The Five Ages established a logically rigorous theoretical system. Many of the contents are unheard of, and many records provide important keys to further understanding the relevant pre-Qin historical legends and ideological culture.
Qinghua Jian's new discovery of the "encyclopedia" in the Warring States period
Author: Jia Lianxiang (Associate Professor, Center for Research and Conservation of Unearthed Documents, Tsinghua University)
In July 2008, Tsinghua University rescued a batch of Warring States Bamboo Janes, with a total of nearly 2,500 pieces, all of which are ancient books. In the past 13 years, the scholar team of the Center for The Research and Protection of Excavated Documents of Tsinghua University has been compiling and revising the bamboo jane day and night, and the collation report of "The Bamboo Jane of the Tibetan Warring States of Tsinghua University" written at a rate of about one series a year has now been published in ten series, and the overall collation work of Tsinghua Jane has been completed by two-thirds, and the collation and research of this batch of precious materials has also received more and more extensive attention from the academic community and society.
The content of Tsinghua Jian is mostly classics and historical classics, and its academic value is self-evident, and there are a considerable number of sub-books, which also constantly update our understanding of the history of pre-Qin thought and academic history. Among them, there is a long mathematical literature, tentatively titled "Five Records", which exists in 126 branches (originally there should have been 130 branches), about 4450 words, and it is speculated that it is nearly 5,000 words when it is complete, and when it is the largest unearthed Warring States bamboo book seen so far, it will be included in the eleventh series of the collation report, which will be published in November this year. Everyone knows that the "Lao Tzu" of the Tongben (Wang Biben) has 5162 words, and the length of the "Five Ages" is very close to it, which is a "one" ancient book in the true sense.
The Five Chronicles takes the flood in the world, and the "Later Emperor" (Jianwen or "Hou" or "Wenhou") quelling the flood through the "Five Ages of the Revised Calendar" as the background, and uses the words of "Hou" to expound astronomical calculations, human ethics, mountain and river properties, human body structure, gods and palms, and ancient legends, and establishes a set of logical and rigorous theoretical systems. Many of the contents are unheard of, and many records provide us with important keys to further understand the relevant pre-Qin history, legends, ideas and culture.
This bamboo book originally had no title, and the whole content was centered on "day, moon, star, chen, and year", which was called "Five Ages" in a simplified text, so we proposed the title according to it. The "Five Ages" were once found in the Shangshu Hongfan, and tradition holds that "Hong" means "Great", "Fan" means "Law", and Hong fan is the Yilun Dafa that Jizi presented to King Wu of Zhou, which not only has many similarities with the content nature of the Five Records, but its source is also related to the legend of water control, but the era is indeed recorded in the Period of GongYu (Yao Shun). Hong Fan had nine domains: "The first day is the five elements, the second two are used for the five things, the second three are used for agriculture, the second is used for the five disciplines, the second five days are used for the imperial pole, the second six days are used for the three virtues, the second seven days are used for doubt, the second eight days are used for shu zheng, the second nine days are used for five blessings, and the six poles are used for wei." Among them, "five ages: one year, two months, three days, four stars, and five calendars." Compared with the two, the extra "calendar number" in "Hong Fan" is mentioned to a more important position in the "Five Ages", independently called "number calculation", and said: "The number of the world is calculated, only the law of the future." It can be seen from this that the person who pushes the "counting" is the supreme master of the universe, the "Later Emperor", and the "Five Ages" are actually established according to the calculation.
Based on numerical calculations, the Later Emperor established a huge cosmic system, in which the understanding of cosmic space is particularly interesting. A complete set of cosmic space concepts appeared in the text, namely "heaven", "earth", "four wildernesses", "four clouds", "four trees", and "four dimensions", which also have divine attributes. Among them, the heaven (number is "gao wei"), the earth (the number is "fear pu"), the four wildernesses are also called "liuhe", "he" when it is taken from the meaning of "hewei", "liuhe" can be understood as a hexahedron, representing the overall space of the universe. The "Four Yuan" text clearly states that it is the "Four Zheng", and from the perspective of phonetic relations, it can also be read as the "Four Zhongs (Middle)" of the Huainanzi Astronomical Training, and the number of the "Four Yans" is "Tianjiao", which can be seen to refer to the four positive directions of the heavens. The name "Four Trees" is "Tianzhu", which is also found in the passage of the Bullet Magazine Book "Celestial Phenomenon" (or "Year"), which was used to be regarded as a star name, which is incorrect. The "four trees" can be read as "four trees" (or "four pillars"), and the "tree of four colors" painted in the four corners of the book is the pillar that plays the role of the heavens, and should be located in the four corners of the universe. The "four dimensions" in the text are divided into east (dragon), south (bird), west (tiger), and north (snake), which is completely different from the view of ancient books such as "Huainanzi Astronomical Training" as the "four corners". The name "Four Dimensions" is "Heavenly Dimension", and it now seems that in the pre-Qin period, it should be the exclusive position of the sky to represent the celestial sphere. The Shuowen says: "Wei, Che Gai Wei Ye", which is probably because of its closeness in shape to the hemisphere of the heavens. Because the celestial sphere is constantly rotating, the "four dimensions" are also constantly transformed between the forward and the corner direction, so that the east, south, west, and north forward four dimensions and the southeast, northeast, southwest, northwest corner of the four dimensions of the two different understandings, the Seven Sayings of Self-Sorrow even collectively called "eight dimensions". Through the analysis of these spatial concepts of the Five Ages, it is possible to clarify the names of many directions in ancient books and gain an in-depth understanding of the overall understanding of the universe by the ancients.
