Book Review

Asia

In traditional Chinese history, Chu appears as the semibarbarous culture of the south, opposed to the middle kingdoms of the heartland on the Yellow River, the conservative rule of Qi in Shandong, and the aggressive power of Qin, which would eventually unite the civilized world.	1
The most dramatic instance of the dichotomy is expressed in Chu ci, rendered by David Hawkes as Ch'u Tz'u: The Songs of the South (1959). There the haunting rhythms of shaman music are contrasted to the heavy beating of bells and drums in northern courts and rituals. The poem Li sao ("Encountering Sorrow") in that collection describes the frustration of a mortal man among visions of gods and magical beings, and the putative author Qu Yuan is said to have committed suicide in misery at his lack of recognition. The romance of his fate inspired a cult, and he has been commemorated in the Dragon Boat festivals of southern China for over two thousand years.	2
More recently, archaeological discoveries in the last half century have brought to light a remarkable richness of culture. The tombs of Changsha in Hunan province have yielded ancient bodies, grave goods, texts and maps, and given form to a religious tradition largely alien to that of the north. In similar fashion, there has been growing appreciation of the literary evidence for non-Confucian influences in the former territory of Chu along the lower Yangzi, including traditions of faith healing, magic and prognostication, and an early manifestation of the foreign doctrine, Buddhism, in the first century A.D.	3
So Chu has long interested scholars of classical China, but it has generally been studied through the mirror of northern-based states and their traditional histories. It is only in recent times that enough independent material has become available to allow the ancient state and its culture to be considered on their own terms. The contributors to the present work combine ancient history and tradition with the more recent evidence of archaeology, providing a picture of the government and society, the belief systems, and the artistry of Chu. As the subtitle implies, moreover, they seek to explore not only the reality of the cultural complex but its influence on the imagination of China under Han and later dynasties.	4
The state of Chu appears in the Nanyang basin of southwest Henan at the end of the second millennium B.C. It extended south across the bend of the Han River about present-day Xiangfan and was well established in Hubei by 700. From that time, as the empire of Zhou declined, Chu expanded south beyond the Yangzi and east into the lands of the Huai. To the north, its chief rival for hegemony was the state of Jin, in present-day Shanxi, with Qi in the east and the ultimate victor, Qin, in the northwest, but the immediate enemies of Chu were the southeastern states of Wu and Yue, which contended for mastery of the lower Yangzi.	5
In this contest, Chu gained final victory, but not before a massive defeat at the hands of Wu in the late sixth century. In the next hundred years, Wu was destroyed by Yue, and Chu confirmed authority in the southeast, but by 400 B.C. the days of expansion were over, and Chu was forced onto the defensive against the northern states. Driven east from their original homeland, during the third century the rulers of Chu based themselves on the lower Yangzi and the Huai. They were able to destroy the kingdom of Yue, but by 225 the rising empire of Qin had conquered its rivals in the north, and in 223 it overwhelmed the remnants of Chu.	. . .