ti body

deborah sommer

Boundaries of the T i Body

A |s part of his argument that “ideas of Nature, state, and the body
.were so interdependent that they are best considered a single
complex,” 1 Nathan Sivin considered the permeable boundaries of the
human frame and assayed the body’s dynamic resonances with the po-
litical, social, and ethical realms of thought in early China. He outlined
different meanings of various terms for the human body: qu 軀, xing 形,
shen 身, and ti 體. This last character, ti, according to Sivin,
refers to the concrete physical body, its limbs, or the physical form
generally. It can also mean “embodiment,” and may refer to an in-
dividual’s personification of something – for instance, a judgment
that an immortal embodies the Way (ti dao 體道). 2
Sivin did not explore the term ti here in great detail, as the focus
of his article lay elsewhere. But the ti body and embodiment deserve
further attention. 3 This article explores the boundaries of this body
as they are outlined in Warring States and early Han received texts.

This article is part of a larger study on the religious, somatic, and visual significance of the
body of Confucius: Sommer, The Afterlife of Confucius, forthcoming. I would like to thank
Henry Rosemont, Michael Nylan, two anonymous reviewers, and the editors of this festschrift
volume for their comments and suggestions.
1 Nathan Sivin, “State, Cosmos, and Body in the Last Three Centuries B.C.,” H J AS 55.1

(1995), p. 5.
2 Sivin, “State, Cosmos, and Body,” p. 14, with romanization changed to pinyin. Sivin’s

continuing interest in these terms is also reflected in several recent conference presentations
on that subject.
3 For the notion of ti, see Derk Bodde, “On Translating Chinese Philosophic Terms,” FEQ

14.2 (1955), pp. 231–44; Peter A. Boodberg, “The Semasiology of Some Primary Confucian
Concepts,” Philosophy East and West 2.4 (1953), pp. 317–32; Boodberg’s review of Bodde’s
translation of Feng Youlan’s History of Chinese Philosophy, “A History of Chinese Philosophy,
Volume II: The Period of Classical Learning (from the Second Century B.C. to the Twentieth
Century A.D.),” FEQ 13.3 (1954), pp. 334–37; Roger Ames, “The Meaning of Body in Clas-
sical Chinese Philosophy,” in Roger T. Ames, Wimal Dissanayake and Thomas P. Kasulis,
eds., Self as Body in Asian Theory and Practice (Albany: State U. of New York P., 1993), pp.
157–77; Yang Rubin 楊儒賓, ed., Rujia shenti guan 儒家身體觀 (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiujuan
Zhongguo wenzhe yanjiusuo, 1996); Yang Rubin, ed., Zhongguo gudai sixiangzhong de qilun ji
shenti guan 中國古代思想中的氣論及身體觀 (Taipei: Juliu,1993); Cheng Chung-ying, “On the
Metaphysical Significance of Ti (Body-embodiment) in Chinese Philosophy: Benti (Origin-sub-
stance) and Ti-yong (Substance and Function), Journal of Chinese Philosophy 29.2 (2002), pp.

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Building upon Sivin’s work, I assay the parameters of the ti body – a

body that, seemingly paradoxically, multiplies when it is divided and
remains whole even when fragmented. To clarify the meaning of ti, I
distinguish some of its meanings from those of other terms for the body
found in early transmitted texts: the dysfunctional qu 軀 mortal coil of
the petty person, the elemental and structural xing 形 form, the gong
躬 body of displayed ritual conduct, and the socialized and cultivated
shen 身 body. I am not making the case that these terms are mutually
exclusive; in fact, their fields of meanings often overlap or are inter-
changeable. But I am interested here not so much in each term’s general
field of meaning (which might overlap with that of another term) but
in their unique focuses of significance. For they do not always overlap
and are not always interchangeable. Focusing on the ti body, in this
article I try to indentify the cache of connotations associated with each
term. Given the great expanse of time covered (the article considers
materials from the Book of Odes to the Book of Rites (Liji 禮記), this ar-
ticle cannot do justice to all usages of each term much less to shifts in
meanings over time. It is moreover limited in that it focuses on terms
used primarily for living bodies and does not consider the vocabulary
of the dead. Nonetheless, it attempts to build upon Sivin’s earlier work
and to suggest ideas for thinking about the ways the human body was
conceptualized in early received texts.
Boundaries of the ti body, because of the very nature of this cor-
pus, are difficult to ascertain. But the ti body can be understood as
follows: as a polysemous corpus of indeterminate extent that can be
partitioned into subtler units, each of which is often analogous to the
whole and shares a fundamental consubstantiality and common iden-
tity with that whole. Ti bodies can potentially extend in all directions
and can exist in multiple, overlapping layers or valences. Boundaries
between valences are often unmarked or are obscure. When a ti body
is fragmented into parts (literally or conceptually), each part retains,
in certain aspects, a kind of wholeness or becomes a simulacra of the
larger entity of which is a constituent. These qualities are unique to
the ti body (at least as it is described in early texts) and are rarely ex-

145–61; and Mark Edward Lewis, The Construction of Space in Early China (Albany: State U.
of New York P., 2006), chap. 1. On embodiment in general, see Tu Wei-ming, “A Confucian
Perspective on Embodiment,” in Drew Leder, ed., The Body in Medical Thought and Practice
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992), pp. 87–100. Early uses of ti should not be
understood in terms ti yong, or “substance and function,” which are part of a later discourse.
See my entry “Ti yong” in Yao Xinzhong, ed., RoutledgeCurzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism
(London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003). National Palace Museum databases greatly facilitated lo-
cating citations of terms.

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hibited by the qu mortal coil, the xing form, the shen body (except in
the case of the bodies of close kin), or the gong 躬 body. Gong, xing,
and qu generally refer to entities that occupy discrete physical frames.
That is, one human being has only one gong body whose identity does
not overlap with that of another human being. But one human being,
however, may be inhabited by multiple ti bodies, and several human
beings may participate in a single or common ti body.
The ability of the ti body to multiply even as it is divided is no
doubt related to its associations with plant life, particularly with the
ability of plants to multiply through vegetative reproduction. Vegeta-
tive propagation is accomplished not with seeds but by dividing the
roots, stems, tubers or other fleshy parts of plants into segments that
are then replanted to develop into “new” plants. Roger Ames has long
noted the organic quality of ti, and he observes that “the organic con-
notation of this character is immediately apparent in its long-standing
abbreviated forms in which it is represented as ‘root,’ that is, ti 体.” 4
The right half of this character is commonly understood both as “root”
and “trunk.” Ames’s interest in the organic quality of ti, however, was
not concerned with plant life specifically but with more general organic
forms of ritual (li 禮) as discussed by Boodberg, who had earlier asserted
that ti and li are connected by a common concern for “organic” form. 5
“‘Form,’” Boodberg writes, “that is, ‘organic’ rather than geometrical
form, then, appears to be the link between the two words, as evidenced
by the ancient Chinese scholiasts who repeatedly used t’i to define li
in their glosses.” 6 I would agree with the close association between ti
embodiment and li ritual, although I understand this association fore-
most in terms of the commensal consumption of grain and of animal
victims that are also understood as ti bodies, as discussed below. 7 But
the significance of plant life for the meaning of ti merits further con-

4 Ames, “Meaning of Body,” pp. 168–69. Donald J. Munro explores Song plant metaphors

and notions of the self in “The Family Network, the Stream of Water, and the Plant: Picturing
Persons in Sung Confucianism” in Donald J. Munro, ed., Individualism and Holism: Studies in
Confucian and Taoist Values (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, U. of Michigan, 1985),
pp. 259–91. For ti in Song thought, see pp. 276–77.
5 Ames, “Meaning of Body,” p. 169. He quotes from Boodberg, “Semasiology,” p. 326.

6 Boodberg, “Semasiology,” p. 326. Boodberg was more interested in the “form” rather than

the “organic” aspects of ti elsewhere, in his critique of Bodde’s translation of ti as “essence.”

