漢武帝內傳

Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn 漢武帝內傳

Inner Biography of Emperor Wǔ of the Hàn by 班固 (attributed)

About the work

A one-juàn Daoist hagiographic narrative pseudepigraphically attributed to the Eastern-Hàn historian 班固 Bān Gù 班固 (32–92), but in fact a Six Dynasties product, almost certainly composed in the late fourth or fifth century within the Shàngqīng 上清 (Highest Clarity) Daoist milieu — possibly redacted by figures close to the Gě 葛 family circle that produced the Shénxiān zhuàn 神仙傳 and the Zhēngào 真誥. The work narrates Hàn Wǔdì 漢武帝 (r. 141–87 BCE) as the recipient of a celestial visitation by Xī Wáng Mǔ 西王母 (the Queen Mother of the West) and Shàngyuán Fūrén 上元夫人 on the seventh night of the seventh month, during which the goddess bestows on the emperor the Liùjiǎ língfēi 六甲靈飛 talismans, the Wǔyuè zhēnxíng tú 五嶽真形圖, and various peaches of immortality, but ultimately judges him unfit for transcendence on account of his sensuality and bloodthirst. The text is one of the most influential single witnesses to medieval Daoist goddess-cult, courtly Daoist liturgy, and the literary topos of the Hàn Wǔdì / Xī Wáng Mǔ encounter that pervades Táng poetry and prose.

Tiyao

Your servants report: Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn in 1 juàn. The old text-line attributes it to the Hàn Bān Gù. The Suízhì records it in 2 juàn without naming a compiler; the Sòngzhì likewise notes “compiler unknown”. This [WYG] copy heads the work with “Bān Gù” — on what basis is unknown. Probably later persons, on the model of the Hàn Wǔ gùshì falsely attributed to Bān Gù, swept this book under the same name. The Hànshū Dōngfāng Shuò zhuàn eulogy says “lovers of curious matter took strange and weird sayings and appended them to [Dōngfāng] Shuò”; this book records Shuò mounting a dragon and ascending to heaven — directly contradicting the eulogy. That it did not come from Bān Gù is therefore beyond all doubt. The prose is parallel and ornate, of the same register as Wáng Jiā’s 王嘉 Shíyí jì 拾遺記 and Táo Hóngjǐng’s 陶宏景 (i.e. Táo Hóngjǐng 陶弘景) Zhēngào 真誥. Examining Xú Líng’s 徐陵 preface to the Yùtái xīnyǒng 玉臺新詠, where the line “the Língfēi Liùjiǎ, lofty in the jade-casket” occurs, in fact draws on this Zhuàn’s phrase “the Liùjiǎ Língfēi in twelve matters, sealed in a white jade casket” — so the forgery is pre-Qí–Liáng. Examining further Guō Pú’s 郭璞 Yóuxiān shī 遊仙詩 line “Hàn Wǔ is no transcendent stuff”, this coincides with what Xī Wáng Mǔ in the Zhuàn says: “you are perhaps not, after all, transcendent stuff”. Gě Hóng’s 葛洪 Shénxiān zhuàn records Kǒng Yuánfāng’s 孔元方 speech to Féng Yù — “one who has received it should for forty years transmit to one man; if there is no fit man, in eighty years he may pass it to two; to give it to an unfit man is called divulging the Way of Heaven; to find a fit man and not transmit it is called sealing up Heaven’s treasure” — which coincides with this Zhuàn. Zhāng Huá’s 張華 Bówù zhì 博物志 records “Hàn Wǔdì loved the Way; on the seventh of the seventh month, when the clepsydra dropped seven kè, Xī Wáng Mǔ came riding the purple cloud from the east”, which also tallies with this Zhuàn. The current Bówù zhì mixes the true and the false and is no sufficient witness, but Lǐ Shàn’s commentary on the Wénxuǎn Luòshén fù 洛神賦 already cites these Bówù zhì words: enough to credit them as Zhāng Huá’s original text. Thus [the Zhuàn] was likely the work of Wèi–Jìn literati. Lù Démíng’s 陸德明 Zhuāngzǐ shìwén annotation on the “Dàzōngshī” chapter on Xī Wáng Mǔ also cites Hàn Wǔ nèizhuàn: “Xī Wáng Mǔ and Shàngyuán Fūrén descended to the emperor; her beautiful countenance — a divine transcendent indeed”; the matter agrees with what the current copy carries, but the wording is rather different — perhaps Démíng paraphrased. Qián Zēng’s 錢曾 Dúshū mǐnqiú jì 讀書敏求記 says: Hàn Wǔ nèizhuàn in 1 juàn, the Chánshǒu jūshì 孱守居士 Kōngjūgé collated copy (note: Chánshǒu jūshì is the alternate sobriquet of Féng Shū 馮舒 of Chángshú) — the [Tàipíng] guǎngjì deletes the two Yuánlíng tunes and the chapter-title “Twelve Matters”, and again drops one passage on the Zhūniǎo chuāng (Vermilion-Bird Window). Only on comparison does one realize that this [Féng’s] copy is the complete book. Now Lǐ Shāngyǐn’s 李商隱 poems include “the jade peach stolen — to be pitied, [Dōngfāng] Shuò; the golden chamber readied — to lodge Ājiāo”, and “on the night of needle-threading in the Hàn palace, again before the window peeping for Āhuán” — both use the Zhūniǎo chuāng matter: hence the original surely had that passage. Lǐ Shàn’s commentary on Guō Pú’s Yóuxiān shī in the Wénxuǎn cites Hàn Wǔ nèizhuàn’s “song of Xī Wáng Mǔ’s attendant maids” — “riding the ten-thousand-dragon coach, careering, surveying the Nine Wilds” — these two lines being precisely from the Yuánfēng tune; so the old text surely had these two tunes, and Qián Zēng’s claim is sound. Now checking this copy: it also lacks the two Yuánlíng tunes and the Zhūniǎo chuāng passage, yet it does have the “Twelve Matters” chapter-title — again at variance with Qián’s account. Further, the Yùhǎi 玉海 cites the Zhōngxīng shūmù 中興書目: “Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn in 2 juàn records the Xī Wáng Mǔ matter, with eight further matters appended on the Huáinán prince, Gōngsūn Qīng, and Master Jìqiū — added by the Táng Zhōngnán Yuándū Daoist Yóu Yán”. The present copy also lacks these eight matters. Plainly the Míng-era cuts have produced an incomplete book. Respectfully checked, Qiánlóng 46 (1781), 5th month. Chief Compilers: Jì Yún, Lù Xīxióng, Sūn Shìyì. Chief Collator: Lù Fèichí.

