Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Author(s): A. Waley
Source: Bulletin of the School of Oriental Studies, University of London, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1930),
pp. 1-24
Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of the School of Oriental and African Studies
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ULLETIN
OF THE
SCHOOLOF ORIENTALSTUDIES
LONDONINSTITUTION
PAPERS
CONTRIBUTED
A. WALEY-
Comment
the
Date
(a)
Passage
of
This passage also occurs in the History of Ssu-ma Ch'ien (Treatise
on the SacrificesFang and Shan, Bk. xxvrii, Chavannes, vol. iii, pt. ii,
p. 465).1 But this treatise of Ssu-ma Ch'ien is almost certainly
a late addition to the text. We know that even by the first century
A.D. many of the original chapters had been lost. What now poses
as the Treatise on Fang and Shan, though it contains some information
on this subject, is in reality an account of religion in general. Almost
the whole of the treatise occurs practically verbatim in the account
of Worship and Sacrifice, Z j -~-, which forms chap. xxv of the
Han Shu. The bulk of the treatise is irrelevant to Ssu-ma Ch'ien's
purpose, but perfectly appropriate to an account of Worship and
Sacrifice.
It is safer, therefore, to regard this passage, the earliest reference
to alchemy in any literature,2 as belonging to the first century A.D.
rather than the first century B.c.
(b) Literary Form of the Passage
The passage is one of those rhetorical catenceof which early Chinese
writers are so fond. They have been discussed by Masson-Oursel
and Maspero. Their intention is dramatic rather than logical. Such
logical connections as exist are implied rather than expressed. The
most difficult step to follow is the statement: " Having increased
your span of life, you will be able to see ... hsien." It implies, perhaps,
a theory that hsien (Immortals) are only visible to those whose span
of life at any rate makes some 'approach to their own. The whole
process leads up to the performance of the sacrifices Feng and Shan,
through which the Emperor will obtain immortality. Alchemy,
then, is here regarded as the third in a series of performances, which
lead ultimately to an Emperor becoming immortal. Viewed in this
light alchemy does not concern people in general, but only the
Emperor. It would, however, be pedantic to interpret logically
a passage that is essentially rhetorical.
1 The
Ssu-ma Ch'ien passage is identical with the Han Shu from f. 3 verso to
f. 32 recto of chap. xxviii.
2
Leaving aside the texts published by R. Campbell Thompson in his The
Chemistry of the Ancient Assyrians, Luzac, 1925. These do not deal with the
manufacture of gold nor of an elixir of life.
A. WALEY-
A. WALEY-
we find: b Ni t
*- p M
J&-
y "Yii Fan
A. WALEY-TEXT
A
gl
A [J
Chapter2.
Chapter 1.
~
TL
" The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i of the Chou dynasty Book of Changes";
The
Five Elements Resembling one Another of the Chou dynasty
"
Book of Changes."
As the heading of the titles implies, the work is here accepted
as a study of the Book of Changes, and it is catalogued as a treatise
on the Five Elements. Finally, in the tenth century it was divided
into ninety sections or paragraphs and commented upon by P'Yng
Hsiao Z~-.1
(d) The Style of the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i
Attempts are sometimes made to date texts of this kind by the
rhyme-system used in verse portions. This is dangerous. We know,
for example, that in the T'ang dynasty at least three rhyme systems
were used concurrently: (1) an intentionally archaic one with an
approximation to the rhymes of the Book of Odes; used in eulogies,
etc., written in four-syllable verse; (2) the rhymes of " Old Poetry "
, songs, etc.; (3) the strict rhyme-system of the T'ang dynasty.
tThe opinion of the great Chu Hsi (1130-1200) upon the Ts'an T'ung
Ch'i has often been
j
quoted": , p
.. [?
" The Ts'an T'ung Ch'i is from the literary point of view very well
written and would actually seem to be by some capable writer of the
1 Taoist Canon, Wieger No. 993.
2 Chu
Tzu Yu Lei, Bk. 125.
NOTESON CHINESEALCHEMY
End of thirteenth century, quoted in Taoist Canon, Wieger, No. 990, preface.
