Mountain deities in China: the domestication of the mountain god and the subjugation of the margins.

• Author: Kleeman, Terry F.

All mountains, whether large or small, have gods and spirits.(1)

Ge Hong (283-343)

THE MARCHMOUNTS

PERHAPS BEST KNOWN of the mountain gods are the marchmounts or sacred peaks (yue). These mountains, one in each cardinal direction, fix and define Chinese space. Their worship may go back as far as the Shang.

The character yue occurs frequently in the oracle bone inscriptions as a pictograph of one range of mountains above another.(2) This yue is the object of a number of sacrifices, including the offering of burnt sacrificial victims known as liao, as well as the di sacrifice usually reserved for the high god(s); announcements (gao) are made to the yue and emissaries dispatched to it.(3) The yue can curse both the king and the crops. It is, according to Qu Wanli's calculations, the most common object of prayers for rain and the second most common object (after the Yellow River) of prayers for the harvest. Ding Shan concludes that this yue need not refer to any of the historical marchmounts; the character denotes, he maintains, a ritual performed on any relatively high mountain.(4) Since, however, emissaries are sent to yue, the term must refer to some specific cult site or sites.

We cannot be certain what mountain(s) were intended in these divinatory charges. Sun Yirang, the first scholar to address this question, identified this yue with Mount Song near Luoyang, the later Central Marchmount, and Sarah Allan has recently concurred, arguing that it had functioned as a cosmic center since Neolithic times.(5) In the Book of Poetry (Shijing) the word yue sometimes means nothing more than "lofty peak" (e.g., Mao 273 and 296), but in one example it seems to refer to a specific peak and that peak has again been identified as Mount Song.(6) An interesting piece of corroborating evidence is found in the mountain's earlier name, Great Palace Mountain (Taishishan). Great Palace was also the name for the central hall in the ancestral Pure Temple (Qingmiao) where the ruler communed with his ancestors and Heaven and the name itself should perhaps be transcribed Palace of Heaven (Tianshi).(7) King You of Zhou (r. 841-830) is said to have convened the feudal lords and non-Chinese rulers at Great Palace Mountain, reflecting its function as symbol of the Zhou state.(8)

Qu Wanli has proposed a different identification for the yue mentioned in the oracle-bone inscriptions and the Shijing. He argues that the mountain in question is Mount Huo, also known as the Taiyueshan or Huotaishan.(9) His best evidence is an incident recorded in the Discourses of the States (Guoyu) and the Guanzi and a passage from the Surviving Zhou Documents (Yi Zhoushu). In the first case, Sire Huan of Qi speaks of the return of sacrificial meats presented to the Zhou king at Jiang, and in the Guanzi the place is specified as "the lofty yue" (longyue).(10) Jiang was near modern Houma in southwestern Shanxi, roughly fifty miles south of Mount Huo. The passage in the Surviving Zhou Documents tells of King Wu's establishment of the city of Luo (modern Luoyang) on the reputed site of the Xia dynasty capital. He extols the commanding location of this city, from which "we to the north can gaze past the outskirts of the yue" (wo beiwang guo yu yuebi).(11) Although neither passage offers definitive proof that the yue referred to is Mount Huo (the distance from Jiang to Mount Huo is considerable and that from Luoyang even greater), it does seem the most likely candidate. Mount Song is southeast of Luoyang and nearly twice as far from Jiang as Mount Huo.

Other texts of the Warring States era speak of a group of yue. In the "Canon of Yao"(12) of the Book of Documents (Shujing), the Thearch Yao consults with ministers called the Four Marchmounts (siyue) concerning the great flood and his own abdication. Although commentarial opinion is split as to the identity of the Four Marchmounts here, all major theories share common conceptions. Kong Anguo identifies them as the four sons of Xi He, each in charge of the feudal lords subordinate to one of the marchmounts.(13) Others take siyue to be a collective term for the feudal lords of the four directions, or to refer to the leader of the feudal lords in each quarter.(14) All see the Four Marchmounts as leading or constituting groups of local nobility with ultimate allegiance to the Zhou royal house but not under its direct control.

Whatever the exact identities of these officials, they certainly had some relation to the mountains whose names they bore. When Shun accepts the abdication of Yao and accedes to the throne, he meets with the Four Marchmounts and local rulers, then goes on a procession to each of the four marchmounts to offer sacrifice.(15) Thus by at least the fourth century B.C. there was a complex of numinous mountains that were conceived as intimately linked to the state and its well-being.

