fragments of the Classic of Poetry and the Songs of the South, a text on breathing exercises, a "year table" (年表) recounting historical events, a manual on dogs, a version of the I Ching
I Ching
The I Ching or "Yì Jīng" , also known as the Classic of Changes, Book of Changes and Zhouyi, is one of the oldest of the Chinese classic texts...
(Yijing) that differs from the received one, and artifacts including the oldest known cosmic board, a divinatory instrument. Like Mawangdui and Guodian
Guodian
Guodian may refer to:*Guodian Chu Slips: a collection of classical Chinese texts found in the Guodian tombs in Jingmen, Hubei*China Guodian Corporation: a state-owned power generation enterprise in mainland China...
, two other tombs from the area of the old state of Chu
Chu (state)
The State of Chu was a Zhou Dynasty vassal state in present-day central and southern China during the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period . Its ruling house had the surname Nai , and clan name Yan , later evolved to surname Mi , and clan name Xiong...
, the Shuanggudui find has shed great light on the culture and practices of the early Han dynasty.
Cosmic board
The Shuanggudui tomb contained the earliest known diviner's board (shi 式), or "cosmograph," a divinatoryDivination
Divination is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic standardized process or ritual...
instrument that was widely used during the Han Dynasty
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
. This lacquer
Lacquer
In a general sense, lacquer is a somewhat imprecise term for a clear or coloured varnish that dries by solvent evaporation and often a curing process as well that produces a hard, durable finish, in any sheen level from ultra matte to high gloss and that can be further polished as required...
ed astrological
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
board consists of a movable disk (9.5 cm in diameter) representing the Heavens mounted on a square base (13.5 x 13.5 cm) representing Earth. The center of the circular top depicts the seven stars of the Northern Dipper (which was considered to be a powerful astral deity), whereas the rim of both the disk and the square base are inscribed with astro-calenderical signs that helped to perform divination.
The use of such boards is described or alluded to in many ancient Chinese texts like the Chu Ci
Chu Ci
Chu Ci , also known as Songs of the South or Songs of Chu, is an anthology of Chinese verse traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan and Song Yu from the Warring States Period, though about half of the poems seem to have been composed several centuries later, during the Han Dynasty...
, Han Feizi
Han Feizi (book)
The Han Feizi is a work written by Han Feizi at the end of the Warring States Period in China, detailing his political philosophy. It belongs to the Legalist school of thought....
, Huainanzi
Huainanzi
The Huáinánzǐ is a 2nd century BCE Chinese philosophical classic from the Han dynasty that blends Daoist, Confucianist, and Legalist concepts, including theories such as Yin-Yang and the Five Phases. It was written under the patronage of Liu An, Prince of Huainan, a legendarily prodigious author...
, and some military texts. The diviner would rotate the disk until the Dipper pointed in a chosen direction, usually corresponding to the current date. He would then find an answer to his question by means of numerological
Numerology
Numerology is any study of the purported mystical relationship between a count or measurement and life. It has many systems and traditions and beliefs...
calculations. Manipulation of this miniature model of the cosmos
Cosmos
In the general sense, a cosmos is an orderly or harmonious system. It originates from the Greek term κόσμος , meaning "order" or "ornament" and is antithetical to the concept of chaos. Today, the word is generally used as a synonym of the word Universe . The word cosmos originates from the same root...
was supposed to bring power to its user.
Classic of Changes
The longest text found in Shuanggudui is an incomplete version of the Yijing, or Classic of Changes, in 752 fragments containing 3,119 characters. The hexagram and line statements of the Shuanggudui text closely resemble the received version, yet it is too fragmentary to reconstruct the complete text of any single hexagram or even the sequence in which they were presented.Nearly two thirds of this Shuanggudui Yijing consists in "formulaic divination statements" that are present neither in the received Yijing, nor in the version that was found in a Mawangdui tomb that was also sealed in the 160s BCE. Historian Edward Shaughnessy has hypothesized that the line statements of the received Book of Changes may have originated in similar but older divination statements.
Classic of Poetry
More than 170 fragments of the Shijing (詩經) or Classic of Poetry (Book of Odes), for a total of 820 characters, have also been found in Shuanggudui. These fragments are longer and have been more extensively studied than other incomplete versions of the Shijing found in ancient tombs like those of GuodianGuodian
Guodian may refer to:*Guodian Chu Slips: a collection of classical Chinese texts found in the Guodian tombs in Jingmen, Hubei*China Guodian Corporation: a state-owned power generation enterprise in mainland China...
