Hun and po

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When a man is born, (we see) in his first movements what is called the [魄] animal soul. [既生魄] After this has been produced, it is developed into what is called the [魂] spirit. By the use of things the subtle elements are multiplied, and the [魂魄] soul and spirit become strong. They go on in this way, growing in etherealness and brightness, till they become (thoroughly) spiritual and intelligent. When an ordinary man or woman dies a violent death, the [魂魄] soul and spirit are still able to keep hanging about men in the shape of an evil apparition; how much more might this be expected in the case of [Boyou]. ... Belonging to a family which had held for three generations the handle of government, his use of things had been extensive, the subtle essences which he had imbibed had been many. His clan also was a great one, and his connexions [sic] were distinguished. Is it not entirely reasonable that, having died a violent death, he should be a [鬼] ghost? [32]

Compare the translation of Needham and Lu, who interpret this as an early Chinese discourse on embryology.

When a foetus begins to develop, it is (due to) the [po]. (When this soul has given it a form) then comes the Yang part, called hun. The essences ([qing]情) of many things (wu物) then give strength to these (two souls), and so they acquire the vitality, animation and good cheer (shuang爽) of these essences. Thus eventually there arises spirituality and intelligence (shen ming神明). [33]

In 516 BCE (Duke Zhao, Year 20), the Duke of Song and a guest named Shusun 叔孫 were both seen weeping during a supposedly joyful gathering. Yue Qi 樂祁, a Song court official, said:

This year both our ruler and [Shusun] are likely to die. I have heard that joy in the midst of grief and grief in the midst of joy are signs of a loss of [xin心] mind. The essential vigor and brightness of the mind is what we call the [hun] and the [po]. When these leave it, how can the man continue long? [34]

Hu proposed, "The idea of a hun may have been a contribution from the southern peoples" (who originated Zhao Hun rituals) and then spread to the north sometime during the sixth century BCE. [35] Calling this southern hypothesis "quite possible", Yü cites the Chuci, associated with the southern state of Chu, demonstrating "there can be little doubt that in the southern tradition the hun was regarded as a more active and vital soul than the p'o. [36] The Chuci uses hun 65 times and po 5 times (4 in hunpo, which the Chuci uses interchangeably with hun). [37]

Relation to yin-yang

The identification of the yin-yang principle with the hun and po souls evidently occurred in the late fourth and early third centuries BCE, [38] and by "the second century at the latest, the Chinese dualistic conception of soul had reached its definitive formulation." The Liji (11), compounds hun and po with qi "breath; life force" and xing "form; shape; body" in hunqi魂氣 and xingpo形魄. "The [魂氣] intelligent spirit returns to heaven the [形魄] body and the animal soul return to the earth; and hence arose the idea of seeking (for the deceased) in sacrifice in the unseen darkness and in the bright region above." [39] Compare this modern translation, [38] "The breath-soul (hun-ch'I魂氣) returns to heaven; the bodily soul (hsing-p'o形魄) returns to earth. Therefore, in sacrificial-offering one should seek the meaning in the yin-yang陰陽 principle." Yü summarizes hun/po dualism.

Ancient Chinese generally believed that the individual human life consists of a bodily part as well as a spiritual part. The physical body relies for its existence on food and drink produced by the earth. The spirit depends for its existence on the invisible life force called ch'i, which comes into the body from heaven. In other words, breathing and eating are the two basic activities by which a man continually maintains his life. But the body and the spirit are each governed by a soul, namely, the p'o and the hun. It is for this reason that they are referred to in the passage just quoted above as the bodily-soul (hsing-p'o) and the breath-soul (hun-ch'i) respectively. [40]

Loewe explains with a candle metaphor; the physical xing is the "wick and substance of a candle", the spiritual po and hun are the "force that keeps the candle alight" and "light that emanates from the candle". [41]

Traditional medical beliefs

The Yin po and Yang hun were correlated with Chinese spiritual and medical beliefs. Hun魂 is associated with shen 神 "spirit; god" and po魄 with gui 鬼 "ghost; demon; devil". [14] The (c. 1st century BCE) Lingshu Jing medical text spiritually applies Wu Xing "Five Phases" theory to the Zang-fu "organs", associating the hun soul with "liver" and blood, and the po soul with "lung" and breath.

