Agriculture and Woodcraft in the Classics
In an attempt to get writing again, I’ve set up a schedule for myself. Perhaps I’ll write a bit more about the issue of writing during the teaching semester at a later time. For now, I’m returning to this collection in an attempt to keep myself disciplined to get one 3–5 page section of writing done each week, and posting drafts here trailing my writing schedule by about a week. At the moment, I’m working on a chapter provisionally titled “Classical Roots: Wood Ethics and Institutions in Early China.” I have two goals for this chapter — to detail some of the classical precedents cited in later writing on wood- and land-management, and to challenge some prevailing notions of environmental thought in early China. As I hope to show, the legacy of the pre-Han period is decidedly mixed:
1. We can find evidence of aggressive expansion of agrarian states and of deforestation. This has been cited by a number of environmental historians, including specialists on China and non-specialists (I will leave the historiographical essay for a later post).
2. We can find evidence of environmental awareness and “conservationist” impulses. This has also been cited by both specialists and non-specialists.
3. But we can also find evidence of woodcraft — of usage that transforms the primeval woods, but that leaves the trees standing.
My investigation here is going to take up several posts; I start here with a general exploration of woodcraft in the classics.
As in much of the world, the picture we get from the scattered early references to woodland centers on the need to clear them for agriculture. Scholars have emphasized the importance of land clearance to the early process of early state-making, and rightly so. The felling or burning of woods to obtain farmland was certainly central to the formation of large and complex settlement in the early period of agrarian states. This can be seen in many verses in the Odes, with the poem “Clearing the grass” (Zai shan 載芟）widely cited:
They clear away the grass and the bushes;
And the ground is laid open by their ploughs.
In thousands of pairs they remove the roots,
Some in the low wet lands, some along the dykes.…
They sow their different kinds of grain,
Each seed containing in it a germ of life.
In unbroken lines rises the blade,
And well-nourished the stalks grow long.
Luxuriant looks the young grain,
And the weeders go among it in multitudes.
Then come the reapers in crowds,
And the grain is piled up the fields…
This theme is echoed in another ode “Thick grew the tribulus” (chu ci 楚茨):
Thick grew the tribulus [on the ground],
But they cleared away its thorny bushes.
Why did they this of old?
That we might plant our millet and sacrificial millet;
That our millet might be abundant,
And our sacrificial millet luxuriant.
When our barns are full,
And our stacks can be counted by tens of myriads,
We proceed to make spirits and prepare viands,
For offerings and sacrifice;
We seat the representatives of the dead, and urge them to eat:
Thus seeking to increase our bright happiness.
Elsewhere, especially in the “Greater Odes of the Kingdom” (Da ya 大雅) there is frequent mention of “dividing the country into fields” and of expansion into new territories:
Of generous devotion to the people was duke Liu,
Unable to rest or take his ease [where he was],
He divided and subdivided the country into fields;
He stored up the produce in the fields and in barns…
Of generous devotion to the people was duke Liu,
He went there to [the place of] the hundred springs,
And saw [around him] the wide plain.
He ascended the ridge on the south,
And looked at a large [level] height,
A height affording space for multitudes.
Here was room to dwell in…Of generous devotion to the people was duke Liu,
[His territory] being now broad and long,
He determined the points of the heavens by means of the shadows; and then, ascending the ridges,
He surveyed the light and the shade,
Viewing [also] the [course of the] streams and springs.
His armies were three troops;
He measured the marshes and plains;
He fixed the revenue on the system of common cultivation of the fields;
He measured also the fields west of the hills;
And the settlement of Bin became truly greatOf generous devotion to the people was duke Liu,
Having settled in temporary lodging houses in Bin,
He crossed the Wei by means of boats,
And gathered whetstones and iron.
When his settlement was fixed, and all boudaries defined,
The people became numerous and prosperous,
Occupying both sides of the Huang valley,
And pushing on up that of Guo;
And as the population became dense,
It is clear from this passage that “dividing the fields” is expansionary, and almost certainly involves wood clearance. Shorter references to this process abound.
Clearance in the early historical period was not just by felling and uprooting trees, it was largely accomplished by burning the woods. This is hinted at by the construction of the most common character for “burning” fen 焚
which clearly depicts a wood (lin 林, at top) on fire (huo 火, at bottom). The Shuowen jiezi, the first Chinese dictionary to give etymologies, defines fen (in its seal script variant 燓) as “burning to clear fields.” This definition reflects the usage in most earlier texts: the Spring and Autumn Annals uses it in the passage “burn (fen) all the hillsides,” with the commentary noting “burn (fen) means to set fire (huo 火) to the fields.” The earliest uses of this character appear to be highly specific; when describing “burning” or “smoking” as a cooking process, early texts used the variant form fen 燔, or any of several other characters (shao 燒，zhi 炙).It is on this point especially that many historians have considered the classical period in China especially destructive to woodland.
Yet we must avoid the idea that land clearance was an entirely one-sided or thoughtless process of deforestation, as some scholars have suggested. The classics tie the kingly way to the provision of fuel as well as farmland. This link can be seen in the first verse of “The Yu and Pu [Trees],” (Yu pu 棫樸) which places the dignity of the King in parallel with the abundance of the yu and pu trees:
Abundant is the growth of the yu and the pu,
Supplying firewood; yea, stores of it.
