248 neil schmid
.^14 This man, not yet fated to die, is allowed to return due to
a declaration filed on his behalf and submitted to the Director of
Fate siming , which secures his release. However Dan returns
not with detailed accounts of the netherworld realm but rather with
information on how the living were to interact morally with the dead.
Grave-securing writs zhenmuwen , along with tomb contracts
maidiquan and talismans fu , increasingly common from
the Han period onward, are another illustration of how bureaucratic
means maintained a distinction between the living and the dead.
Placed in the tombs, these documents had a twofold purpose: to exor-
cize malevolent spirits of the earth during construction of the tomb
so the corpse would not be harmed once in the grave, and to ensure
that the underworld authorities received the proper documentation to
maintain control over the deceased when segregated below ground.^15
These texts demonstrate how earlier mantic and exorcism practices of
the late Warring States period were reconfigured through the bureau-
cratic model.^16
Discussion of the deceased in early China often refer to a distinction
between the different types of “souls” that constituted the individual,
the earthly yin soul, po , and the celestial yang soul, hun.^17 Both
types of souls were required to descend into the earth and remain in
the grave.^18 The grave, however, increasingly came to represent a vari-
ety of afterlife possibilities. For example, research on the Mawangdui
banner and the multiple coffins has elaborated a variety of
afterlife scenarios contained within one tomb. The inner coffin guo
represents the complete household with its goods, entertainers, and
personal attendants. The banner, like the four coffins, represents the
range of possible afterlives in a singular material assemblage: under-
ground abode, the netherworld, the immortal realm, and the universe
(elsewhere illustrated with the celestial deities Fuxi and Nuwa
, the sun and moon, and the geographical directions).^19 Descendents
(^14) Harper 1994. The story of Dan is the earliest version of a genre that proliferates
during the Six Dynasties period. See Campany 1990.
(^15) Nickerson 1996, Seidel 1987b.
(^16) Nickerson 2006.
(^17) For a discussion of hun and po souls, see Yü 1987.
(^18) Poo 1997, 62–66. Conceptualizations of the hun and po necessarily changed over
time and location. See Brashier 1996 and also Seidel 1987a. 19
Wu 1992, 140–42. Rawson 1999 argues that the conceptual coherence and uni-
formity of Qin and Han tombs is a result of political unification.