10
A. WALEY---
This brings us back to the Shin Hsien Chuan,' which work purports
to be by the same author as Pao P'u Tzu. In the preface to the
Shjn Hsien Chuan Ko Hung says that he wrote it after composing
the esoteric chapters NJ t of Pao P'u Tzu. At the end of the
exoteric chapters (1, f. 10 verso, 1. 9) is an autobiography, the
fullest document of this kind that early China produced. Here Ko
Hung mentions as one of his works a Shen Hsien Chuanin ten chapters.
It has been pointed out as an inconsistency that in the preface to the
Shin Hsien Chuan Ko Hung should say that he wrote it later than
Pao P'u Tzu; while in Pao P'u Tzu the Shin Hsien Chuan is already
mentioned. A simple solution would be to suppose that Ko Hung
wrote first the esoteric chapters, then the Sh&n Hsien Chuan and
then the exoteric chapters.
If we accept that Ko Hung is actually author of both works,
we shall have to assume that at the time he wrote the Esoteric
chapters he was unacquainted with the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i; whereas
when he wrote the Shen Hsien Chuan he had at last become familiar
with it.
But did Ko Hung really write the Shin Hsien Chuan ? If we
confront similar passages from it and from the undoubtedly authentic
Pao P'u Tzu it becomes hard to believe that both are by the same
hand. Take the story of Ch'6ng Wei, quoted above.2 Not only is
the style strangely different, but the Shen Hsien Chuan version is
so meagre and so incompetently told that one doubts whether the
author of it is even trying to pass himself off as Ko Hung.
It seems indeed likely that the Shin Hsien Chuan, though a work
of the fourth century, was merely an anonymous series of Taoist
biographies, which some mistaken person labelled as Ko Hung's
Shin Hsien Chuan and divided into ten chapters.
But Ko Hung's ignorance of the Ts'an T'ung Ch'i still remains
inexplicable.
It would, of course, be an anachronism to expect in an ancient
Chinese author the same bibliographical completeness that we demand
in a modern scholar. But that a writer so encyclopeedicshould ignore
a work of such importance, dealing with a subject in which he was an
hereditary specialist,3 is difficult to believe. It becomes necessary,
1
11
12
A. WALEY-
iv,
exactly
19 recto, 1. 3.
corresponds
13
14
A. WALEY-
li-ka
4or
15
The Problem of Lii Yen (Lii Tung-pin) and his Teacher Chung-li
Ch'uan
The second of these two is purely mythical. Lii Tung-pin (as he
is usually called) tends to materialize in the ninth century. But of the
numerous works attributed to him some are admittedly " spiritcommunications ", conveyed to the world by planchette long after
his death; others (such as the numerous tractates included in the
Taoist Canon)are obviously works of a much later date. It might have
been hoped that the Tun-huang finds would have furnished us with
datable texts; but so far as I know there are no alchemistic works
either in the Stein or in the Pelliot Collection.
It is in the tenth century that we are again on firm ground and
from then onwards we can follow the history of Chinese alchemy continuously. Our great landmark is P'?ng Hsiao's commentary on the
IJ lived during
Ts'an T'ung Ch'i (Wieger, No. 993). P'Fng Hsiao
the close of the ninth and the first half of the tenth century. In his
works 1 we again meet with the distinction (already made by Hui-ssii)
between exoteric alchemy, which uses as its ingredients the tangible
substances mercury, lead, cinnabar, and so on, and esoteric alchemy
These
kj ), which uses only the " souls " of these substances.
" souls ", called the " true " or "purified " mercury, etc., are
in the same relation to common metals as is the Taoist
Illuminate or t k to ordinary people. Presently a fresh step
is made. These transcendental metals are identified with various
parts of the human body, and alchemy comes to mean in
China not - an experimentation with chemicals, blow-pipes,
furnace, etc. (though these, of course, survived in the popular alchemy
of itinerant quacks), but a system of mental and physical re-education,
This process is complete in the Treatise on the Dragon and Tiger (Lead
and Mercury) of Su Tung-p'o, written c. 1100 2: " The Dragon is
mercury. He is the semen and the blood. He issues from the kidneys
and is stored in the liver. His sign is the trigram k'an _. The tiger
is lead. He is bread and bodily strength. He issues from the mind C,
and the lungs bear him. His sign is the trigram li _.
