S C H O L A R LY A R T I C L E AND AND HUAIYU CHEN Animals, Divination, and Climate: An Environmental Perspective on the Cult of the Pig in Ancient China Introduction In ancient China, the tradition of observing nature is combined with Yin-yang and the Five-Phase theories, which were later incorporated into the ancient arts of divination, including the technique of predicting weather changes by observing the behavior and health of animals. The observation of the close connection between animals and weather developed into the worship of animals, that is, what can be called the cult of animals. This article aims to analyze the rise of the cult of the pig in ancient China, with special reference to the context of environmental and climate changes. As one of the most common species among domesticated animals in traditional China’s agricultural civilization, the pig occupies a unique position in both the material and spiritual lives of the Chinese people, which some comprehensive Western-language works on pigs in the past decade did not fully acknowledge (Mizelle; Essig; Lutwyche). In the Central Plain of the Chinese empire, where the socalled “Yellow River civilization” had its origin, the pig was the most important source of meat consumed in daily life, thus contrasting sharply with the civilizations of the Jewish, Muslim, and Christian people who lived in the ancient Near East and the Middle East where pork was a food taboo. Contemporary scholars have debated about the ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 00.0 (2020), pp. 1–20 doi:10.1093/isle/isaa195 # The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isle/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isle/isaa195/6158280 by guest on 04 March 2021 MIN XIANGPENG 2 I S L E Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isle/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isle/isaa195/6158280 by guest on 04 March 2021 origins of the view of the people in these regions that pigs are unclean and the taboo against pork in these areas (Harris 35–57; Diener 493–540; Simmons 178–84; Hesse 195–225; Lobban 57–75; Essig 43–52, 89–103; Lutwyche 148–51). One of the most notable perspectives on this issue is Marvin Harris’s ecological and environmental theory. For Harris, pigs are hated not only because they are perceived as unhygienic, given that they frequently roll around in their own feces and urine, but also because they compete with humans for the same basic nutrients, such as those found in grain. What interests us is Harris’s observation that pigs have to roll around in their own feces and urine in order to cool off. Harris notes that the behavior of pigs in the Middle East may be influenced by the local climate and the environment. Based on his understanding of animal physiology, Harris suggests that, “due to the lack of protective hair and the inability to sweat, the pig must dampen its skin with external moisture by wallowing in fresh clean mud” (Harris 42–43) . This observation reminds us of sources in ancient China that describe such behavior in pigs. Interestingly, in ancient Chinese sources, the pig was portrayed in the earliest texts as a beast living near water. Later, it became symbolic of rain, and its behavior was used to predict rainstorms. Inspired by Harris’s hypothesis and discussion, this article examines these Chinese sources in an attempt to understand how Chinese writers observed and portrayed the pig from ecological and environmental perspectives. The aim is to analyze the sophisticated relations among animal behavior, ecology, and environment, as well as religion and the associated rituals. Because the behavior of pigs is also influenced by the way in which they are raised, we are also interested in investigating whether the change from a free, foraging way of life to confinement in pens may have had an impact on observers’ understanding of pig behavior and associated beliefs and practices. Contemporary scholarship has focused primarily on textual studies and folklore surrounding the pig as a god of water and a god of thunder. Chinese and Japanese scholars have concentrated on deities that often appear as pigs in traditional literature, folklore, and drama, such as the god of water (shuishen 水神), the god of thunder (leishen 雷神), and the god of the river (hebo 河伯), as well as the Marshall of the Celestial Canopy (Tianpeng yuanshai, or Zhu Bajie). For example, Min Xiangpeng’s very short essay traces the changing images of Zhubajie from the perspective of textual studies, while he does draw attention to the climate issue (Min 67–72). Such changes from one identity to another must be examined carefully in the broader philosophical and intellectual contexts of ancient China. Mark Elvin and Robert B. Marks’s Animals, Divination, and Climate 3 Climate, Environment, Animal Behavior, and Husbandry In ancient China, correlative thinking often led people to connect astronomical phenomena with social changes and animal behavior on the ground. People predicted rainfall by observing animal behavior, along with the movements of the wind and the clouds. The earliest record of observing pigs’ behavior can be found in the poem “Jagged are the rocks” (“Jianjian zhi shi” 漸漸之石) in the Minor Odes (Xiao Ya小雅) section of the Book of Poetry (Zhu 199; Waley 120). The image of the pig dashing into the water together with the reference to the Hyades has the effect of placing the pig among astronomical phenomena. In the Tang Dynasty, Kong Yingda’s孔穎達 (574–648) textual research suggests that hogs running into the water and the moon caught in the Net are signs that it will rain (Kong 15). After that, many scholars have agreed with this explanation. Until the Qing Dynasty, Xu Ding徐鼎 Downloaded from https://academic.oup.com/isle/advance-article/doi/10.1093/isle/isaa195/6158280 by guest on 04 March 2021 works remind us how an environmental perspective could offer us new insights in understanding Chinese history (Elvin; Marks ). This study is inspired by Min’s paper but will expand and revise his brief observations. We aim to add a fresh and concise document demonstrating the sophisticated relationship between the animal cult and the environmental context in premodern China to Western-language literature. In addition, animal studies constitute a new academic field that has developed during the past two decades, providing new methodologies for analyzing relations between humans and animals and encouraging us to take the life experiences of humans and animals into account in order to understand animal cults and their transformations. Some scholars have noted the interconnectivity between humans and animals in ancient China and argued that human morality could transform the animal realm from the perspective of early Chinese philosophical cosmology (Sterckx 162; Cao 16). However, in documenting the changing images of the pig as a case study, this article attempts to demonstrate that animals and humans both lived in a changing environment, and their behaviors in relation to each other also changed to accommodate to the changes in environmental conditions. Humans observed the behavior of animals and created images of animals for social and cultural as well as religious purposes based on their behaviors. This article documents the processes by which these deities developed and provides a fresh perspective on the ecological and environmental contexts in which the pig’s behavior was understood, depicted, and interpreted in the historical, cultural, and religious life of ancient Chinese people.