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Divine visitations and prodigies

This reign is unique in the number of visitations and prodigies recorded.
Fires, comets, eclipses, fogs, flies, droughts, floods, earthquakes,
avalanches, murders, meteors, and thunders dot the pages of this chapter,
few years being without several visitations. The recording of these
portents is undoubtedly due to the increasing acceptance of Han Confucianism
by intelligent people, with its doctrine that Heaven, as the
state god, is interested in state happenings and consequently sends
visitations (tsai) as warnings whenever anything wrong is allowed to

occur, following them by prodigies (yi), if the warnings were not heeded.
As a natural consequence, people looked for portents whenever things
began to go wrong, and found a portent in any strange event. The
reporting of portents was thus a means of criticizing the government—one
which could hardly be punished or stopped, since portents were supposed
to be sent by Heaven, not by men. Ever since the time of Emperor Wu,
criticism of the government had been more or less repressed and ofttimes
punished; the reporting of portents thus became a safe outlet for peoples'
feelings. It is furthermore probable that most, if not all, of these
portents were reported by the people to the high officials, such as Commandery
Grand Administrators, and memorialized to the throne by the
latter, since, except for those persons who could go to the imperial palace
in person, ordinary people could not petition the emperor. Thus the
large number of portents in this reign is an indication of the reaction by
the people, and especially by the higher officials, to the character of the
central government.

There were several systems of portent-interpretation; they are summarized
in the "Treatise on the Five Elements," ch. 27, of which W.
Eberhard has made a study in his "Beiträge zur kosmologischen Spekulation
der Chinesen der Han-Zeit" (Baessler-Archiv, B. 16, H. 1-2). Since,
however, portents were merely strange chance events and could not be
fabricated to fit the situation, due to the danger of detection and punishment,
and since they had to be interpreted to fit the actual evils of the
time, no system of portent-interpretation could fit all cases; we find
diverse interpretations for the same portent from different authorities
and for the same sort of event at different times. It is therefore not
surprising that Pan Ku, after a long discussion of portents, should have
concluded that they are "obscure, profound, dark, and impenetrable."
(HS 100 A: 16a). In his "Memoirs," he records many instances in which
an interpretation of a portent produced a correct prophecy of the future,
but he characteristically also records instances in which reliance upon
portents led to error and calamity. The interpretation of portents was
thus, even in Han times, a pseudo-science not wholeheartedly accepted
by the best minds.

Emperor Ch'eng was usually affected by these portents; his edicts
testify to his acceptance of the Confucian doctrine that they are warnings
sent by Heaven to the ruler. Sometimes, however, he was not so sure
of their meaning. In 16 B.C., after an eclipse of the sun and several
earthquakes, people memorialized that these portents came because of
the Wang clan. But the aged Confucian scholar, Chang Yü3, told Emperor
Ch'eng that it is very difficult to know the causes of portents and
that Confucius rarely spoke of strange events or of supernatural beings,

so that the Emperor should not pay attention to the sayings of ignorant
Confucians and should pay attention to the government. Emperor
Ch'eng was glad to have his cherished relatives thus exonerated. On
the other hand, when, in 7 B.C., a strange appearance among the stars,
an avalanche, and an earthquake were all blamed upon the highest
official in the government, Emperor Ch'eng had this exacting and cruel
Confucian Lieutenant Chancellor, Chai Fang-chin, commit suicide, saying
that these signs showed he had not done his duty. Thus the Confucian
doctrine could be used upon a Confucian official who had made
use of portents in his criticism of others.