Notes On the Nomenclature of Winds and Directions in the Early Han

Abstract

The Huai-nan-tzu M M (hereafter HNT), an eclectic Taoist work presented to the court of Han Wu-ti around I39 B.C., is an important source of information concerning Warring States and Han conceptions of the size, shape, and operations of the cosmos. The doctrines incorporated in HNT represent one of the final steps in the development of Chinese cosmology anterior to Tung Chungshu's K Tff grand synthesis of natural and social philosophy, political theory, and public policy that established the ruling ideology of Confucian government for the remainder of the Han and beyond. In HNT, as would no longer be the case a few decades after HNT was written, natural philosophy could be presented as a set of issues largely independent of political theory and public policy. Nevertheless, in HNT and certain related texts, one can in some cases see the beginnings of an integration of those two sets of issues. One such case is found in the names of the eight winds and eight directions, their symbolic connotations, their correlations with the seasons, and the definition of social and political activities appropriate to each. This article will discuss some problems of the nomenclature of winds and directions encountered in HNT and certain other closely associated texts. The names of the eight winds seem not to have been fully standardized at the time that the Huai-nan-tzu was written. The names for the winds given in HNT 4:2a do not agree with the names given in 3:4a and in 4: i6a, nor do they agree with the names given in Li-shih ch'un-ch'iu g .EMkWA (hereafter LSCC) I3: 2b, in a passage that was closely copied in the opening pages of HNT 4 1). That the names were at that time in the process of becoming standardized can be seen in the fact that the (identical) names of the winds in HNT 3:4a and 4: i6a are also the names given in Shih chi 9 E 25 and in the chapter on the eight winds (Chapter 24)