(tomb sealed around 300 BCE) and Mawangdui (168 BCE).
The Shuanggudui version contains portions of 65 songs from the "Airs of States" (Guofeng 國風) section and 4 from the "Xiaoya" 小雅 section. Although the song titles are the same as those of the received version, its text varies substantially from the other early Han
Han Dynasty
The Han Dynasty was the second imperial dynasty of China, preceded by the Qin Dynasty and succeeded by the Three Kingdoms . It was founded by the rebel leader Liu Bang, known posthumously as Emperor Gaozu of Han. It was briefly interrupted by the Xin Dynasty of the former regent Wang Mang...
versions. Since each strip contained one stanza (zhang 章), characters were written smaller when a long stanza had to fit on a single strip.
Cangjie pian
Named after the mythical inventor of Chinese writing, The Cang Jie Wordbook (Cang Jie pian 仓颉篇) was one of the earliest primersPrimer (textbook)
A primer is a first textbook for teaching of reading, such as an alphabet book or basal reader. The word also is used more broadly to refer to any book that presents the most basic elements of a subject....
of Chinese characters. It was compiled by Li Si
Li Si
Li Si was the influential Prime Minister of the feudal state and later of the dynasty of Qin, between 246 BC and 208 BC. A famous Legalist, he was also a notable calligrapher. Li Si served under two rulers: Qin Shi Huang, king of Qin and later First Emperor of China—and his son, Qin Er Shi...
(280-208 BCE), an important statesman of the Qin Dynasty
Qin Dynasty
The Qin Dynasty was the first imperial dynasty of China, lasting from 221 to 207 BC. The Qin state derived its name from its heartland of Qin, in modern-day Shaanxi. The strength of the Qin state was greatly increased by the legalist reforms of Shang Yang in the 4th century BC, during the Warring...
, who wanted to use it to support his policies of language unification. This book has long been lost, but fragments of it have been found in Shuanggudui, in Juyan 居延 (at the confines of Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia
Inner Mongolia is an autonomous region of the People's Republic of China, located in the northern region of the country. Inner Mongolia shares an international border with the countries of Mongolia and the Russian Federation...
and Gansu
Gansu
' is a province located in the northwest of the People's Republic of China.It lies between the Tibetan and Huangtu plateaus, and borders Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Ningxia to the north, Xinjiang and Qinghai to the west, Sichuan to the south, and Shaanxi to the east...
), and among the Dunhuang manuscripts
Dunhuang manuscripts
The Dunhuang manuscripts is a cache of important religious and secular documents discovered in the Mogao Caves of Dunhuang, China during the early 20th century. Dating from the 5th to early 11th centuries, the manuscripts include works ranging from history and mathematics to folk songs and dance...
. The Shuanggudui version count 541 characters.
Wanwu
The text that Chinese editors have titled "Myriad Things" or "Ten Thousand Things" (Wanwu 萬物) is an extensive list of natural substances that historians of Chinese medicine see as a precursor of later Chinese herbologyChinese herbology
Chinese Herbology is the theory of Traditional Chinese herbal therapy, which accounts for the majority of treatments in Traditional Chinese medicine ....
, or literature on materia medica
Materia medica
Materia medica is a Latin medical term for the body of collected knowledge about the therapeutic properties of any substance used for healing . The term 'materia medica' derived from the title of a work by the Ancient Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides in the 1st century AD, De materia medica libre...
like the Shennong bencao jing. It explains how to use some substances for healing purposes, but also contains technical information on how to catch animals or expel vermin. In the words of historian Donald Harper, this work "catalogues human curiosity about the products of nature," noting among other things that pinellia
Pinellia
Pinellia is a genus of plants in the family Araceae native to Asia. Its species are commonly called Green Dragons due to the color and shape of the inflorescence, which possesses a green, hooded spathe from which protrudes a long, tongue-like extension of the spadix...
can fatten pigs and that "a horse-gullet tube can be used to breathe under water." The names of drugs and illnesses found in Wanwu correspond with those found in the Recipes for Fifty-Two Ailments, a text dating from about 200 BCE that was buried in a tomb in Mawangdui in 168 BCE. These and other correspondences between the two texts show that the same knowledge of drugs was circulating in both the southern Chu region
Chu (state)
The State of Chu was a Zhou Dynasty vassal state in present-day central and southern China during the Spring and Autumn period and Warring States Period . Its ruling house had the surname Nai , and clan name Yan , later evolved to surname Mi , and clan name Xiong...