Elegant and dignified was our prince and king;
On the right and the left they hastened to him.
Almost exactly the same link between is drawn between fuels supplies and princely dignity in “The Foothills of Han [Mountain]” (Han lu 旱麓):
Look at the foot of the Han,
How abundantly grow the hazel and the arrow-thorn!
Easy and self-possessed was our prince,
In his pursuit of dignity [still] easy and self-possessed!…
Thick grow the oaks and the yu,
Which the people use for fuel.
Easy and self-possessed was our prince,
Cheered and encouraged by the Spirits.
A passage in the Documents likewise links political authority to the woods through a different metaphor. It suggests that the Mandate of Heaven favoring the state renews itself like the regrowth of trees in a coppice:
As from the stump of a felled tree there are sprouts and shoots, Heaven will perpetuate its decree in our favor in this new city; the great inheritance of the former kings will be continued and renewed, and tranquillity will be secured to the four quarters (of the kingdom).
While not given the same pride of place as agriculture, several of the Odes suggest that woods, and especially the fuel supply, continued to have great significance to the ancients.
Passages in the Odes and the Documents suggest that a key aspect of kingship was maintaining the proper balance between fields and forests.. In “Great is the God Di” (Huang yi 皇矣)— a poem praising and legitimating the line of Zhou Kings, they are given divine favor in part for their ability to settle the land, the same theme seen in the widely-cited land-clearance passages above:
Great is the God Di,
Beholding this lower world in majesty.
He surveyed the four quarters [of the kingdom],
Seeking for some one to give settlement to the people…
But the next two verses go on to describe what the chosen king does to deserve this divine favor:
[King Da] raised up and removed,
The dead trunks, and the fallen trees.
He dressed and regulated,
The bushy clumps, and the [tangled] rows.
He opened up and cleared,
The tamarix trees, and the stave-trees.
He hewed and thinned,
The mountain-mulberry trees.
The God Di having brought about the removal thither of this intelligent ruler,
The Chuan hordes fled away.
Heaven raised up a helpmeet for him.
And the appointment he had received was made sure.The God Di surveyed the hills,
Where the oaks and yu were thinned,
And paths made through the firs and cypresses.
The God Di, who had raised the State, raised up a proper ruler for it…
In other words, this ode posits that land clearance should not just be a heedless process of stump removal and burning; it also entails maintenance of woodlots. The thinning or reorganization of woodland appears in other poems as well. “Mian” also speaks of how “The oaks and the Yu were [gradually] thinned/ And roads for traveling were opened,” during the construction of a settlement. As the composers of these odes knew, woodlots — like farms — are the product of human intervention. Thinning woodlands would have improved the productivity of the remaining oaks and yu, promoted new undergrowth to attract game for hunting, and probably made them less susceptible to wildfire.
Other odes show substantial accumulation of woodcraft knowledge, even among the political class. Indeed, woodcraft is often used as a metaphor for the advice of political outsiders — perhaps a suggestion that woodsmen were part of the social order and yet stood somewhat apart from it. As an exhortation to heed new councils to bring an end to a period of calamities, the poem “Reversal” (Ban 板) remarks: “The ancients had a saying:/ ‘Consult the grass and firewood-gatherers. ‘” In “Xiao Bian” (小弁) the poet laments that he has been slandered by his lord:
Our sovereign believes slanders,
As readily as he joins in the pledge cup.
Our sovereign is unkind,
And does not leisurely examine into things.
The tree-fellers follow the lean of the tree;
The faggot-cleavers follow the direction of the grain;
[But] he lets alone the guilty,
And imputes guilt to me.
This stanza employs a woodcutting metaphor to assert that his suggestions have been misunderstood outside of their proper context,noting that trees are cut differently when felled for timber than when coppiced for fuel. Again, the implication is that woodcraft has implications for statecraft, and perhaps that woodsmen are a sort of familiar outsider. Similarly, in the “Charge to Yue” (Yue ming 說命) in the Documents, the minister Yue admonishes the King that “Wood is made straight by the use of the line, and the sovereign who follows reproof is made sage.”
We will probably never know exactly how the ancients managed their environments. These passages tell us tantalizingly little; archeology is probably a more useful approach to ancient land use than scattered allusions in the Classics. Yet classical precedent was vitally important to the construction of political argument for two-thousand years of Chinese history, giving these scattered references outsize importance in what was to come.
Even this context — as legitimization for later forms of state land management — I think we should exercise caution in interpreting the Classics. To be sure, we can find dozens of references to land clearance, used to promote expansionary agrarian programs in later eras. But we can also find passages that might be used to justify the maintenance of woods for other uses. As I will explore in later posts, Classical and Warring States texts gave later thinkers many different institutional precedents for how to manage this woodland, ranging from permanent clearance, to exclusive preservation. However, I will suggest that the most interesting precedents pointed neither toward heedless deforestation nor toward hard-headed restrictions; the most important precedents for wood management lay in the wide middle spectrum of regulated use.