Boodberg insists that the “Chinese t’i never developed the subtlety of our ‘essence’ and ‘sub-
stance’, having remained close to the level of ‘embodiment’ or ‘form.’“ See Boodberg, “His-
tory of Chinese Philosophy,” pp. 335–36.
7 For associations between ritual and the body, see Ames, “Meaning of Body,” pp. 169–70;

Zhu Pingci 祝平次, “Cong li de guandian lun xian Qin Ru, Dao, shenti/zhuti guannian de
chayi” 從 禮的觀點論先秦儒, 道身體主體觀念的差異, in Yang, ed., Qilun ji shenti guan, pp.
261–324; and Lewis, Construction of Space, chap. one.

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sideration, particularly as the term was first used in reference to plant

(and also animal) bodies.
For ti bodies often act more like plants than like humans. When
living human bodies are divided, they die: halving, quartering, or frag-
menting human or animal bodies inevitably results in dismemberment
or death. Ti bodies, however, lend themselves readily to unusual kinds
of division and multiplication—processes that rarely occur with other
kinds of bodies without killing them—and for ti bodies, division is ac-
tually tantamount to reproduction and multiplication, not death. This
quality is most likely associated with ti’s early association with plants.
For some kinds of plants, such as those that are propagated vegetatively,
division results in an increase rather than a decrease of life forms. Each
new plant produced in vegetative propagation becomes a new plant
exactly like its “parent.” Moreover, each new plant in some sense is
still the parent plant, and there exists a material continuity of identity
from one life form to the next. 8 If one quarters a tuberous root into four
segments, each of which flourishes on its own, does the plant matter
from those four segments then belong to the original “mother” plant
(to use modern horticultural terminology) or the four new “daughter”
plants? 9 Mother and daughter plants are at once autonomous and yet
consubstantial. For people of an agriculturally based society, the no-
tion that plants can be multiplied through vegetative division would
have been commonplace.

8 My understanding of the material continuity of personal identity has been informed by

Carolyn Walker Bynum’s studies of that notion in such works as her “Material Continuity,
Personal Survival and the Resurrection of the Body: A Scholastic Discussion in its Medieval
and Modern Contexts.” See her Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the
Human Body in Medieval Religion (New York: Zone Books, 1992), pp. 239–97 and 393–417.
Here she explores the significance of the medieval Christian identification of the “self” with
the material continuity of the physical body itself rather than with the soul – a continuity that
in medieval Christianity persists until the resurrection of the body at the end of time, when
all skeletons are literally re-enfleshed. “Material Continuity” asks how a particular personal
identity (a “human being”) is associated with a particular physical frame and how that iden-
tity persists (or does not persist) when that body is transformed, fragmented, consumed by
animals, or re-enfleshed. Turning to received texts in China, one might ask how a personal
identity associated with a particular body (whether understood as ti, shen, or any other term)
persists over time.
9 I use the number four here as the human body is most commonly understood to contain

four ti, or four limbs (si ti 四體or also si zhi 四肢; the latter written with the tree radical in
the Mawangdui texts. Mawangdui Han mu boshu zhengli xiaozu, 馬王堆漢墓帛書整理小組
ed., Mawangdui Han mu boshu 馬王堆漢墓帛書 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985) 4, p. 149. My under-
standing of those texts is based on Donald J. Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The
Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (London: Kegan Paul International, 1998). The number four
figures also in Mao no. 246 in the Odes, as discussed below.

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And in fact, one of the earliest meanings of ti is not “human body”

at all but rather “plant vegetation”: of the four instances where the
term appears in the Book of Odes, none directly denotes human bod-
ies, but two (Mao nos. 35 and 246) refer directly to the roots, foliage,
or stalks of plants (the other two refer to animal bodies or refer indi-
rectly to plants). 10 Plant forms in the Odes are signs for human emotion
and activity. In “Valley Winds” (Gu feng 谷風, Mao no. 35), ti signifies
both the unwanted lower sections of plants and the unwanted body of
a discarded wife: the “lower bodies,” or xia ti 下體, of feng 葑 and fei 菲
plants collected from the field are metaphors for the “lower body” of
a spurned woman. The former wife begs her dissatisfied spouse to ac-
cept the good with the bad, just as when gathering in plants, one does
not throw away an entire plant simply because an unwanted segment
of root or stem is attached. She asks rhetorically,
When picking the feng, when picking the fei,
Does one not also end up with their roots below (xia ti 下體)? 11
Let me not be spurned, she seems to ask, because of some inevitable
shortcomings. But (like the discarded vegetables) she is not brought to
the table; in the succeeding verse, her former husband ritually replaces
her by banqueting with a new woman, and their relationship is already
as close as that of blood relatives. “You banquet with your new bride,”

