Le sacrifice au Ciel dans la Chine ancienne: Théorie et pratique sous les Han occidentaux (review)

Marianne Bujard's book on the sacrifice to Heaven in the Former Han dynasty is an important work that deserves the attention of anyone interested in religion in ancient China, in early imperial religious politics, or in Dong Zhongshu (ca. 195-ca. 115 B.C.) and his legacy. It is also laborious to read: Bujard painstakingly presents her many sources either descriptively or in translation, and deliberately refrains from comprehensive interpretative theories. Still, one comes away from it with many novel insights into the way local cults fared in the newly constituted Chinese empire, into the way religious specialists (fangshi) competed with the classicists (ru) for imperial patronage, and into the way Dong Zhongshu and other religious reformers sought to ground a new state religion in the texts of antiquity. Bujard approaches the foregoing themes only indirectly. Her immediate concern is to analyze Dong Zhongshu's views on the sacrificial rite known as jiao. She presents Dong's theory on jiao in the first part of her book. In the second part she checks Dong's theory against the classical sources that, according to Dong's own claims, inspired his views. In part three she reviews the various descriptions of jiao sacrifices in the treatises on religion in the Shi ji and Han shu, again seeking to determine to what extent they coincide with Dong's proposals.

The only source available for Dong Zhongshu's views on jiao is the Chunqiu fanlu. Bujard posits, with some caution, that the chapters on jiao belong to the authentic core of the Chunqiu fanlu. She first presents a translation of these chapters (i.e., 65-71 and 76) before summarizing and commenting on Dong's views.¹ According to Dong, jiao was an ancient sacrifice that flourished at the time of the Zhou sage-kings, but was subsequently neglected by the Qin rulers as well as by their Han successors. It was felt that this sacrifice ought to be offered uniquely to Heaven by the emperor, the Son of Heaven, in person. It should be the first and most important sacrifice on the imperial ritual calendar, and had to be celebrated in the suburbs of the imperial capital—"suburbs" being the original meaning of the word jiao. During the sacrifice, a calf with horns the size of chestnuts should be offered. From Dong Zhongshu's perspective the jiao sacrifice, when respectfully executed, was the prime occasion for the ruler to communicate with Heaven and to fathom whether Heaven approved or disapproved of his policies. Heaven's approval or disapproval would be manifested in the appearance of a range of auspicious or inauspicious natural phenomena. Also, disruptions or irregularities in the sacrificial proceedings could indicate Heaven's displeasure.

Dong Zhongshu took great pains to ground his theory of the jiao sacrifice in the classics—those texts, supposedly written by the sages of antiquity, that were beginning to attain canonical status in Dong's own times. In the chapters of the Chunqiu fanlu devoted to jiao, Dong refers repeatedly and extensively to related passages in the Odes (Shi), the Annals (Chunqiu), or the Rites (Li). In part 2 of her book, Bujard takes up the received versions of these three texts to check the legitimacy of Dong's claim that they endorse his views on the jiao sacrifice.² Not surprisingly, Bujard finds in the classical texts a bewildering array of meanings for jiao, and, in those relatively rare cases where jiao refers to a specific sacrifice, there is no trace of a unified theory as to what the sacrifice is supposed to mean, who should offer it, when and where it should take place, and what procedures it should follow.

What Bujard's analysis shows is that Dong Zhongshu's theory on jiao should not be understood as a historically accurate...