Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2015

 

The Struggle for the Mandate of Heaven at the Turn of the Former and Later Han, as Seen from the Sanctification of Hanjia 

(Abstract)

 

Feng Yujie

 

By glorifying the foundation myth of the Han Dynasty, sanctifying the lineage of the hanjia (汉家 the Han Empire or Han dynasty) and transmitting auguries of good and ill fortune, chenwei (谶纬divination) completed the final sanctification of hanjia. This ensured the public (gong 公) character of hanjia, but was the source of a struggle over the sacred Mandate of Heaven. At the turn of the Western and Eastern Han, the usurpation and restoration of the Han succeeded one another in a brief cycle that turned from annihilation to rebirth, which left the sacred right once again in the hands of the Han. The intellectual roots of Wang Mang’s usurpation and Guangwu’s revival of the dynasty midway through its course are to be found in the sanctification of hanjia divination. To some extent, this represented the political construction that “The world belongs not to one man alone but to all under Heaven.” This demonstrates that although the pre-Qin spirit of the rational appeal of “public power” was obscured by sanctification of hanjia, it yet managed to employ this to reach its apogee.