10 Ti also refers indirectly to the bodies of plants (and animals) in the Odes in Mao no. 58,

where it is a corpus of information concerning a betrothal interpreted from shi 筮 divina-

tion (which uses the stalks of plants) and bu卜 divination (which uses bones of livestock also
known as ti, as discussed below). James Legge, The She King (rpt. Taipei, Southern Materials
Center, 1985), p. 98. For ti as a body of signs revealed through divination, see Book of Docu-
ments, “Jin teng” 金縢. James Legge, The Shoo King (rpt. Taipei, Southern Materials Center,
Inc., 1985), p. 356. This is one of only two occurrences of the term in the Documents. (So that
references might be accessible to scholars of comparative body studies, I cite page numbers
from bilingual sources and alternative English translations when available. All translations are
my own unless otherwise noted.) See also Zuo zhuan, Duke Min 閔 1; James Legge, The Ch’un
Ts’ew with the Tso chuen (rpt. Taipei, Southern Materials Center, Inc., 1985), pp. 124–25. In
the Zhou li 周禮, the tortoiseman (gui ren 龜人) cares for the six tortoises (those for heaven,
earth, and the four directions), distinguishing them based on their colors and their ti, a term
variously understood by later commentators as their bodies or four legs. Sun Yirang 孫詒讓,
annot., Zhou li zhengyi 周禮正義 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1987), pp. 1950–52. The fourth
occurrence of ti in the Odes, Mao no. 52, is the body of a “rat” that is a metaphor for a human
being devoid of ritual decorum. Legge, She King, p. 85.
11 Legge, She King, p. 55. Both Hightower and Chen Zizhan note that ti in this passage was

written (or miswritten or borrowed) as li, or ritual, in such texts as the Han Shih wai zhuan 韓
詩外傳. James Robert Hightower, Han Shi Wai Chuan: Han Ying’s Illustrations of the Didac-
tic Application of the Classic of Songs (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard U. P., 1952), p. 306 and
Chen Zizhan, 陳字展, ed. Shijing zhijie 詩經直解 (Shanghai: Fudan Daxue, 1983), p. 104. For
translating terms in the Odes, I have generally followed Xiang Xi 向熹, ed., Shijing cidian 詩
經詞典 (Chengdu: Sichuan Renmin, 1986), which discusses ti at pp. 637–38. Cultivars of the
feng and fei are no longer identifiable, but Xiang Xi notes many commentaries that assume
they were edible.

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the former wife laments, “as if you were older siblings, as if you were
younger siblings.” 12
Close sibling relations appear again in “Wayside Rushes” (Xing wei
行葦, Mao. no. 246), where ti refers to a clump of plant buds that is an
allegory for a corporate group of siblings. Rushes grow luxuriantly at
the sides of the road, and their “bodies” (their budding root clumps or
new stems) are just beginning to sprout foliage above ground.
Thick, those wayside rushes;
Don’t let the cattle and sheep trample them.
Developing (fang 方) are their shoots, developing are their bod-
ies (ti),
Furled foliage lush and tender. 13
Rushes appear later in the verse, this time after having been crafted
into woven mats that seat a family of siblings who have convened for a
ritual banquet. Dense plant growth in the wild is now transformed into
the close-knit ties of family members seated on the mats:
Close, close are the elder and younger siblings.
None are distant, all are nigh.
Mats are spread for them. 14
After feasting, the siblings pray together for blessings and long life.
References to “four arrows” in a post-banquet archery contest suggest
there are four siblings. 15 Additional allusions to plants appear even in
the archery game itself, as the arrows are described as being “planted”
like trees (shu 樹) in their targets. Connections between plant life and
sibling amity in this verse were long ago noted by Legge, who com-
ments as follows:
In the reeds growing up densely from a common root we have
an emblem of brothers all sprung from the same ancestor; and in
plants developing so finely, when preserved from injury, an em-
blem of the happy fellowships of consanguinity, when nothing is
allowed to interfere with mutual confidence and good feeling. 16
In these two examples from the Odes, ti denotes plant forms that
are signs for human bodies – and, significantly, signs for bodies engaged