(Mawangdui) and the Yangzi River valley (Shuanggudui).
Historical annals
The most fragmentary and badly damaged of the texts found in Shuanggudui is a text that the Chinese editors have called "Table" (biao 表), an annalisticAnnals
Annals are a concise form of historical representation which record events chronologically, year by year. The Oxford English Dictionary defines annals as "a narrative of events written year by year"...
compilation of events from about 850 to the end of the third century BCE, that is, from the late Western Zhou
Western Zhou
The Western Zhōu period was the first half of the Zhou Dynasty of ancient China. It began when King Wu of Zhou overthrew the Shang Dynasty at the Battle of Muye. C.H...
through the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States. Some of the strips still carry the horizontal markers that divided the text into rows. The existence of this chronological "Table" in the early second century BCE shows that Sima Qian
Sima Qian
Sima Qian was a Prefect of the Grand Scribes of the Han Dynasty. He is regarded as the father of Chinese historiography for his highly praised work, Records of the Grand Historian , a "Jizhuanti"-style general history of China, covering more than two thousand years from the Yellow Emperor to...
did not invent this mode of historical representation, as he often gave the impression in his magnum opus
Magnum opus
Magnum opus , from the Latin meaning "great work", refers to the largest, and perhaps the best, greatest, most popular, or most renowned achievement of a writer, artist, or composer.-Related terms:Sometimes the term magnum opus is used to refer to simply "a great work" rather than "the...
the Shiji.
Breathing exercises
An incomplete text dealing with breathing exercises was also excavated in Shuanggudui; along with similar texts found in Mawangdui, Zhangjiashan, and Shuihudi, it testifies to the widespread existence of gymnastic practices in Han times.Manual on dogs
The tomb also contained a Classic for Physiognomizing Dogs (Xiang gou jing 相狗經), "a text for assessing the qualities of dogs." It has been compared to another text on dogs from Yinqueshan (tomb sealed in the second half of the second century BCE) and to a work on the physiognomyPhysiognomy
Physiognomy is the assessment of a person's character or personality from their outer appearance, especially the face...
of horses that was excavated from a grave in Mawangdui (sealed in 168 BCE).
See also
- Chu Silk ManuscriptChu silk manuscriptThe Chu Silk Manuscript , also known as the Chu Silk Manuscript from Zidanku in Changsha , is a Chinese astrological and astronomical text. It was discovered in a Warring States period tomb from the southern Chinese state of Chu.-History:...
- Guodian Chu SlipsGuodian Chu SlipsThe Guodian Chu Slips were unearthed in 1993 in Tomb no. 1 of the Guodian tombs in Jingmen, Hubei. The archeological team suggested the tomb should be dated to the latter half of the Warring States period...
- Mawangdui Silk TextsMawangdui Silk TextsThe Mawangdui Silk Texts are texts of Chinese philosophical and medical works written on silk and found at Mawangdui in China in 1973. They include some of the earliest attested manuscripts of existing texts such as the I Ching, two copies of the Tao Te Ching, one similar copy of Strategies of the...
- Shuihudi Qin bamboo textsShuihudi Qin bamboo textsThe Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts are early Chinese texts written on bamboo slips, and are also sometimes called the Yúnmèng Qin bamboo texts. They were excavated in December 1975 from Tomb #11 at Chéngguān Shuìhǔdì , Yunmeng County, Hubei Province, China. The tomb belonged to a Qin administrator....
- Tsinghua Slips
- Yinqueshan Han SlipsYinqueshan Han SlipsThe Yinqueshan Han Slips are ancient Chinese writing tablets, made of bamboo strips and were discovered in 1972. The tablets contain many important writings that were not previously known, and important copies of existing work....
- Zhangjiashan Han bamboo textsZhangjiashan Han bamboo textsThe Zhangjiashan Han bamboo texts are ancient Han Dynasty Chinese written works dated 196–186 BCE. They were discovered in 1983 by archaeologists excavating tomb no. 247 at Mount Zhangjia of Jiangling County, Hubei Province . The tomb was built for an early Western Han era official who had...