The liver stores the blood, and the blood houses the hun. When the vital energies of the liver are depleted, this results in fear; when repleted, this results in anger. ... The lungs store the breath, and the breath houses the po. When the vital energies of the lungs are depleted, then the nose becomes blocked and useless, and so there is diminished breath; when they are repleted, there is panting, a full chest, and one must elevate the head to breathe. [42]

The Lingshu Jing [43] also records that the hun and po souls taking flight can cause restless dreaming, and eye disorders can scatter the souls causing mental confusion. Han medical texts reveal that hun and po departing from the body does not necessarily cause death but rather distress and sickness. Brashier parallels the translation of hun and po, "If one were to put an English word to them, they are our 'wits', our ability to demarcate clearly, and like the English concept of "wits," they can be scared out of us or can dissipate in old age." [44]

Jade burial suits were believed to delay the bodily po soul's decomposition. CapitalMuseum14.jpg
Jade burial suits were believed to delay the bodily po soul's decomposition.

Burial customs

During the Han Dynasty, the belief in hun and po remained prominent, although there was a great diversity of different, sometimes contradictory, beliefs about the afterlife. [45] [46] Han burial customs provided nourishment and comfort for the po with the placement of grave goods, including food, commodities, and even money within the tomb of the deceased. [45] Chinese jade was believed to delay the decomposition of a body. Pieces of jade were commonly placed in bodily orifices, or rarely crafted into jade burial suits.

Separation at death

Generations of sinologists have repeatedly asserted that Han-era people commonly believed the heavenly hun and earthly po souls separated at death, but recent scholarship and archeology suggest that hunpo dualism was more an academic theory than a popular faith. Anna Seidel analyzed funerary texts discovered in Han tombs, which mention not only po souls but also hun remaining with entombed corpses, and wrote, "Indeed, a clear separation of a p'o, appeased with the wealth included in the tomb, from a hun departed to heavenly realms is not possible." [47] Seidel later called for reappraising Han abstract notions of hun and po, which "do not seem to have had as wide a currency as we assumed up to now." [48] Pu Muzhou surveyed usages of the words hun and po on Han Dynasty bei碑 "stele" erected at graves and shrines, and concluded, "The thinking of ordinary people seems to have been quite hazy on the matter of what distinguished the hun from the po." [49] [50] These stele texts contrasted souls between a corporeal hun or hunpo at the cemetery and a spiritual shen at the family shrine. Kenneth Brashier reexamined the evidence for hunpo dualism and relegated it "to the realm of scholasticism rather than general beliefs on death." [51] Brashier cited several Han sources (grave deeds, Book of the Later Han , and Jiaoshi Yilin ) attesting beliefs that "the hun remains in the grave instead of flying up to heaven", and suggested it "was sealed into the grave to prevent its escape." [52] Another Han text, the Fengsu Tongyi says, "The vital energy of the hun of a dead person floats away; therefore a mask is made in order to retain it."

Hun and po souls, explains Yü, "are regarded as the very essence of the mind, the source of knowledge and intelligence. Death is thought to follow inevitably when the hun and the p'o leave the body. We have reason to believe that around this time the idea of hun was still relatively new." [53]

Silk painting found in the tomb of Lady Dai at Mawangdui dated to 168 BCE, interpreted as depicting her hun soul ascending to heaven and her family performing the zhaohun "summoning the soul" ritual below. Mawangdui silk banner from tomb no1.jpg
Silk painting found in the tomb of Lady Dai at Mawangdui dated to 168 BCE, interpreted as depicting her hun soul ascending to heaven and her family performing the zhaohun "summoning the soul" ritual below.

Soon after death, it was believed that a person's hun and po could be temporarily reunited through a ritual called the fu復 "recall; return", zhaohun招魂 "summon the hun soul", or zhaohun fupo招魂復魄 "to summon the hun-soul to reunite with the po-soul". The earliest known account of this ritual is found in the (3rd century BCE) Chuci poems Zhao Hun 招魂 "Summons of the Soul" and Dazhao大招 "The Great Summons". [55] For example, the wu Yang (巫陽) summons a man's soul in the "Zhao Hun".

O soul, come back! Why have you left your old abode and sped to the earth's far corners, deserting the place of your delight to meet all those things of evil omen?

O soul, come back! In the east you cannot abide. There are giants there a thousand fathoms tall, who seek only for souls to catch, and ten suns that come out together, melting metal, dissolving stone ...

O soul, come back! In the south you cannot stay. There the people have tattooed faces and blackened teeth, they sacrifice flesh of men, and pound their bones to paste ...

O soul, come back! For the west holds many perils: The Moving Sands stretch on for a hundred leagues. You will be swept into the Thunder's Chasm and dashed in pieces, unable to help yourself ...

O soul, come back! In the north you may not stay. There the layered ice rises high, and the snowflakes fly for a hundred leagues and more...