The system of four marchmounts was based upon a center/margins dichotomy. The Tradition of Zuo (Zuozhuan) repeatedly links the marchmounts to non-Chinese tribes. At a great interstate summit held in 559 B.C., a leader of the Rong people comments, "Sire Hui [of Jin], making illustrious his great virtue, considered us many Rong to be the descendants of the Four Marchmounts and not to be mistreated or abandoned."(16) The four human marchmounts are analogues of the four regional hegemons (bo, lit. "elder brother"), originally non-Chinese (i.e., not at that time identified as part of Huaxia) regional leaders who assume responsibility for managing the tribes of their region and acting as a bulwark against foreign invasion in return for a privileged alliance with the Chinese ruling house.(17) King Wen of the Zhou, a Western Rong tribe, had occupied such a position as Hegemon of the West (xibo) before organizing a revolt, primarily of the non-Chinese tribes of his region, against Shang rule. In this system the marchmounts are defined as outside of or at least peripheral to the Chinese cultural sphere, an allied but still marginalized "other."

The king is the center and axis of this spatial arrangement, liegelord of the marchmount-hegemons, and as such, he must have had his own mountain. This central mountain would have been the acme of a pyramid of sacred peaks, just as the Shang and Zhou kings held supreme ritual authority over powerful regional leaders, upon whom they relied for military support. Whether this supreme central mountain was Mount Song/Great Palace Mountain, Mount Huo, or some other peak lost to history, the ordering of Chinese space was hierarchical with a single focus exalted above its four supports.

By the Han dynasty, at the latest, it had become common to group the physical marchmounts into a company of five, adding the Central Marchmount, Mt. Song.(18) Each mountain was now correlated with one of the Five Agents (wuxing) and, through it, with the whole system of related colors, flavors, directions, stars, seasons, etc. Part of this system is the Five Thearchs (wudi), color-coded monarchs of the five quarters and their marchmounts. The earliest recorded instance of sacrifice to one of these gods is set in the eighth century B.C., when the ruler of the state of Qin institutes sacrifices to the White Thearch, god of the Western Marchmount or Flowery Mountain (Huashan). The circumstances are related in the Records of the Historian (Shiji):(19)

Fourteen generations had passed since the Zhou conquest of the Shang; generation after generation the Zhou house had waned and the rites and music had been abandoned. The feudal lords acted without restraint and King You was defeated by the Dog Rong. Zhou moved its capital east to Luo. Sire Xiang of Qin (r. 777-766 B.C.) attacked the Rong, saving the Zhou, and in recognition of this for the first time he was ranked foremost among the feudal lords. Once Sire Xiang of Qin had been made marquis, and occupied the Western Appendage, he concluded that he was the host of the god Shaohao. He created the Western Sacred Preserve,(20) offering cult to the White Thearch (Baidi). He is said to have used as sacrificial animals one each of red horses with black manes and tails, yellow oxen, and rams. Sixteen years later, Sire Wen of Qin (r. 765-715) was hunting in the east, between the Qian and Wei Rivers. He divined about occupying this site and the response was auspicious. Sire Wen dreamt that a yellow snake hung down from the heavens, touching the earth, with its mouth reaching the lower slopes of Fu.(21) Sire Wen asked the historian Dun about this. Dun replied, "This is a summons from the Thearch(s) on High (shangdi). My lord should offer cult to them (him). Thereupon [the Sire] created the Fu Sacred Preserve and, using three sacrificial victims, performed the suburban sacrifice to the White Thearch there.(22)

In this important passage the ruler of the state of Qin institutes sacrifices to the god of a mountain within his territory, the White Thearch, ruler and occupant of the Western Marchmount. "White," being the color of the west, places this god within the framework of the system of five directionally oriented deities known as the Five Thearchs. We cannot be certain if this grouping was part of a pre-existing belief, assimilated by the Qin, or represents the introduction of a Qin cult to the rest of China.(23) The rulers of Qin were to build five more of these sacred preserves, two dedicated to the White Thearch, one to the Green Thearch (Qingdi), one to the Yellow Thearch, and one to the Fiery (i.e., red) Thearch (Yandi).(24) The presence of a yellow snake in the above passage may imply a recognition of the Yellow Thearch associated with the center, but it seems that there was no attempt to establish within the borders of Qin a complete set of altars to the Five Thearchs. The dating of this passage is open to question (it follows immediately after a famous prophecy predicting the rise of Qin, which is widely assumed to be late) but the very lack of systematization...