VOLUME III, SEMESTER 1, CHAPTER 8, SECTION 3
The Market of the Han, the Person Becomes Property That Can Be Moved Along
The Shang turned the person into a thing, the Zhou wrote the person into law. This section walks the last step. The Han wrote the person into the market. Walk this step through, and that position has grown to its full height, and over the two thousand years to come, all it changes is the skin.
An account Sima Qian set down
The last chapter but two called Sima Qian up, and looked at those cold eyes of his. But those same eyes saw this thing too, and set it down as it was.
In the Accounts of the Money-Makers, telling the roads to wealth, he comes to a kind of labor called the bondservant. A thousand fingers of bondservants, he writes. This is from Sima Qian, the Records of the Grand Historian, the Accounts of the Money-Makers.
Say it plain. Under one’s hand, a thousand fingers of the slave.
A thousand fingers is a hundred people.
Read this way of saying it once over in your mind. He does not count the people. He counts the fingers.
A person here is not a person, he is ten fingers. What ten fingers can do, what they can earn, can be reckoned out.
Mark where Sima Qian set this road down. He set it alongside the raising of horses, the tilling of fields, the lending at interest, as one of the routes to wealth.
To keep a hundred people, and to keep a hundred horses, on this account book, sit in the one same column.
This is not Sima Qian swinging his brush
Here stop a moment, and set the position straight.
Sima Qian did not curse. Nor did he praise. He only set it down as it was. In his age, this was a road to wealth, just like the raising of horses.
Think back to his method. Set out the facts, let the rule show itself, do not hurry to hand the reader a judgment.
So this stroke is not his cruelty. Just the reverse. He sets the thing out in its plain shape, sets it into the column beside the horse, and only so does it strike a chill through you.
Had he cursed a line first, a person would feel eased, would feel he stood on his own side, and then would stop looking.
He does not curse, and so a person cannot but look.
The numbers on the account book
In the law of the Han there are detailed records of the price of slaves.
In the Juyan Han strips of the Eastern Han there are contracts for the buying and selling of slaves. The price, the age, the sex, the place of origin, all entered in the register.
The price of a strong young male slave was something like fifteen to twenty thousand cash.
What does that come to. Several times the price of an ox. About the price of an ordinary house.
Set these few things side by side. A house, several times an ox, a person.
They are on the one same price list.
Look again at what is written on that contract. Age, sex, place of origin.
These three things are the three things also entered when the livestock is recorded.
What exactly this step evolved
Set the three ages in a row, for this is the frame of the whole chapter.
The Shang, holding the person directly. The Zhou, holding the person through law. The Qin and Han, holding the person through the market.
Every evolution, and wei grows one degree more refined.
See this direction. The thing of the Shang was violence. The thing of the Zhou was administration. The thing of the Han was what.
It was buying and selling.
Buying and selling are the two most ordinary words under heaven. One hand hands over the cash, one hand hands over the goods, both willing, no cheating of young or old.
And so that most extraordinary thing was wrapped inside a most ordinary thing.
By this step, that line it is only right that I take more no longer looks like holding at all. It looks like a piece of business. It looks like the natural order. It looks like an everyday thing that happens on this market day upon day.
This move is wei’s most fearsome. It does not argue, it only makes a thing feel ordinary.
Once a thing turns ordinary, a person stops looking at it.
Can be moved along, these three words are the fiercest
The slave of the Shang was property. The slave of the Han was property that can be moved along.
Weigh these words. Can be moved along.
Can be bought. Can be sold. Can be pledged. Can be handed down.
The word pledged, above all, look at it. A person can be set in another’s hand as a pledge, to draw a sum of money back. He still stands where he stood, still does his work, but he no longer belongs to the master he belonged to. He belongs to a debt.
Hold this layer fast, for it runs all the way to today. The twelfth chapter of this semester, speaking of the thirty year mortgage, comes back to these words, to pledge.
By then, what is pledged out is not a person’s body. It is thirty years of a person’s life.
Walk up close and look at that contract
Walk in a little closer, and look at the writing on that Juyan Han strip.
The one who wrote this contract is a clerk. He writes a very neat hand. He puts the person’s age down, puts the place of origin down, puts the price down, and having written it, blows on the ink, rolls it up, files it into the archive.
He hates no one. He has not even a thought in him. This is the third document of his morning, and there are five more this afternoon.
What this section is out to stand up is exactly this. By this step, that position no longer needs a bad man.
The thing of the Shang needed a king to give the order. The thing of the Zhou needed a manager of the condemned to see it done. On the market of the Han, no one need give an order, no one need be hard of heart. A buyer, a seller, a clerk, three ordinary people, and a thing is done.
Hold this line in mind, for the ten-odd chapters to come will use it without let. That position, walked to its end, does not need a bad man.
It needs only a crowd of ordinary people, each doing his duty.
What this chapter set up, and the turn to the next chapter
This chapter is walked through, and the eighth meaning stands steady.
The first section, the few characters on the oracle bone. Zhong, chen, qie, qiang. The barest look of that position, the person turned wholly into a thing. The second section, the Rites of Zhou write it into law. From here it need not be argued again, the institution turns on its own, and the refined is exactly the layer hardest to recognize. The third section, the market of the Han. The person becomes property that can be moved along, and that most extraordinary thing was wrapped inside the two most ordinary words, buying and selling.
The line this layer sets up is this. Holding directly, holding through law, holding through the market. Every skin it changes, one degree more refined, and every degree more refined, one degree less like holding. And walked to the end, it needs no bad man, only a crowd of ordinary people each doing his duty.
Then, is this road China’s alone. Is it the ailment of some one culture. It is not. Turn the eye to the far side of the Mediterranean. The people there never once met the ancestors of China, never read one character of one another. And yet, each walking to the step where wei is made whole into institutions, the thing that grew up was startlingly alike.
The next chapter, the far side of the Mediterranean, the one same position.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.
Chapter 9. The Far Side of the Mediterranean, the One Same Position