Abstract

The attribution to Bān Gù is universally rejected by modern scholarship and was already rejected by the Sìkù compilers. Internal evidence places the received recension in the Six Dynasties: the Suíshū Jīngjí zhì records the work in 2 juàn with compiler unknown; Xú Líng’s Yùtái xīnyǒng preface (mid-sixth c.) draws on the Zhuàn’s phrasing for the Liùjiǎ Língfēi talisman-set, giving a firm terminus ante quem. The text shares phraseology with Guō Pú’s (276–324) Yóuxiān shī, with Gě Hóng’s (283–343) Shénxiān zhuàn, with Zhāng Huá’s (232–300) Bówù zhì, and most closely with Táo Hóngjǐng’s (456–536) Zhēngào. The consensus of twentieth- and twenty-first-century scholarship (Schipper, Bokenkamp, Smith, Cahill) is that the received text is a late fourth- to fifth-century Shàngqīng composition, drawing on a slightly earlier core of stories about the Hàn Wǔdì / Xī Wáng Mǔ encounter that may go back to Wèi–Jìn literati hagiography. Date bracket here: c. 300–500 CE for the received recension; the pseudepigraphic Hàn attribution is set aside per the project rule that dating reflects the actual composition of the received text, not the lifetime of the named author. Bān Gù is retained in the persons list as “attributed” to preserve the catalog signal.

The narrative core: in the Yuánfēng 元封 era (110–105 BCE) Hàn Wǔdì receives a foretelling from a divine messenger that Xī Wáng Mǔ will descend on the night of the seventh day of the seventh month. The emperor prepares the palace; the goddess arrives in a purple cloud-chariot, accompanied by attendant transcendents and the Shàngyuán Fūrén. She bestows the immortality peaches (the “xiāntáo” later famous in poetry), the Wǔyuè zhēnxíng tú talisman, the Liùjiǎ Língfēi talisman in twelve sections sealed in a white jade casket, and instruction in inner cultivation. The goddesses sing celestial songs (the Yuánlíng and Yuánfēng tunes that the Sìkù compilers note are missing from the WYG copy but cited in Lǐ Shàn and Tàipíng guǎngjì). Ultimately Xī Wáng Mǔ pronounces the emperor unfit: he is too violent, too sensual, too attached to imperial power. The work ends with Hàn Wǔdì’s death as an ordinary mortal, his transcendence-quest having failed. The narrative is the principal source for the topos of Xī Wáng Mǔ-as-court-goddess that dominates Táng courtly poetry — Lǐ Shāngyǐn 李商隱, Wú Yún 吳筠, Liú Yǔxī 劉禹錫 all draw on this Zhuàn — and is the textual foundation for the Shàngqīng tradition’s vision of revealed Daoist hagiography.