When the
mind is moved, then the breath and strength act with it. When the
kidneys are flushed then semen and blood flow with them."
1 Besides Wieger's No. 993, see also Wieger, No. 1020, vol. 691, a treatise by
P'6ng entitled MJ ~-jIt " Method of Esoteric Alchemy "
2
T'u Shu encyclopaedia, xviii, 300.
16
A. WALEY-
NOTES
ON CHINESE
17
ALCHEMY
is the passage which chiefly concerns us: Chingiz: Have you any
elixir of immortality to bestow upon us ? The Master : " I have a
means of protecting life,' but no elixir of immortality."
The Khan, we are told, " was pleased with his frankness." 2
The interest of this purely mystical phase of Chinese alchemy
is that whereas in reading the works of Western alchemists one
constantly suspects that the quest with which they are concerned is a
purely spiritual one-that they are using the romantic phraseology
of alchemy merely to poeticize religious experience-in China there is
no disguise. Alchemy becomes there openly and avowedly what
it almost seems to be in the works of Bohme or Thomas Vaughan.
6. The antiquity of Alchemy in China.
It has been seen that literary references do not carry the history
of alchemy in China beyond the first century B.C. This does not, of
course, necessarily imply that it was unknown before that date. As a
result of the Burning of the Books and of Confucian hostility to rival
doctrines we possess only a small fragment of early Chinese literature.
But if we are to take the term alchemy in its narrower sense-the
attempt to compound gold out of baser substances-then it is certain
that no such attempt was at all probable in early China, where gold
was not until a comparatively late period 3 regarded as particularly
valuable either as a life-giving substance or as a medium of exchange.
Even in the first four centuries after Christ alchemy continues to
occupy a very obscure place.4 This has been explained on the ground
that the surviving histories of the period were written under influences
that were hostile to Taoism. There is, indeed, a tendency to generalize
from the example of later histories (such as the New T'ang History
which is frankly anti-Buddhist and anti-Taoist), and to regard the Han
histories, the histories of the Three Kingdoms, etc., as rigidly orthodox
Confucian works. But these works are, in reality, far from ignoring
Taoism and its magicians ; and there is no reason to suppose there was
any special prejudice against alchemy as opposed to magical practices
in general.
i.e. means of warding off evil influences.
~,
f"j t_
The doctrines of Ch'ang-ch'un and his sect will be discussed in the introduction
to a translation of the Hsi Yu Chi shortly to be published in the Broadway
Travellers Series; for the moment, therefore, I say no more about him.
3 To fix the date is difficult owing to the surprising fact that there is in Chinese
writing and vocabulary no word for gold. " Yellow metal," the usual periphrasis
can also mean bronze.
* See above, p. 5.
1
VOL.
VI.
PART I.
18
A. WALEY-
19
20
A. WALEY-
out of them. This describes how the magic power of the gold is to be
absorbed into the system. (5) You will then increase your span of
life and see hsien {h in the island of P'Eng-lai. The hsien of P'eng-lai
are always associated with herbal magic, and we are here branching
off on to a totally different system of wizardry, familiar to us through
early Chinese literature. This herbal magic seems, indeed, to have
been the craft of the educated and ruling classes as opposed to the
mineral magic that only gradually drifted up out of the realm of
folk-lore. (6) You may then perform the sacrifices fing and shan.
Here we have branched off on to yet another line of magic-the
mystic ritual of kingship, which is here superimposed on all the rest.
7. Connectionwith Alchemy Elsewhere
It has already been suggested that the introduction of gold into
China involved not merely the importation of the substance itself
or the knowledge how to work it, but also of the magical ideas connected
with the craft. These ideas were super-imposed on the magical ideas
connected with *the native precious substances, such as jade and
cinnabar. But how far did definitely alchemistic notions from abroad
-that is, notions assuming the possibility of changing base metals
into gold-affect the history of alchemy in China ?
