So, says Marianne Bujard, "The development of the new imperial religion," and especially the sacrifice to Heaven,
"contributed greatly to the movement that made of the ancient texts the orthodox corpus that was firmly in place by the end of the Western Han."
So the corpus is already in place by the end of the Western Han.
It is already in fact a kind of canonical substance.
But then as we've said several times, in the year 175,
these Classics were engraved in stone, and so they're called the <i>Shijing</i> 石經, the Stone Classics.
And they're "carved and displayed in a public place."
Why?
There were "reports that factions inside the palace had bribed the palace eunuchs to change the text of the Classics that were stored in the imperial libraries,
in order to manipulate the court's deliberations on policy matters and selection criteria."
So just like with any, like the biblical corpus,
you want to have a fixed text, a text about which there can be no dispute,
then you can dispute about the interpretation, but you can no longer dispute,
contest the original text itself, so it was carved in stone.
So without any question, this is the first canon,
scriptural canon in Chinese history. Now, what happens?
We've got a set of Classics inscribed in stone.
And all of a sudden, in the second century,
probably before too,
but the ones that have survived and the ones that we know about started to appear in great number:
"The proliferation of revealed texts in the Eastern Han may be seen as a reaction" to the creation of this text-based orthodoxy.
So we've just talked about— suddenly there's these new revealed texts.
And I would like to quote here from yet another chapter by Grégoire Espesset,
called "Latter Han Religious Mass Movements."
I'm quoting and then we'll unpack his extremely complex statement:
"With the weft 緯 or apocryphal remnants and the composite <i>Taipingjing</i>,
we enter the unorthodox sphere of the epistemic alternatives which various social groups felt compelled to offer as a challenge to the centralized state,
its orthodox ideology, and the established canon."
Now what are we talking about here?
Well, let's take the <i>Taipingjing</i> first. It is said to have been introduced to court by <i>fangshi</i> types,
I believe also from Shandong, at several,
on several occasions and finally to have been accepted by one of the Eastern Han emperors; then it supposedly disappeared.
In any case, we now have a very large text which most people agree is by
and large from the [Han-era] <i>Taiping jing</i> and there's a fellow in it called the <i>tianshi</i> 天師,
parts of it are the <i>tianshi yue</i> 天師曰, that Heavenly Master speaks and reveals, okay?
And this is an extraordinary complex
text—of which Grégoire Espesset
is one of the past masters—
very very difficult to read.
People who are used to reading Han dynasty literature find <i>Taiping jing</i> extremely difficult.
Its grammar is strange, its vocabulary is strange, and so on.
So this is not a text written by a great literat[us], exactly: it's a revealed text, okay?
So, on the one hand, we have these social groups who produced the <i>Taiping jing</i>.
There's all kinds of debates about that.
We're not exactly sure, but what is clear is that they come from some locality,
from some social groups who don't find their preferences in the established canon,
the established orthodoxy of Chang'an 長安 or Luoyang 洛陽. In the Eastern Han, it's—the capital is Luoyang.
So that's on the one hand, we have the first Daoist texts that are being revealed and that will continue to be revealed throughout Chinese history,
throughout Daoist history. This is one of the characteristic features of Daoism—
is that texts are constantly being revealed. Now he calls them "the weft or apocryphal remnants:"
weft, as opposed to <i>jing</i> 經, which is the warp.
So we've already mentioned that, it's like the warp and the weft of a tissue, which is being woven on a loom.
So if we've got the vertical strands, the vertical strings of the <i>jing</i>, of the Classics,
we now have the horizontal, which complete them.
But these weft texts, first of all, there are only remnants left. Why?
Well, they were very important to the rise of Guangwudi during the—at the beginning of the Eastern Han.
They're predictive texts. But they're also mystical texts referring to all kinds of mystical events, about people like Dayu, the Great Yu, and so on.
And so they helped to lead to the founding of the Eastern Han.
But then they had this political significance, political religious significance,
and of course then they started to become dangerous, because they could be re-used for another pretender to the throne.
And so they get forbidden. They get forbidden at various times and so the result is we don't have a canon inscribed in stone in this case,
we have these fragments. And they were collected back in the 1970s or 1980s,
I forget now, by a couple of Japanese scholars.
And this set off a whole new form of Sinological studies of this period,
of these strange mystical texts that we call "the weft or apocryphal" texts,
okay, that represent then this unorthodox sphere.
"Epistemic alternatives": what does he mean here?
Well, that means that—"epistemic" refers to epistemology: how do we know?
Well, if we've got a canon set in stone,
the text cannot be manipulated anymore. We can debate about the exact meaning of this or that phrase,
but it's still basically set in stone. Whereas these texts which keep pouring out,
these new revelations, they could say anything, anything new.
They could support somebody who represents a rebel group as opposed to an orthodox group.
So they give access to alternative knowledge, alternative structuring values,
alternative rituals. And that is why,
as the foundation of new social groups, they become a challenge to the centralized state,
to orthodox ideology and the established canon.
Now, it's above all Wang Mang who, "even before his ascension to the throne,"
reformed the imperial rites "in the direction the exegetes of the Classics wanted."
So I already mentioned, he's the first to perform in fact the sacrifice to Heaven.
This involved moving the altars to Heaven and Earth respectively to the southern and northern suburbs of the capital.
Let's just stop there a moment.
Why did he want the altar to Heaven to be in the southern suburb and the altar to Earth be in the northern suburbs, outside?