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Cultural Censorship in the Gwodyen DDJ |
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A
Taeko Brooks, University
of Massachusetts at Amherst
Abridged Paper Introduction It was perhaps first noticed by Isabelle Robinet (1998) that there is a significant difference between the cosmology of the Tai-yi Shvng Shwei document and the DDJ florilegia with which that text is physically associated in Gwodyen Tomb 1. Don Harper, though differing with her on that occasion, himself separately (1999) emphasized certain aspects of the difference. In this paper, I wish to demonstrate that the difference is not only real, but that an analogous difference, at bottom a contrary opinion as to the unseen system of the world, is pervasively present in the selection process that derived the Gwodyen florilegia from a source text that is much more like our received DDJ, and that, together with disapproval of certain harsh, demeaning, or disrespectful expressions, it is the only principle of selection that it is necessary to posit in order to account for what is, and what is not, present in the Gwodyen DDJ. In sum, I find that the Gwodyen DDJ is a Chu adaptation of what can only have been an originally non-Chu text, and is not a selection from that text, but rather includes all of it that was not forbidden by this principle of selection. I will first consider some passages omitted from included DDJ chapters, where the presumption is strong that this particular chapter existed in the Gwodyen source text, and thus that the omission is perhaps significant. I will then take up the chapters omitted altogether from the Gwodyen text, where that presumption requires support. In conclusion, I will note that the process I here envision for the DDJ in Chu circa 0288 is duplicated in the Mawangdwei treatment of the DDJ (circa 0168, or 120 years later), and to a slight extent in what we know as the Wang Bi text. Preliminary Note I may first observe that the Gwodyen DDJ shows no preference for the Dau or Dv sections of our DDJ (respectively chapters 1-37 and 38-66), but represents both portions almost equally (16 or 52% of the included chapters are from the Dau section; 15 or 48% are from the Dv section). Omitted Passages [Abbreviated] Of the 31 chapters represented, 17, or more than half, lack passages present in the received DDJ. I find, in sum, that those passages can be subsumed under the following topics:
The first two groups I see as conflicting with Chu ideas of the supernatural, and of cultivation of spiritual aspects of the individual, about which Chu culture held different ideas. The second two would appear to be a matter of propriety: not attributing to the ruler and the government openly harsh policies or describing them with a too low imagery. Omitted Chapters [Abbreviated] The 35 chapters from the range DDJ 1-66 which are exceptionally not included in the Gwodyen florilegia, may similarly be seen as having been excluded on the basis of the same criteria. For the excluded chapters, those criteria might be worded this way:
If we take the included Gwodyen chapters (minus the passages which the Gwodyen compiler excised), we may infer from them the following orientation:
These characteristics, particularly the fourth, may be observed in the actions of the Chu state and particularly in its style of military operations, which over many centuries show a consistent tactical frugality and strategic patience; and a general economy of means, both military and civil. The Chu state, for instance, seems not to have modernized its social structure in the way the northern states did, but retained to the end a more conservative and aristocratic tone. It is perhaps significant, as one more element in this profile, that though we have many legal documents from Baushan 2, showing a developed administrative practice, no major work of Legalist theory is associated with Chu. Chu appears to rely more seriously on the natural order, and to wish to go beyond that order only minimally and temporarily, in both civil and military spheres. The drawings preserved in the Chu Silk Manuscript may be seen not merely as Chu deities, but more specifically as the deities of the natural order as envisioned in Chu. I do not claim that the above is a complete cultural inventory of Chu, only that, as far as it goes, it may be taken as applicable to Chu. The Tai-yi Shvng Shwei I now take up the other side of the question: the aspects of Chu culture that are not captured in the above summary of what the Gwodyen compiler retained of the DDJ. Our only direct evidence for this is the thing with which the Gwodyen compiler replaced the excluded material, namely the Tai-yi Shvng Shwei text. For present purposes, I may defer to Harper's 1999 explication of the text; see also, for a slightly different view, Carine Defoort's 1999 summary, made in view of Harper and taking a slightly different view of the text and its interpretation. What is relevant for my thesis as to the strategy of the compilers is that they were not content to excise spiritually incompatible material from their reworked DDJ, but were also concerned to include compatible material, thus filling the void created by their excisions with something in the same category. It follows that the Chu compilers were not hostile to the supernatural as such, but rather concerned to nativize the supernatural assumptions of the source text, whose more general strategic principles they otherwise admired, and wished to make available for themselves; in the case of the Gwodyen 1 tomb, perhaps specifically to make them available to future rulers of the state. The Gwodyen Florilegia None of the above addresses the principle of arrangement in the Gwodyen florilegia, or the fact that there are three and not one series of DDJ extracts in the Gwodyen 1 tomb. I cannot take up this topic in detail on this occasion, and will content myself with acknowledging a suggestion made on the WSW discussion list, namely that one of the three series has been arranged to deal with Heaven more systematically than the originally scattered references in the received DDJ had done. My suggestions for the other two series must await a future occasion. Later Treatments of the DDJ [Abridged] I thus see, behind the Gwodyen DDJ, something much like our present DDJ, or rather the part of it that had been composed by that date, DDJ 1-66. I find that the same model will also easily account for the peculiarities of the Mawangdwei DDJ texts, whose important mutual differences I here ignore, but whose large qualities are the following:
The common ground is that the DDJ at all stages, including the present, has exerted a powerful fascination for individuals and governments alike, and that in these two particular cases the response to that fascination was to rearrange the DDJ itself to adapt it more completely to local needs, and to supplement it with contemporary material which further increased its adequacy or appropriateness for local intentions. The book has thus invited active treatment beyond that accorded to any other Warring States text. At the same time, the degree of textual freedom enjoyed by successive reprocessors of the DDJ has steadily decreased. The Gwodyen compiler felt free to exclude about half of the source text; the Mawangdwei copyist preserved the entire work. The Gwodyen compiler totally recast the order of chapters he included; the Mawangdwei copyist contented himself with rearranging blocks of material (plus a few individual chapters) so as to bring particular ideas into structural prominence. And Wang Bi, in a still later century, did his reinterpretation of the text only in his commentary, and except at most for some cosmologizing changes (which may easily have been made before the text reached him for comment), took as his basis the text as it came to him, content, sequence, and all. Envoi In our forthcoming study and translation of the DDJ, we propose to use even less freedom, and to content ourselves with describing the ways in which the earlier centuries made use of their greater freedom, and what political ends they served in so doing.
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