Taking the four dimensions as the coordinates, the Later Emperor calculated the movement of the stars according to the celestial phenomena on the celestial sphere, and set up twenty-eight houses seven times in four directions. The twenty-eight lodges that were common in later generations have been found on the lacquer of the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in the early Warring States period, which shows that its source is not late, but the twenty-eight lodges in the "Five Ages" are quite different from them, and are mostly consistent with the records of the "Book of History and Law". For example, "Five Ages" uses "big horn" instead of "kang", "Jianxing" without "fighting", "cutting" without "coveting", and "wolf" and "arc" without "well" and "ghost". In the order of the stars, the eastern horns, kang, and xenon, the five ages are the big horns, tiangen, and ben horns; the southern stars and zhang, and the jianwen zhang and seven stars. These differences not only reflect that there are different systems circulating in the twenty-eight houses of the pre-Qin period, but also may be directly related to the difference in the observed age, which is an important material for the study of the history of pre-Qin astronomy.
The purpose of the Later Emperor in establishing the cosmic system was actually to regulate and guide the use of human beings on the ground. The Five Chronicles summarizes it into five aspects: time, degree, positive, chapter, and numerical calculation. Among them, "shi" refers to the five climates of wind, rain, cold, summer, and big tone (thunder); "degree" refers to the five norms of straightness, moment, quasi, weighing, and rules; "positive" refers to the five virtues of etiquette, righteousness, love, benevolence, and loyalty; and "chapter" refers to the five colors of green, white, black, red, and yellow. These contents are based on numerical calculations, which can be matched with each other, and can be used to set up a state house, educate the people, and worship ghosts and gods. It is not difficult to see that there is a strong "five elements" color in it. But the strange thing is that the whole text of the "Five Ages" does not appear in its entirety with gold, wood, water, fire, and earth, which does not match the five elements, perhaps reflecting the author's special and taboo ideological orientation.
The Later Emperor selected six gods for each of the five aspects used for personnel affairs, and these thirty gods could also be jointly controlled with the great gods such as "Four Dragons", "Four Dragons", and "Four Dimensions" who represented the cosmic space, and they could even control various parts of the human body and control human diseases. For example: "If the people have a disease, from the waist above, it is called a disease, and the sky is sneaky." From the waist down, it is called a mane, and the ground is sneaky. The way of determining the lord mentioned here can provide a systematic reference for us to understand the wushu activities in the Warring States period, as well as the blessing techniques that continued until the Qin and Han dynasties. In addition, the property of mountains and rivers is also controlled by gods, and the more interesting thing is that the "Great River" as a local treasure is in charge of "water", and JianWen remembers that the treasures in the water are "beads, turtles, elephants", and "elephants" refers to ivory, but it is considered that ivory is a product in water, which is quite different from our current understanding, perhaps reflecting the environment and animal habits of the time and place where the author of the "Five Ages" lived, which is very different from today. In addition, the Five Ages enshrined the twenty-eight lodges, twelve-year-olds, etc., together with the aforementioned gods of heaven and earth, which were selected from among the many gods seen at that time, which was a systematic integration of the pre-Qin gods through the way of counting and matching.
In order to illustrate the effectiveness of the "Five Ages" system established by the Later Emperor, jianwen describes his specific practice of this theoretical system in the last quarter of the article, taking the original "human king" Huangdi as an example. It involves a large number of historical legends of the Yellow Emperor period, as well as the familiar story of "Yellow Emperor Zhan Xuan You". Among them, the record of the identity of "Xuan You" completely updates our cognition, and its text reads: "The Yellow Emperor has a son, Xuan You, who is an adult, but as a five soldier." Xuan You was the son of the Yellow Emperor, although it was unexpected, but the literature has been suggested, and the Chronicle of the Princes Since the Jianyuan Dynasty contains Tian Qianqiu's letter to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty: "Sons make father soldiers, and sin should be flogged." The wrath of father and son has existed since ancient times. Father of Xuan Youpan, the Yellow Emperor waded into the river. It can be seen that this saying is still circulating in the Han Dynasty. In the process of recording the battles of the Yellow Emperor and Xuan You, the Jianwen also involved many formations, orders, etc., and even three battle songs with pipe music, "Wu Zhuang", "Zheng Kuang" and "Xi Shang", which are also of great significance to the study of pre-Qin military history.
The content of the "Five Ages" is vast and profound, and it is not an exaggeration to call it the "encyclopedia" of the Warring States period from the current perspective. Although the whole text of the simplified text is only written down, from the characteristics reflected in some text descriptions, the "base book" of this book or the original documents taken from it may be equipped with a schema, and I have deduced the "Tianji Map" and "Human Body Diagram" based on some of the contents. These views are only our preliminary understanding, and we hope to arouse everyone's interest and conduct more in-depth research on the Five Ages.
(This paper is the phased result of the beijing municipal social science foundation key project "Research on the Construction of Tsinghua Jane Ancient Character Database and Related Issues" [20yya001])
Guangming Daily (11th edition, October 30, 2021)
Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily