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Lisa Raphals . Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 September 2016

Paul R. Goldin
Paul R. Goldin*
Affiliation:
Paul R. Goldin, 金鵬程, University of Pennsylvania; email: [email protected].
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Early China , Volume 39 , 2016 , pp. 299 - 301
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Copyright © The Society for the Study of Early China and Cambridge University Press 2016 

Lisa Raphals's latest book is a lucid and well-organized survey of divination in early China and ancient Greece. So as not to be constrained by Greek and Chinese terminology that does not map neatly one-to-one, she introduces the technical phrases “mantic activity” (p. 2) and “mantic practitioners” (Figs. 1.1–3, pp. 8–9). One might object that these are still not culturally neutral, inasmuch as the word “mantic” has purely Greek roots,Footnote 1 but this problem happily does not interfere with her exposition, which is rich in relevant primary texts on both sides. (My own terminological suggestion would be “forecast,” which, unlike “divination” or “prognostication,” does not imply that the practice is irrational or presupposes peculiar divinities.) I am not qualified to judge the Greek material, but the Chinese sources are accurately and appositely presented. Another strength is the range, with both received and excavated texts from several different sites, including Baoshan 包山, Wangshan 望山, Jiudian 九店, and Shuihudi 睡虎地.

The book is organized thematically, taking the reader on a tour of sources, theories, the range of practitioners, their methods, the types of questions posed and answered, and so on, with a survey of Greek and Chinese evidence in each chapter, and a comparative section toward the end. Because Raphals handles primary sources so ably, the book can serve as a handy reference for any researcher looking for the available sources pertaining, for example, to the types of practitioners, both formal and informal, who operated in ancient China. Or their methods (turtle and milfoil, astromancy, hemerology, etc.) and how these changed over time.

If there is one general shortcoming, it is that the secondary literature is not as well accounted for. Not to be captious, but there are instances where a fuller engagement with recent scholarship would have forestalled mistakes. For instance, it is clear that Raphals misunderstands the concept of xingde 刑德, which she translates questionably as “sanctions and virtues” (p. 139; see also p. 243), without citing John S. Major's study elucidating the term.Footnote 2 Even when the analysis is not compromised in this manner, readers still deserve references to leading scholarly opinions, and these are often missing—for example, Roel SterckxFootnote 3 on animal physiognomy (pp. 95f., 143ff., and 351), Richard RuttFootnote 4 on methods of yarrow-stalk divination (p. 131), David W. PankenierFootnote 5 on “field-allocation” (fenye 分野) astrology (p. 132), Guo JueFootnote 6 on whether divination is rational (p. 165), Yuri PinesFootnote 7 on the religious functions of early historiographers (p. 312), Nathan SivinFootnote 8 and Manfred PorkertFootnote 9 on causes of disease according to Huangdi neijing 皇帝内經 (p. 320f.),Footnote 10 Edward L. ShaughnessyFootnote 11 on the Wangjiatai 王家臺 Guicang 歸藏 (p. 334f.). Similarly, scholarly readers who check Raphals's footnotes will discover that some bibliographical investigation is often necessary, because her references are not always accurate and sometimes she even cites the wrong publication.Footnote 12 A little more detail-oriented work of this kind would have made the book more useful and reliable.

Nevertheless, Divination and Prediction in Early China and Ancient Greece will serve as an excellent first resource for students and scholars who wish to acquaint themselves with the extant sources before venturing into this immensely complex field on their own. It will undoubtedly aid the cause of comparative research, as Raphals intended.

References

1. On p. 101, incidentally, Raphals implies (maybe I am misreading her) that Plato was wrong to associate mantis with mania, but the two undoubtedly share the same proto-Indo-European root: *men.

2. “The Meaning of hsing-te ,” in Chinese Ideas about Nature and Society: Studies in Honour of Derk Bodde, ed. Le Blanc, Charles and Blader, Susan (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1987), 281–91Google Scholar.

3. The Animal and the Daemon in Early China, SUNY Series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture (Albany, 2002), 25ff. and 156ffGoogle Scholar.

4. The Book of Changes (Zhouyi): A Bronze Age Document, Durham East-Asia Series 1 (Richmond, UK: Curzon, 1996), 145–201 Google Scholar.

5. Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 265–88Google Scholar. (The relevant chapter was originally published in 1999 and was thus available to Raphals even if the revised version in this book was not.)

6. “Divination,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Chinese Religions, ed. Nadeau, Randall L., Wiley-Blackwell, Companions to Religion (Chichester, UK, 2012), 419–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recently, Albert Galvany has explored this question in “Signs, Clues and Traces: Anticipation in Ancient Chinese Political and Military Texts,” Early China 38 (2015), 151–93CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7. Foundations of Confucian Thought: Intellectual Life in the Chunqiu Period, 722–453 B.C.E. (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2002), 14–26 Google Scholar. (Raphals does list this book in her bibliography.)

8. Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China, Science, Medicine, and Technology in East Asia 2 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, 1987), esp. 100–102 Google ScholarPubMed.

9. The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence, MIT East Asian Science Series 3 (Cambridge, 1974), e.g., 148–52Google Scholar.

10. Here she also mis-Romanizes the title of a paper by Yamada Keiji and refers to Paul U. Unschuld's response without citing it: “Der Wind als Ursache des Krankseins: Einige Gedanken zu Yamada Keijis Analyse der Shao-shih Texte des Huang-ti nei-ching ,” T'oung Pao 68 (1982), 91–131 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. “The Wangjiatai Gui Cang: An Alternative to Yi Jing Divination,” in Facets of Tibetan Religious Tradition and Contacts with Neighbouring Cultural Areas, ed. Cadonna, Alfredo and Bianchi, Ester, Orientalia Venetiana 12 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2002), 95–126 Google Scholar. Shaughnessy's more recent book, Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the jing, Yi (I ching) and Related Texts, Translations from the Asian Classics (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014)Google Scholar, would not have been available to Raphals while she was writing.

12. Another example: p. 301, where she states that Hans Bielenstein responded to a paper by Wolfram Eberhard, but cites the wrong one; it should be “Beiträge zur kosmologischen Spekulation Chinas in der Han-Zeit,” Baessler Archiv 16.1 (1933), 1–100 Google Scholar. In the same discussion, she provides the wrong date for Sivin's “Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy”; it should be 1969.