聞分館君 Ask BunKanKun

恒先

5 min read

Text ID
KR2p0042
Date
-350–-250
Dynasty
戰國

Héng Xiān 恒先

The Constant Beginning (modern editorial title, from the first two characters of the text)

(anonymous; excavated bamboo manuscript, no attributable author)

About the work

Héng Xiān 恒先 is one of five texts in 馬承源 Mǎ Chéngyuán ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 3, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè 上海古籍出版社, 2003, comprising approximately 13 bamboo strips bearing some 440 graphs across 16 sections. It is a dense cosmological-philosophical text with no close parallel in the received tradition, offering what appears to be an original Warring States attempt at a systematic ontology. The text begins with the statement héng xiān wú yǒu 恒先無有 (“the constant beginning had no-being/non-existence”) and proceeds through a cosmogony — from primordial non-being to qì 氣 (breath/pneuma) to the ten thousand things — and then to an account of names, language, and action, and their relationship to the Way.

Abstract

Cosmogony (§§1–9). The text opens by attributing to the “constant beginning” (héng xiān 恒先) three primordial qualities: zhì 質 (essential material), jìng 靜 (stillness), and xū 虛 (emptiness); each quality in its maximal form (dà pǔ 大樸 — great simplicity; dà jìng 大靜 — great stillness; dà xū 大虛 — great emptiness). From this primordial state arises huò 或 (something-or-other / indeterminacy), from which arises qì 氣 (pneuma/breath), from which arises yǒu 有 (being), from which arises shǐ 始 (beginning), and from which arises the “past” (wǎng 往). Before Heaven and Earth existed, there was only “empty stillness as a unity” (xū jìng wéi yī 虛靜為一). Then:

qì shí zì shēng, héng mò shēng qì 氣寔自生，恒莫生氣 — “pneuma itself is self-generating; the constant [beginning] never generates pneuma.” This is a key cosmological claim: qì is self-generating within the primordial state, not produced by an external cosmic agent. The text then states that pneuma cannot generate alone — it needs a partner (yǒu yǔ yě 有與也) — and from this mutual condition arises creative differentiation: turbid qì produces earth, clear qì produces Heaven.

The ontological chain (§10). The key passage articulates a six-stage sequence:

huò → xìng → yì → yán → míng → shì 或 → 性 → 意 → 言 → 名 → 事 “Indeterminacy → nature → intention → speech → name → affairs/things”

This sequence moves from cosmological indeterminacy to the moral and social ordering of human action. The following section (§11) negates each term: “Indeterminacy is not indeterminacy — then we cannot call it indeterminacy; Being is not Being — then we cannot call it Being” — a series of paradoxical statements reminiscent of Daoist self-negation and Buddhist dialectical structures.

Action and names (§§12–16). The final sections argue that all things under Heaven are created through zuò 作 (intentional action): “Propitious omens, appropriate conduct, clever application, the varied things — all come from action; where there is action, there are affairs; where there is no action, there are no affairs” (zuò yān yǒu shì; bùzuò wú shì 作焉有事；不作無事). The text ends with the observation that all action has its extreme (jí 極) and yet both “attaining” and “not attaining” that extreme exist, neither being abolished.

Genre and intellectual context. Héng Xiān is unique among the Shanghai Museum texts for its sustained abstract-philosophical character. It has been compared to the cosmological sections of the Tàiyī Shēng Shuǐ 太一生水 (from Guōdiàn) and to chapters of the Zhuāngzǐ and Lǎozǐ, but it differs from all received texts in its specific ontological vocabulary (huò 或, héng 恒, the six-stage chain). The inclusion of an explicit theory of naming and language (míng 名) within a cosmological framework suggests contact with the later Mohist tradition of language analysis. Some scholars have read it as a Daoist text; others as an independent philosophical tradition.

Translations and research

  • 馬承源 ed., 《上海博物館藏戰國楚竹書》 vol. 3, Shànghǎi gǔjí chūbǎnshè, 2003 — editio princeps with extensive annotations by editors.
  • Shaughnessy, Edward L. “The Hengxian and the Nature of Its Cosmology.” In Unearthing the Changes: Recently Discovered Manuscripts of the Yi Jing (I Ching) and Related Texts. Columbia UP, 2014 — English analysis and partial translation.
  • Andrew Meyer, “Publicness as Backdrop,” Dao (2025) — for the broader Shanghai Museum vol. 6 context; not specifically on Héng Xiān but relevant to the philosophical tradition.
  • Perkins, Franklin. “All Things Flow into Form (Fanwu liuxing) and the ‘One’ in the Laozi.” Early China 38 (2015): 195–232 — on the related Shanghai Museum vol.7 cosmological text KR2p0071, providing comparative context.
  • Édouard Chavannes, Jean Levi, and Anne Cheng have variously engaged with the Héng Xiān in French sinological contexts; see the bibliographies in the editio princeps annotations.

Other points of interest

The text’s phrase héng xiān wú yǒu 恒先無有 has been compared to the opening of the Dàodéjīng 道德經 (where “Non-being” and “Being” are the two primal states) and to the Tàiyī Shēng Shuǐ 太一生水 from Guōdiàn (where the Great One generates water, then Heaven and Earth). The Héng Xiān’s ontology is in some ways more systematic than either: it distinguishes several stages (primordial state → indeterminacy → qì → being → beginning → past) and provides explicit accounts of how naming and action relate to this ontological chain. This makes it one of the most ambitious theoretical texts in the entire Guōdiàn/Shanghai Museum corpus.

Graph View

Backlinks