The Trail of Time: Time Measurement with Incense in East Asia (review)

36o China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 The book also could have provided a more comprehensive and thoughtful appraisal ofthe post-Mao reforms in light of the Russian experience since 1990. A comparison ofthe successes and failures of the two experiences in the sociopolitical arena would be valuable to anyone concerned with national transformation. One of the book's other faults is the presence of some simple factual errors. For example, Lin Piao should not have been referred to as the "commander-inchief of the Chinese armed forces, since the man who was at one time designated the successor to Mao never acted in that capacity either in name or in reality (p. 136). In conclusion, this book is more like a historical novel full of fascinating stories than a sound scholarly work based on authentic data, searching analysis, and balanced judgment. Franklin W. Houn University of Massachusetts, Amherst Professor emeritus ofpolitical science Franklin Houn specializes in modern Chinese politics and traditional Chinese political culture. Il Silvio Bedini. The Trail ofTime: Time Measurement with Incense in East Asia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. xiii, 342 pp. Hardcover $125.00, ISBN 0-521-37482-0. The Trail ofTime is an expanded version of an earlier work, The Scent ofTime, that the author published in 1963. In the thirty years since the first monograph appeared, Mr. Bedini has transformed Appendixes A and B into chapters and gready augmented die body of the text to form this book. The Trail ofTime has two parts, an introductory section devoted to time measurement and incense and two sections on the incense seal in China and Japan. In addition to incense seals it also treats other combustion devices—incense sticks, incense coils, "dragon boat" alarms, match cords, and the like—invented in China and widely used in Japan and Korea for measuring time as well as noncombustible timekeepers such as the clepsydra (water clock), gnomon, and sundial. In the course of describing these artifacts and their history Mr. Bedini also digresses on such widely diverse topics y ' rsity as ^16 jj£e o£^j16 geisna jn £^0 japarl) irrigation regulation, metallurgy, the collection ofantiquities in China during the post-World War II era, Chinese calligraphy , and scent contests in Heian times. The book also has one appendix with ofHawai'i Press Reviews 361 translations ofprefaces to an extremelyrare nineteenth-century catalog ofdesigns for incense clocks and another widi notes to collectors. It concludes with a large section of112 photographs diat depict the artifacts treated in die body ofthe work. The Trail ofTime deals mainly widi incense seals, and one ofits principal theses is that the Tantric incense seal employed to effect magical transformations in Buddhist rituals was instrumental in the development ofthe incense seal used to measure time (p. 69). Amoghavajra (Bukong, 705-774) apparentiy introduced the Tantric incense seal through his translation ofa Buddhist sutra sometime around the middle ofthe eighth century. The text in question (reproduced in figure 21 and translated on pp. 72 to 75) instructs the officiant to place an incense burner in the middle ofan altar and to form the mystic character hrih from four letters ofthe Siddham script (a modified form ofSanskrit devisedbyAmoghavajra for use in China) by spreading incense on the burner. The incense thus laid out formed a continuous trail ofaromatics that burned from one end ofthe graph hrih to the other when ignited and produced miraculous results when employed in conjunction widi the uttering of mantras. The second form ofincense seal, the "hundred graduations incense seal," originated in the eleventh century. According to the Xiangpu, written by Shen Li (eleventh century), Mei Qi (Mei-ch'i, sic), an official awaiting promotion, invented (shizuo ^kft) the device during a drought in 1073, apparendybecause there was insufficient water to fill the local clepsydra. He fabricated a wooden "mold" with an intricate tracery ofchannels into which he pressed incense. As die burning incense coursed through the tracery it passed turns in the mold which marked a given segment oftime. It is tempting to draw the conclusion that the two forms ofincense seals were related. After all, diey share a common name, and both were based on the...