O soul, come back! Climb not to heaven above. For tigers and leopards guard the gates, with jaws ever ready to rend up mortal men ...

O soul, come back! Go not down to the Land of Darkness, where the Earth God lies, nine-coiled, with dreadful horns on his forehead, and a great humped back and bloody thumbs, pursuing men, swift-footed ... [56]

Daoism

The Hun and Po Souls Hun Po Tu , 1615 Xingming guizhi Xing Ming Gui Zhi Hun Po Tu .png
The Hun and Po Souls 魂魄圖, 1615 Xingming guizhi
hun
Chinese 魂

Hun魂 and po魄 spiritual concepts were important in several Daoist traditions. For instance, "Since the volatile hun is fond of wandering and leaving the body during sleep, techniques were devised to restrain it, one of which entailed a method of staying constantly awake." [57]

The sanhunqipo三魂七魄 "three hun and seven po" were anthropomorphized and visualized. Ge Hong's (c. 320 CE) Baopuzi frequently mentions the hun and po "ethereal and gross souls". The "Genii" Chapter argues that the departing of these dual souls cause illness and death.

All men, wise or foolish, know that their bodies contain ethereal as well as gross breaths, and that when some of them quit the body, illness ensues; when they all leave him, a man dies. In the former case, the magicians have amulets for restraining them; in the latter case, The Rites [i.e., Yili ] provide ceremonials for summoning them back. These breaths are most intimately bound up with us, for they are born when we are, but over a whole lifetime probably nobody actually hears or sees them. Would one conclude that they do not exist because they are neither seen nor heard? (2) [58]

This "magicians" translates fangshi 方士 "doctor; diviner' magician". Both fangshi and daoshi道士 "Daoist priests" developed methods and rituals to summon hun and po back into a person's body. The "Gold and Cinnabar" chapter records a Daoist alchemical reanimation pill that can return the hun and po souls to a recent corpse: Taiyi zhaohunpo dan fa太乙招魂魄丹法 "The Great One's Elixir Method for Summoning Souls".

In T'ai-i's elixir for Summoning Gross and Ethereal Breaths the five minerals [i.e., cinnabar, realgar, arsenolite, malachite, and magnetite] are used and sealed with Six-One lute as in the Nine-crucible cinnabars. It is particularly effective for raising those who have died of a stroke. In cases where the corpse has been dead less than four days, force open the corpse's mouth and insert a pill of this elixir and one of sulphur, washing them down its gullet with water. The corpse will immediately come to life. In every case the resurrected remark that they have seen a messenger with a baton of authority summoning them. (4) [59]

For visualizing the ten souls, the Baopuzi "Truth on Earth" chapter recommends taking dayao大藥 "great medicines" and practicing a fenxing "divide/multiply the body" multilocation technique.

My teacher used to say that to preserve Unity was to practice jointly Bright Mirror, and that on becoming successful in the mirror procedure a man would be able to multiply his body to several dozen all with the same dress and facial expression. My teacher also used to say that you should take the great medicines diligently if you wished to enjoy Fullness of Life, and that you should use metal solutions and a multiplication of your person if you wished to communicate with the gods. By multiplying the body, the three Hun and the seven Po are automatically seen within the body, and in addition it becomes possible to meet and visit the powers of heaven and the deities of earth and to have all the gods of the mountains and rivers in one's service. (18) [60]

The Daoist Shangqing School has several meditation techniques for visualizing the hun and po. In Shangqing Neidan "Internal Alchemy", Baldrian-Hussein says,

the po plays a particularly somber role as it represents the passions that dominate the hun. This causes the vital force to decay, especially during sexual activity, and eventually leads to death. The inner alchemical practice seeks to concentrate the vital forces within the body by reversing the respective roles of hun and po, so that the hun (Yang) controls the po (Yin). [61]

Number of souls

The number of human "souls" has been a long-standing source of controversy among Chinese religious traditions. Stevan Harrell concludes, "Almost every number from one to a dozen has at one time or another been proposed as the correct one." [62] The most commonly believed numbers of "souls" in a person are one, two, three, and ten.

One "soul" or linghun靈魂 is the simplest idea. Harrell gives a fieldwork example.

When rural Taiwanese perform ancestral sacrifices at home, they naturally think of the ling-hun in the tablet; when they take offerings to the cemetery, they think of it in the grave; and when they go on shamanistic trips, they think of it in the yin world. Because the contexts are separate, there is little conflict and little need for abstract reasoning about a nonexistent problem. [63]

Two "souls" is a common folk belief, and reinforced by yin-yang theory. These paired souls can be called hun and po, hunpo and shen, or linghun and shen.

