Excavated manuscripts of the past 50 years allow a glimpse of the religious rituals of the classical Chinese civilisation's elite. Donald Harper reports on a lost religion

Over the long duration of Chinese civilisation the social and intellectual stance associated with the figure of Confucius (551-479BC) has always been sceptical of religion. The Master's definition of knowledge is unambiguous: "He who works at fulfilling his duty to the people, and who respects demons and spirits yet keeps them at a distance, can be called knowledgeable." Since the Han dynasty, when Confucianism became a state-sponsored doctrine, Confucian orthodoxy has fashioned an ideal image of classical Chinese civilisation similar to the image of Greek civilisation that emerged from the European Enlightenment philosophers: the classical age, either in China or in Greece, was a time when humanistic rationalism supplanted old forms of religious belief and changed the course of civilisation.

But archaeological discoveries in China in the last half century have made it possible to lift the veil of Confucian-dominated tradition from the face of classical Chinese civilisation. And we are virtually discovering a lost religion. Much of our knowledge comes from tombs, with their crypts and coffins and their assemblages of burial goods including buried manuscripts - whose contents range from administrative documents, historical narratives, and philosophical writings to divination records, hemerological guides (used to determine lucky and unlucky times for human activities), and medical manuals. These manuscripts are not mortuary documents prepared for the burial. Rather, they were selected from the collection of manuscripts owned by the well-to-do tomb occupants during life.

Excavated manuscripts that treat of divination, hemerology, and magico-religious subjects open a window on to the religious beliefs and practices of the Chinese elite from the fourth to second centuries BC. The manuscripts supplement the received picture of this group as religiously cool with a picture of religious engagement. From these writings it is clear that during the classical age forms of popular religious practice flourished. The elite often performed rituals and chanted incantations themselves to satisfy the spirit world.

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The manuscripts were written with brush and ink on slips of bamboo or sheets of silk. For knowledge of the everyday religious activities of the elite, the manuscripts from a tomb at Mawangdui, in Changsha, Hunan and from another at Shuihudi, Hubei are most illuminating. The occupant of the Mawangdui tomb was a young nobleman. Most of the magical and religious material is in his medical manuscripts, in particular a recipe manual that was probably copied around 215-210BC. This includes recipes to exorcise ailments. For example, the painful rash caused by contact with raw lacquer is blamed on the Lacquer King in the following treatment: Spit and say: "Phew! Lacquer" - thrice. Then say: "The God of Heaven sent you down to lacquer bows and arrows. Now you cause scabby sores for the people down below. I daub you with pig faeces." Rub and slap it with the sole of a shoe.

The fox demon blamed for causing swelling in the inguinal region (the ailment category includes hernias) is dispatched with the following curse: "Spirit of Heaven send down the sickness-shield. Spirit Maids according to sequence hear the spirit pronouncement. A certain fox has seized a place where it does not belong. Desist. If you do not desist, I hack you with an axe."

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The curse finished, the patient is beaten with a piece of hemp cloth "twice seven" (that is, 14) times.

The occupant of the Shuihudi tomb was a Qin official. Two of his manuscripts are hemerological guides. A section of the first guide, entitled "Spellbinding" (Jie), is devoted to demonology; it identifies varieties of demonic harassment and uncanny phenomena, and for each provides an effective remedy. In one entry the trouble is a demon who announces that he is the "son of God on High" and that he intends to steal the daughter of the household; the remedy is to exorcise the demon with dog faeces and reeds (which magically slash it). Demons sometimes assume disguises, as when one "feigns being a rat and enters people's vinegar ... or drink". Having contacted its victims, the demon threatens them with announcements of their day of death.

These manuscripts are not religious documents of the sort that might have been kept by priests or shamans for their private use, nor do they reveal details of specific cults. What has emerged from the tombs are examples of the occult literature that circulated among the elite. Given the testimony of the received record, one of the surprises about this occult literature is the knowledge that the elite of the classical age routinely had encounters with the spirit world and expected to undertake the necessary rituals themselves. The practice of religion was not relegated to a priestly class.

The Shuihudi and Mawangdui manuscripts date to the end of the classical age; both tombs were excavated in the 1970s. More recent tomb excavations in several regions of China have yielded even older manuscripts with religious content, some of them dating to the last decades of the fourth century BC. The latest discoveries both corroborate certain details regarding religion in the Shuihudi and Mawangdui manuscripts and contribute additional details. For instance, until recent archaeological discoveries, the cult of the deity Grand One (Taiti) was associated with the cults established by Han dynasty rulers. A memorial was presented to the throne in 133BC proposing the establishment of the Grand One cult as a state-sponsored cult because, according to the memorial, "Grand One is the most exalted of the spirits of Heaven''. Other Han sources make it clear that Grand One is an astral deity identified with the Han period polestar (Kochab, B Ursa minor).

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A silk manuscript from Mawangdui has restored the iconographic image of Grand One, who is painted in the centre of an entourage of spirits, including three dragons (the flanking dragons are labelled Azure Dragon and Yellow Dragon on the manuscript; the third dragon beneath Grand One's crotch is not identified). The arrangement of the three dragons and Grand One represents the four stars of the polar constellation where Grand One resides. The text recorded on the manuscript concerns Grand One's role in warfare; the deity controls astrological configurations that determine victory and defeat.

The earlier existence of the Grand One cult in classical Chinese religion has also been revealed by a bamboo-slip manuscript from a tomb at Baoshan, Hubei, which dates to about 316BC. The manuscript is a record of divination performed for the tomb occupant during the last years of his life. Divination determines the correct sacrifices to be offered to the spirits; Grand One is among them.

Between the Mawangdui image of Grand One and his appearance among the spirits in the Baoshan divination record, there are the clues to identify the image on a bronze dagger-axe discovered in a tomb at Cheqiao, in Jingmen, Hubei, which dates to the late fourth century BC. The standing figure on the dagger-axe is Grand One; he holds a dragon in each hand, corresponding to the Azure Dragon and Yellow Dragon of the Mawangdui manuscript, and the third dragon is beneath his crotch. The dagger-axe is a small object, yet its significance for classical religion is enormous. It shows us that already in the fourth century BC the cult of Grand One had been taken up by the elite and had found expression in their weaponry. It looks as though the cult of Grand One sponsored by Han rulers was a revival of the classical cult. The excavated manuscripts have much to tell us about the religious consciousness of the elite in the classical age, which should no longer be regarded as a time when men "kept demons and spirits at a distance," but rather as a time when many of the basic elements of Chinese religion were forged.