As is well known, the history of alchemy outside China begins
with texts written in Greek at Alexandria, none of which seem to be
older than the second century A.D. Some of these texts (though not,
I think, the earlier of them) indicate that the art was introduced into
Egypt by learned Persians, such as Ostanes, whom one may identify,
if one will, with the historical person of that name. To the ancients
of the classical world Chaldea was the home of astrology and magic;
this is a judgment which our vastly greater knowledge of Babylonian
literature enables us to confirm, and there is an antecedent probability
that alchemy, a form of magic intimately connected with astrology,
also had its origin in Babylon, or " Persia " as the ancients freely
called the whole cultural realm from Mesopotamia to Turkestan.
But until 1925 nothing had come to light in this region which could
be interpreted as throwing any light on the origins of alchemy. In
that year appeared Campbell Thompson's On the Chemistry of the
Ancient Assyrians,1 and this was immediately followed by an article
1 The same texts were published almost simultaneously by Zimmern. Dr. Eisler's
article in the ChemikerZeitung was followed by others in the Zeitschriftfiar Assyriologie
and elsewhere. The details of the ensuing controversy do not here concern us.
21
I have already referred to the rise of alchemy in Alexandria somewhere about the second century A.D. There is some reason for
supposing that it had not been established in Egypt for any
considerable time before the appearance of the earliest texts. Ancient
Egyptian literature knows nothing of it, and it is wholly lacking in
1 Op. cit., p. 57,
2Revue d'Assyriologie, 1922 (xix), p. 81.
S Revue de Synthase Historique, xli (1926), and elsewhere.
4 Particularly common in India. See Meyer's translation of the
Arthah.istra,
p. 378, p. 649, etc.
22
A. WALEY-
x La Magie ddns l'Egypte Antique, 2 vols. text, 1 vol. plates. Goes down to
the Coptic period.
2 Dating, no doubt, from the
preceding T'ang dynasty.
23
" Prolonging Life ". We do not know what his means were, whether
herbal or mineral. Some time before 657 he returned to India. But
in 657 we find his patron Wang Hsiian-ts'E petitioning the new
Emperor (T'ai Tsung died in 649) not to let Narayanasvamin go back
to India till his elixir had been given a fair trial. Evidently, then,
the magician had visited China for a second time. According to the
New T'ang History and the Yu Yang Tsa Tsu, Ndrayanasvamin
died in Ch'ang-an. But a much earlier authority (the Fang Shih Lun
of Li T-yuii 1) says that the Emperor Kao Tsung sent him back to
India, and this is supported by the Old T'ang History.
In 664-5 the Buddhist monk Hsiian-chao 2 was ordered by Kao
Tsung to fetch from Kashmir another Indian magician, named
Lokdditya (Lu-chia-i-to), who was supposed to possess the drug 0
This Hindu was at the Chinese Court in 668; we
of Longevity.
do not know whether he stayed in China or returned to India.
Nardyanasvamin, if not Lokdditya, certainly returned at least
once to India, and it is certain that while at Ch'ang-an he must have
picked up from his Chinese confreres some notions of Chinese alchemy.
But the influence was not all in one direction; for we have seen 3
a Chinese writer, probably of two centuries later, giving a Sanskrit
name to the chemical, arsenic sulphide. That reactions of this kinda definite give and take, went on between China and India during
the T'ang dynasty is, I think, beyond doubt. A much more difficult
question is the extent to which Chinese alchemy was influenced by
that of other countries in the early centuries of the era; and this
question is obviously complicated by the fact that we are far from
certain whether in Central Asia, the most likely source of influence,
alchemy at this time existed at all. We know that An Shih-kao,
the famous Parthian translator of Buddhist scriptures, who worked
in China in the second century, was also skilled in the magic and
astrology of his own country. But whether he may have acted as
a "' carrier " of Iranian alchemy to China we do not know, for the
simple reason that we are still uncertain whether such a thing as
Iranian alchemy ever existed. The Central Asian king Yakat (Yakar
or the like) to whose treatise I have already referred 3 remains an
enigma. It is probable, but not quite certain, that he proves the
1 Quoted in the T'u Shu encycloppedia, xviii, 289, i, 16.
2 See
Chavannes, Voyages des Pdlerins Bouddhistes, p. 21, and the new Tripitaka
(Takakusu's edition), vol. li, p. 2, col. 1 (No. 2066).
3 p. 14.
24
NOTES
ON CHINESE
ALCHEMY