Three "souls" comes from widespread beliefs that the soul of a dead person can exist in the multiple locations. The missionary Justus Doolittle recorded that Chinese people in Fuzhou

Believe each person has three distinct souls while living. These souls separate at the death of the adult to whom they belong. One resides in the ancestral tablet erected to his memory, if the head of a family; another lurks in the coffin or the grave, and the third departs to the infernal regions to undergo its merited punishment. [64]

Ten "souls" of sanhunqipo三魂七魄 "three hun and seven po" is not only Daoist; "Some authorities would maintain that the three-seven "soul" is basic to all Chinese religion". [65] During the Later Han period, Daoists fixed the number of hun souls at three and the number of po souls at seven. A newly deceased person may return ( 回魂 ) to his home at some nights, sometimes one week ( 頭七 ) after his death and the seven po would disappear one by one every 7 days after death. According to Needham and Lu, "It is a little difficult to ascertain the reason for this, since fives and sixes (if they corresponded to the viscera) would have rather been expected." [26] Three hun may stand for the sangang三綱 "three principles of social order: relationships between ruler-subject, father-child, and husband-wife". [66] Seven po may stand for the qiqiao七竅 "seven apertures (in the head, eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth)" or the qiqing七情 "seven emotions (joy, anger, sorrow, fear, worry, grief, fright)" in traditional Chinese medicine. [57] Sanhunqipo also stand for other names.

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References

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Yü 1987, p. 363.
  2. ↑ The Chinese Classics, Vol. III, The Shoo King. Translated by Legge, James. Oxford University Press. 1865. p. 434.
  3. ↑ The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu. Translated by Watson, Burton. Columbia University Press. 1968. p. 152. ISBN   9780231031479.
  4. 1 2 3 Yü 1987, p. 370.
  5. ↑ Schuessler 2007, pp. 290, 417.
  6. ↑ Tr. Needham & Lu 1974 , p. 87.
  7. ↑ Schuessler 2007, p. 417.
  8. ↑ Shaughnessy, Edward L. (1992). Sources of Western Zhou history: Inscribed Bronze Vessels. University of California Press. pp. 136–45. ISBN   978-0520070288.
  9. ↑ Matisoff, James (1980). "Stars, Moon, and Spirits: Bright Beings of the Night in Sino-Tibetan". Gengo Kenkyu. 77: 1–45.
  10. ↑ Yü 1981; Carr 1985.
  11. ↑ Hu 1946, p. 30.
  12. ↑ Yü 1981, p. 83.
  13. ↑ Hu 1946, p. 31.
  14. 1 2 Carr 1985, p. 62.
  15. ↑ Eberhard, Wolfram (1967). Guilt and Sin in Traditional China . University of California Press. p. 17. ISBN   9780520003712.
  16. ↑ Schuessler 2007, p. 290.
  17. ↑ Giles, Herbert A. (1912). A Chinese-English Dictionary (2nd ed.). Kelly & Walsh.
  18. ↑ Mathews, Robert H. (1931). Mathews' Chinese-English Dictionary. Presbyterian Mission Press.
  19. ↑ Chao, Yuen Ren; Yang, Lien-sheng (1947). Concise Dictionary of Spoken Chinese. Harvard University Press.
  20. ↑ Karlgren, Bernhard (1957). Grammata Serica Recensa. Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities.
  21. ↑ Lin, Yutang (1972). Lin Yutang's Chinese-English Dictionary of Modern Usage. Chinese University of Hong Kong. ISBN   0070996954.
  22. ↑ Liang, Shiqiu (1992). Far East Chinese-English Dictionary (revised ed.). Far East Book. ISBN   978-9576122309.
  23. ↑ Wu, Guanghua (1993). Chinese-English Dictionary. Vol. 2 volumes. Shanghai Jiaotong University Press.
  24. ↑ Ling, Yuan; et al. (2002). The Contemporary Chinese Dictionary (Chinese-English ed.). Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. ISBN   978-7560031958.
  25. 1 2 DeFrancis, John (2003). ABC Chinese-English Comprehensive Dictionary. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN   9780824827663.
  26. 1 2 Needham & Lu 1974, p. 88.
  27. ↑ Baldrian-Hussein 2008, p. 521.
  28. ↑ Legge 1872, p. 329.
  29. ↑ Legge 1872, p. 551.
  30. ↑ Legge 1872, p. 618.
  31. ↑ Yu 1972, p. 372.[ full citation needed ]
  32. ↑ Yu 1972, p. 372.[ full citation needed ]
  33. ↑ Needham & Lu 1974, p. 86.
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