Mme Constance Cook, professeure à l’université de Lehigh, aux Etats-Unis, proposera le lundi 31 mars une conférence en anglais intitulée : « Illness and the Cosmic Body in 4th Century BCE China ». Elle fera part des ses réflexions à propos de deux manuscrits du IVe siècle avant notre ère conservés par l’université de Tsinghua : le “Shifa 筮法” (Méthode de divination par l’achillée) et le “Wuji 五紀” (Les cinq lignes directrices). Elle s’intéressera en particulier aux discours relatifs aux relations entre le corps humain et les puissances surnaturelles.
Abstract:
A comparison of two body cosmograms in 4th century BCE bamboo manuscripts stored in Tsinghua University reveals socially varied but overlapping conceptions of how the human body is controlled by supernatural forces. A “cosmogram,” in this context, is a graphically or textually described pattern depicting the interconnection of the spirit world, including agents of time and space, with the structure of the human body. One manuscript, the *Wuji 五紀 (The Five Guidelines), reflects government-level hierarchy and a scholarly readership concerned with the role of moral prosocial behavior and sustaining a balanced cosmic order. The other manuscript, the *Shifa 筮法 (Stalk Divination), reflects householder-level hierarchy and a specialist group of literate diviners concerned with managing the forces influencing a particular person. Both manuscripts reveal a dynamic relationship between pantheons of divine and demonic spirits that affect the welfare of the living. In a world where divine spirits, like officials, governed the people through a system of awards and punishments, illness is a punishment. This is specified in the *Wuji. It is the role of ghosts and demons to inflict that punishment, causing “supernatural harm” (sui 祟) to individuals. It is the identification of the source of sui that concerns the diviners using the *Shifa. In both texts, the afflicting demonic forces are categorized according to the divine spirits in charge of the “harmed” body site. While demonic harm was seen in the 4th century BCE as potentially affecting all aspects of social and political life, this essay focuses on afflictions to the physical bodies of individuals. Hence, the details presented in the *Shifa are linked to diviner records buried in 4th century BCE tombs and compared to the larger framework presented in the *Wuji.
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Jour : Le lundi 31 mars 2025, de 10h à 12h
Lieu : Campus Condorcet, Bâtiment de Recherche Sud, RDC, salle 0.019 (M° Front Populaire, ligne 12)
Organisateurs : Alain Arrault (EFEO-UMR CCJ-CECMC) et Olivier Venture (EPHE-CRCAO)
Conférence organisée avec le soutien des UMR CCJ-CECMC et CRCAO.
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