Birth in Ancient China , livre ebook
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2017
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137
pages
English
Ebook
2017
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Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
26 octobre 2017
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781438467122
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
12 Mo
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Chu Text
1. Words and Images
Chu Ancestral Names and the Word for Birth
A Lost Word for Birth
Suggestive Images
2. Controlling Reproduction: Fertility Prayers
Zhou Fertility Prayers in Bronze Inscriptions
A Warring States Prayer Preserved on Bamboo Strips
3. Mothers and Embryos
Embryonic Transformation
4. Controlling the Pregnant Body
Time and Divination
Curses, Stars, and the Gendered Cosmos
Sequestering
A Question of Thorns
5. Divine Origins and Chu Genealogical History
Gender-Bending
6. The Traumatic Births of Non-Zhou Ancestral Founders
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Publié par
Date de parution
26 octobre 2017
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781438467122
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
12 Mo
Birth in
ANCIENT CHINA
SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture
Roger T. Ames, editor
Birth in
ANCIENT CHINA
A Study of Metaphor and Cultural Identity in Pre-Imperial China
Constance A. Cook and Xinhui Luo
Cover image of face from Hongshun ritual site. Photo by Tian Shuai. Courtesy of the National Museum of China.
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2017 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Production, Ryan Morris
Marketing, Kate R. Seburyamo
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Cook, Constance A., author. | Luo, Xinhui, co-author.
Title: Birth in ancient China : a study of metaphor and cultural identity in pre-imperial China / Constance A. Cook and Luo Xinhui.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2017] | Series: SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016054534 (print) | LCCN 2016057612 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438467115 (hardcover : alkaline paper) | ISBN 9781438467122 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Childbirth—Social aspects—China—History—To 1500. | Birth customs—China—History—To 1500. | Human reproduction—Social aspects—China—History—To 1500. | Metaphor—Social aspects—China—History—To 1500. | Group identity—China—History—To 1500. | China—Social life and customs—To 221 B.C. | China—History—Zhou dynasty, 1122–221 B.C.
Classification: LCC GN482.1 .C66 2017 (print) | LCC GN482.1 (ebook) | DDC 392.1/2—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016054534
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Chu Text
Chapter 1. Words and Images
Chu Ancestral Names and the Word for Birth
A Lost Word for Birth
Suggestive Images
Chapter 2. Controlling Reproduction: Fertility Prayers
Zhou Fertility Prayers in Bronze Inscriptions
A Warring States Prayer Preserved on Bamboo Strips
Chapter 3. Mothers and Embryos
Embryonic Transformation
Chapter 4. Controlling the Pregnant Body
Time and Divination
Curses, Stars, and the Gendered Cosmos
Sequestering
A Question of Thorns
Chapter 5. Divine Origins and Chu Genealogical History
Gender-Bending
Chapter 6. The Traumatic Births of Non-Zhou Ancestral Founders
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Illustrations
Chart 1. Shang and later graphs for embodiment
Chart 2. Shang words related to birthing
Chart 3. Chu progenitor names and related graphs
Figure 1. Hongshan sculpture of a pregnant body
Figure 2. Banpo pottery bowl paintings with baby faces
Figure 3. Possible fertility symbolism on a Neolithic pot
Figure 4. Fu Hao jade amulets with possible fertility symbolism
Figure 5. Jade figurine of a woman in the birthing position
Figure 6. Jade figurine of a woman with tattoos and a bird tail from Fu Hao’s tomb
Figure 7. Humans in the mouths of tigers, images from bronzes
Figure 8. Jade amulet with a fetal-like birdman from the Fu Hao tomb site
Figure 9. Figures with split bodies found on the inner coffin of Zeng Hou Yi
Figure 10. Fuxi and Nüwa with snake tails and holding the sun and moon
Figure 11. Oracle bones with birth divination from Heji 14001 and 14002
Chart 4. Sequestering images
Chart 5. Chu ancestral names
Chart 6. Images of technical intervention in pregnancy
Acknowledgments
Constance Cook is grateful for the support of the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany. Both authors wish to thank Tian Shuai and Hu Wenjia for their research help.