The Sìkù compilers’ textual criticism (above) reconstructs the historical transmission: a Six Dynasties 2-juàn original, augmented in the Táng by the Zhōngnán Yuándū Daoist Yóu Yán 游岩 with eight further matters on Huáinánwáng Liú Ān 劉安, Gōngsūn Qīng 公孫卿, and Master Jìqiū 稷邱君; subsequently reduced to 1 juàn in Míng Gǔjīn yìshǐ 古今逸史 reprints (Wú Guǎn 吳琯, late sixteenth century) with the Yuánlíng tunes and Zhūniǎo chuāng passage cut. The WYG copy is a Míng-cut abridgement; the fuller text survives in the Dàozàng 道藏 (CT 292) and in the Tàipíng guǎngjì citations.

Standard modern editions and reference: Schipper / Verellen, The Taoist Canon (UCP 2004), entry on CT 292 Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn; Smith, Han Emperor Wu and the Inner Biography; Cahill, Transcendence and Divine Passion. The text is canonical in the Dàozàng (CT 292) and is the basis for all modern Xī Wáng Mǔ-cult and Shàngqīng scholarship.

Translations and research

• Smith, Thomas E. “Ritual and the Shaping of Narrative: The Legend of the Han Emperor Wu.” Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1992. The standard monograph-length study of the Hàn Wǔdì nèi-zhuàn and its textual companions (Hàn Wǔ gùshì, Hàn Wǔdì wài-zhuàn etc.), with extensive translated passages.
• Smith, Thomas E. “Han Emperor Wu and the Inner Biography.” In Religions of China in Practice, ed. Donald S. Lopez (Princeton 1996). Substantial annotated English translation of key episodes.
• Cahill, Suzanne. Transcendence and Divine Passion: The Queen Mother of the West in Medieval China (Stanford UP 1993). The standard English-language treatment of the Xī Wáng Mǔ cult; Hàn Wǔdì nèi-zhuàn is the central source.
• Schafer, Edward H. Mirages on the Sea of Time: The Taoist Poetry of Ts’ao T’ang (UCP 1985). Uses the Nèi-zhuàn extensively for Táng-poetic reception of the Xī Wáng Mǔ encounter.
• Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures (UCP 1997). Discusses the Nèi-zhuàn as part of the Shàng-qīng-revelation milieu.
• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (UCP 2004). Entry on CT 292 with full bibliographical apparatus.
• Lǐ Fēng-mào 李豐楙. 《漢武帝內傳研究》 [Studies on the Hàn Wǔdì nèi-zhuàn]. Táiběi: Wén-shǐ-zhé, 1980. The standard Chinese-language monograph.
• Schipper, Kristofer. L’empereur Wou des Han dans la légende taoïste (École française d’Extrême-Orient, 1965). The pioneering Western-language study; partial French translation.

Other points of interest

The work is the principal textual locus for the medieval Daoist transformation of the early-imperial Hàn Wǔdì legend: the Shǐjì and Hànshū present Hàn Wǔdì’s quest for immortality as an imperial fixation manipulated by court fāngshì 方士; the Hàn Wǔdì nèizhuàn reframes the same quest within a Shàngqīng theological framework in which the emperor actually receives a transcendent visitation but is personally unworthy of the goal. This shift — from credulous emperor and charlatan fāngshì to real goddesses and an unworthy emperor — is the foundational move of medieval Daoist hagiography’s appropriation of the Hàn imperial cult.

The list of revealed talismans (Wǔyuè zhēnxíng tú, Liùjiǎ Língfēi) preserved in the Nèizhuàn is one of the principal early-medieval witnesses to the actual contents of the Shàngqīng talismanic corpus, several elements of which (the Wǔyuè zhēnxíng tú in particular) survive in independent transmission in the Dàozàng.

The work has no demonstrable BānGù connection. The compilers’ detective work on the attribution — citing the Hànshū Dōngfāng Shuò zhuàn eulogy as internal contradiction, citing Xú Líng’s preface as terminus ante quem, citing Gě Hóng and Zhāng Huá as period parallels — is a textbook example of QiánJiā 乾嘉 textual scholarship applied to a Daoist source.

Links

• Schipper, The Taoist Canon entry on CT 292.
• Wikipedia (zh)
• ctext
• Wilkinson, Chinese History: A New Manual §63 (anecdote literature).