Abstract
The Taiyi shengshui 太一生水 is one of only a few texts in the early Chinese corpus to present a detailed cosmogony, one that traces the beginnings of the cosmos back to a variety of spiritual and natural forces, such as the divinity Taiyi and water. My primary question in this chapter is not to ask what that cosmogony was, but why such a cosmogonic text might have been written in the first place. Why in particular did authors in Warring States China deem it necessary to go all the way back to the very beginning of everything to try to situate their thought and recommendations for human action? By comparing the Taiyi shengshui to various other cosmogonies in the textual tradition, we arrive at interesting insights into both the overarching moral agenda of the text as well as its specific contributions to cosmological thinking in early China.
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Notes
- 1.
While the text of the TYSS had not been previously known or transmitted before the Guodian find, the fact that it was attached to the Laozi C version of the Guodian corpus has had many scholars musing about its relationship to the Laozian texts and traditions (Jingmenshi Bowuguan 1998). In a volume on the proceedings of a conference on the Guodian Laozi, for example, Sarah Allan contended that, given that the bamboo slips of the TYSS are physically identical to those of the Laozi C, the former should be read as the same text (Allan and Williams 2000: 168). Li Xueqin was more inclined to take the TYSS as a commentary to the Laozi (Allan and Williams 2000: 168–69). Allan’s proposal speaks to the issue of the unity of the strips that should be taken as the TYSS. She is the most prominent spokesperson for the claim that these strips do not constitute a separate text on their own.
- 2.
This translation is my own from 2001. I have since consulted Scott Cook’s published translation and included a few of his terms or phrases here (Cook 2012).
- 3.
Referring implicitly to the mutually and reciprocally dependent, sequential process of completion.
- 4.
It is worth noting that this responsiveness is notably missing from the first act of creation, that of Taiyi before the birth of water. So there is still a sense in the text of initial generation that does not respond to anything outside of itself.
- 5.
Note that water is not mentioned here.
- 6.
There is a very unfortunate lacuna in the text here. Given that the text goes on to speak of “Heaven’s Way (Dao)” and “Dao” in the next statement, it is likely that one or the other of these terms could constitute the missing phrase/term.
- 7.
I believe the author is distinguishing between the spoken name, a mere linguistic device, and its signifying name, a deeper, operational or modal element associated with the ritual invocation of the name. The distinction in Chinese is between zi 字and ming名.
- 8.
The manuscript has huo 或 for the first graph, but this is frequently used for yu 域 in both received and paleographic literature.
- 9.
Unlike in the TYSS, the Daodejing often speaks of such a Dao as the “mother of all under Heaven,” (chapter 25), or the “mother of all things” (chapter 1).
- 10.
This “fall from grace,” while not a common theme in the Chinese textual record as we know it, is nonetheless present in the comment from the Heng xiancosmogonic text, another excavated text of unknown provenance that likely dates to around the same period as the TYSS and Daodejing: “Primordially, there is good, order, and no disorder. Once there are humans, there is not-good. Disorder emerges from human beings” (先者有善,有治無亂; 有人焉有不善, 亂出於人) (Brindley et al. 2013: 148).
References
Allan, Sarah and Crispin Williams, eds. 2000. The Guodian Laozi: Proceedings of the International Conference, Dartmouth College, May 1998. Berkeley: Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California.
Cook, Scott. 2012. The Bamboo Texts of Guodian: A Study and Complete Translation, 2 vols. Ithaca: Cornell University.
Brindley, Erica F., Paul R. Goldin and Esther S. Klein. 2013. “A Philosophical Translation of the Heng Xian”. Dao: Journal of Comparative Philosophy 12.2: 145–51.
Jingmenshi Bowuguan 荊門市博物館, ed., 1998. The Bamboo Slips from the Chu Tomb in Guodian 郭店楚墓竹簡 Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe.
Li, Ling and Donald Harper. ([1995] 2013). “An Archaeological Study of Taiyi (Grand One) Worship.” Early Medieval China 1995.1: 1–39. https://doi.org/10.1179/152991095788305864.
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Brindley, E. (2019). The Taiyi shengshui 太一生水 Cosmogony and Its Role in Early Chinese Thought. In: Chan, S. (eds) Dao Companion to the Excavated Guodian Bamboo Manuscripts. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 10. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04633-0_8
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