Introduction
A Chu Text
Birth is naturally a gendered phenomenon. Only a “mother” can give birth and only people labeled “females” can be mothers. In this sense, the idea of womanhood has always been intimately associated with the physical reproduction of society. Reproduction of society, history, and the ability to have a future all relied on women. 1 However, the categorization of birth as a female experience was not absolute in ancient China. For example, in Chinese philosophical and historical discourse, the vocabulary for “birth” could be used in a genderless and abstract sense of one cosmic process generating another or even a male dynastic founder producing heirs. In this book, we focus on the female experience of physical birth but, since we are necessarily limited to written texts, we also interrogate the seeming genderless aspects of mythical, philosophical, and religious contexts. Unlike other studies of female reproduction and the control over reproduction during the imperial, particularly the late-imperial, times, a study of childbirth in pre-imperial China must tease information out of ancient vocabulary and cryptic texts. 2 The heavy hand of later editors, particularly those of Han and later Ru or Confucian scholars, upon pre-imperial texts requires us to balance information provided by recently discovered bamboo and silk texts and other excavated texts, such as bone and bronze inscribed texts, against what is preserved in the transmitted classics. Material culture—that is, artifacts and burial data—can also provide hints.
The text, the Chu ju , that inspired this analysis of the female birth process is a recently discovered fourth-century BCE bamboo manuscript that likely originated from the middle Yangzi region, a product of a Chu 楚 scribe (the text is translated at the end of the introduction and analyzed in more detail in chapter 5 ). Its exact origin is unknown since it is among the historic, poetic, and divinatory texts preserved by Tsinghua University that were originally stolen by thieves from an ancient tomb. This text clearly connects birthing to lineage creation and political identity. It is remarkable because it not only provides a history of the mostly male Chu royal lineage in rhythmical prose and all its capitals up to 381 BCE, but it also includes the earliest detailed description of a female traumatic birthing experience, one that in modern times would be understood as a cesarean section. We explore the connection between birthing myths and royal genealogy as well as the cultural symbolism of the cutting or splitting open of the mother’s body. But first, to put this Chu text into a larger religious and mythical context, we examine the earliest records, those produced by the Shang people during the second millennium BCE up through the time of the third-century BCE Chu text. The elite wished to control fertility, the success of the pregnancy, as well as the gender and future prognosis of the baby. Because of the religious belief structure at the time, this process included appeals to the supernatural. China’s earliest birthing records are mostly preserved in divination records, oracle bones, and bamboo stalk divination manuals and almanacs, or Day Books ( Rishu 曰書 ), as well as in silk medical manuscripts and some transmitted texts.
In chapter 1 , we begin our discussion with the earliest vocabulary and images associated with birth. We show the connection between the idea of human embodiment and early notions of “enclosure.” In chapter 2 , we discuss the efforts to control social reproduction through divination, prayers, and sacrifices to the ancestors. We also touch on the issue of birthplace and hints regarding the need to sequester the birth event, which in later times we know was to control spiritual pollution from fluids and blood. In chapter 3 , we examine the idea of the “mother” as a channel of cosmic reproduction and transformation and look at ancient notions of embryonic development. In chapter 4 , we examine ancient divination and other methods used to determine the outcome of birth. In chapter 5 , we compare transmitted versions of Chu genealogy with that recorded in the fourth-century BCE Chu ju 楚居 account and pay particular attention to the role of mothers and goddesses. In chapter 6 , we compare the legends of good and bad births and their cultural affiliations and note how cultural conflicts ironically preserve evidence for early surgical procedures for difficult births. Through a subtle examination of early Chinese materials, our overall study teases out the unknown history of ancient womanhood and women’s role in the social reproduction of early Chinese patriarchy.
Although the ideas in this book are necessarily speculative, we feel that the Chu text provides us a unique opportunity to explore an untouched and for many a still untouchable topic: the female experience of childbirth. In the Chu ju text, which we will explain in detail in chapter 5 , we find a number of avenues for exploration: divine genealogies, the mention of birth mothers, the contrast between a smooth versus difficult birthing, the significance of twins, the manipulations of the traumatic birth by a shaman-physician, the idea of the mother’s body “splitting,” and the naming of a people (the Chu people) from a tool used in the birthing of the ancestral progenitor of the Chu people and to represent their identity. 3 We analyze the meaning behind the names of these ancestors in terms
