The Real Ideal (1)—Chinese Historians

One year ago on Round and Square (12 June 2011)—Hurtin' Country: Nobody's Home. 
Click here for the introduction to the Round and Square series "The Real Ideal."
Borders, Real and Imagined 

[a] Ideal, real, cultural, historical RF

In January 2002, at the American Historical Association conference in San Francisco, I attended a panel dealing with military borders, “real and imagined,” in Song China (960-1279). The first paper dealt with the “great ditch” of Song, a long barrier intended to prevent incursions from the north during a tense time in the history of Chinese border relations. The speaker relied on standard sources and sought to explain what was “really happening” in the complex relationship between Inner Asian states such as the Xi Xia and what would later come to be called Northern Song China. The sense of urgency felt by many eleventh century officials was great, and the capital’s sack followed by the retreat to the “Southern Song” capital of Hangzhou in 1127 was a powerful political reality.

[b] Malleable RF

The author explained that he is unashamedly a military historian, and that his work deals with troop movements, battlefield accounts, and military stratagems on both sides of China’s northwest border. He also made clear that he feels he can find significant clues as to the actions and even intentions of the Song commanders in his documents (less so, for the Xi Xia, because the sources tend to be written from a Chinese perspective). Equally clear was his point that he has little time for speculative studies that drift too far from those sources. Sorting through the nuances surrounding the military uses of a vast ditch to hold at bay a growing northwest power is a large scholarly enterprise on its own.

The second paper showed a marked contrast to the first. The speaker dealt with numerical and calendrical correspondences used in divination on the Song battlefields. She articulated the cosmic connections that were an important part of the “idea of warfare” during the transition from Northern Song (960-1127) to Southern Song (1127-1279). She described ways in which generals could set coordinates according to numerical and directional calculations in order to weaken or even subdue their enemies. She connected these Song concepts—which were clearly described as military practices that both complemented and supplemented more ordinary battlefield calculations such as troop movements and preparedness—to Zhuge Liang’s famous calculations at the Battle of the Red Cliffs, made famous in historical and fictional narratives of the end of the Han (206 BCE-CE 220)  and the Three Kingdoms period (220-265).

[c] Manipulable RF

In addition to several Song dynasty examples, she also cited the famous fourth century BCE example, complete with astrological and numerological calculations, of Commander Mao Bao and his garrison at Zhu City, noting that it represented a military use of cosmological ideas. The month spirits interact with each other, and there is also a second echelon of spirits supplementary to those. The calculation is derived by putting all of the elements together—combining time, space, and strategy to produce what is described as a real effect. As can readily be seen, the calculation brings the elements together with, at least in a linear reading, the outcome uncertain until all of the information has been processed.

       On the twenty-fourth day in the cycle (dinghai), in the tenth month, the rebels 

       will arrive at midnight. The Celestial Stem represents the Master, the Terrestrial 

       Branch represents the Servant. The Stem ding represents the prefecture of the

       Commander of the Campaign in the West (i.e. Mao Bao’s superior, Yu Liang).   

       The branch hai represents Zhu City (under the command of Mao Bao himself). 

       The spirit Gong Zao (the spirit of the tenth month, branch yin) represents the 

       rebels. It is to be aligned with the midnight hour, zi.  In the tenth month, water is 

       King and wood is Minister. The vapor of King combines with that of Minister—the 

       rebels must come. The number corresponding to yin is seven, the number

       corresponding to zi is nine. The rebels may be as many as 9,000 or as few as 

       7,000. The spirit Cong Kui (branch you, metal) represents the Noble Personage 

       and is aligned with the stem ding (fire). The inferior one vanquishes the superior 

       one. But the events show Vacancy and Loss (i.e. the branch wei) next to ding is

       inauspicious because the day dinghai falls in the decade beginning with jiashen 

       and during that ten day period the branch wei does not occur). The rebels will not 

       dare to enter Wu Chang (i.e. the prefecture of the Commander of the Campaign in 

       the West).[1]

[d] Ongoing RF

When the speakers had presented their papers, I realized again what a gap there is in the ways that we perceive the world around us—historical or otherwise. From one perspective, there were two Song dynasty military specialists giving papers on a narrow swath of time from the late-eleventh through mid-twelfth centuries. On the one hand, however, there was “real fighting” over a barren stretch of land in China’s northwest, as well as the decades of planning that went into the construction of the ditch itself. The ditch was—for those who negotiated it with horses, ground troops, and munitions—quite real. On the other hand, we have Cosmic Board calculations to determine the actions of an enemy and the subduing of opponents through concepts that channeled the energy of the universe toward their cause, all in keeping with centuries of Chinese divinatory practice. The document had its earliest roots in Shang dynasty (c. 1700-c.1100 BCE) oracle bone prophecies, and many layers of abstraction had developed since then.

When the panel concluded (with a paper that could be called “in-between” on the spectrum of real and imagined), I asked the first question. I wished to know whether the panelists felt there was a way to resolve the “ways of seeing” that the research behind their papers reflected. The approaches taken by the panelists could not have been further apart, and reflect, to my mind, the differences between, say, traditions of British social anthropology and French ethnology in the mid-twentieth century. The first speaker sought the facts; the second speaker sought to encompass them. The first mined his texts for clues about a “reality” that is lost in time; the second explicated detailed texts that perhaps were never “really” used in a battlefield situation, yet were a part of the intellectual arsenal, as it were, of every commander who deployed troops in Chinese history.

[e] Pliable RF

I asked the speakers whether they could resolve the themes on a panel that might well have been subtitled “Karl von Clausewitz Meets Charles Baudelaire.” Could they, to use an example from early Chinese thought, find a way to resolve round and square—the very structures of heaven and earth? In the Chinese intellectual tradition, round and square are complementary, much as are the concepts of yin and yang. The “ideal” and “real” presented that January day in San Francisco, however, did not seem complementary in the least. Indeed, both panelists agreed that the only times that they have even approached agreement is when meeting over large steins of beer in Taiwan after busy research days, noting that the “pull” of their perspectives had carried them in very different directions.  

***  ***

I left the panel wondering if there really is any way to resolve these ways of seeing the world, as well as the objects of our research. Like a game of chess, it seems that every move commits the researcher to a line of questioning that almost precludes the other. The first speaker, in tracking troop movements and focusing on “real” events, clears a path (across the Great Ditch of Song, as it were) toward more such questions and answers. The second speaker, by beginning with the analysis of concepts, is soon unable to bring them to actual battlefields, except as they are portrayed in fiction or strategic texts—or by analogy in actual times of warfare. How can they be resolved? How can idea and practice be framed in a whole?  Are they complementary, or are they polar opposites?

Notes
[1] Course materials from Donald Harper "Chinese Cosmology" University of Chicago, Spring 1988. 

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[f] Very Big i-Deal RF