12 Legge, She King, p. 56. 13 Ibid., p. 472. 14 Ibid., p. 473.

15 Qualities of four are also suggested earlier in the verse in the term fang方, which I have
understood as “developing” or “emerging in all directions,” but which could also allude to
the four quarters. Relationships between siblings are likened to the four bodies/limbs in the
“Sang fu” 喪服 chapter of the Ceremonial and Ritual (Yili 儀禮). Yili, “Sang fu”; Hu Beihui,
annot., Yili zhengyi 儀禮正義 (Jiangsu: Jiangsu guji, 1993), p. 1409. See also John Steele, The
I-li (rpt. Taipei, Ch’eng-wen, 1966) 2, p. 17.
16 Legge, She King, p. 473.

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in (or divorced from) the ritual consumption of food. The wife is cast
out from the marriage table, whereas the siblings’ banquet solidifies
a corporate harmony avowed to last through old age. In later texts, ti
retains echoes of its associations with the plant world, ritual, and the
commensal consumption of food integral to ritual performance. Rit-
ual is itself likened to a great body that is incorporated into all under
heaven. “The great body (da ti 大體) of ritual,” says the Book of Rites, “is
embodied (ti) in heaven and earth, is modeled on the four seasons, is
gauged in the yin and yang, and accords with the human condition.” 17
And not surprisingly, when the ti body is separated from ritual, it fre-
quently dies. 18

T he q u mortal coil

More commonly, however, the ti body enjoys food, as will be seen

below. No other body routinely consumes food; however, the qu 軀
body is even noted for its inability to digest things, even things as eas-
ily absorbed as learning. Qu, an uncommon term I translate as “mortal
coil,” refers almost exclusively to the dysfunctional bodies of small or
petty people (xiao ren 小人), whose diminished virtues invite ridicule
and even early death. Xunzi, for example, in “Encouraging Learning”
contrasts the learning of the person of noble character (junzi) with that
of the petty person. Noble people have ti bodies (here understood as
the four limbs), xing forms, and shen bodies; petty people instead have
qu mortal coils.
The learning of noble people enters their ears, is made manifest
in their minds, spreads throughout their four limbs [lit. si ti, or
“four bodies”], and takes form (xing) in their activities and repose.
. . . But the learning of petty people enters their ears and comes
right back out of their mouths. Now the distance between mouth
and ear is only about four inches – how is that enough to make a
seven-foot mortal coil (qu) fine! In antiquity, learning was done
for one’s self; today, it is done for [the sake of impressing] others.
The learning of noble people is done to make their bodies (shen)
fine; the learning of petty people is for show. 19

17 Liji zhengyi 禮記正義, “Sang fu si zhi” 喪服四制 (SSJZS edn.; Beijing: Zhonghua, 1979),

p. 1694. See also James Legge, The Li Ki (rpt. of vols. 27–28 of The Sacred Books of the East;
Delhi: Motilal, 1964), vol. 28, p. 465.
18 See for example the case of the rat in Mao. no. 52 of the Odes, whose ritual-less ti body

might soon die, and Zigong’s prediction of the deaths of two officials who do “not embody”
(bu ti 不體) ritual. Zuo zhuan, Duke Ding 定 15; Legge, Tso chuen, pp. 790–91.
19 Wang Xianqian, annot., 王先謙, Xunzi jijie 荀子集解 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1988), “Quan

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Noble people completely somatize their learning in their ti bod-

ies and let it beautify their social shen bodies, but petty people quickly
regurgitate it unabsorbed. Smallness of character has potentially fa-
tal consequences: another of the rare occurrences of qu refers to Pen
Chengkuo, who in the Mencius is a man of petty talents ignorant of the
great (da 大) Way of the noble person. Pen’s limited gifts were just suf-
ficient enough to kill him – literally, to “kill his mortal coil” (sha qi qu
殺其軀).
Pen Chengkuo became an officer in Qi. Mencius said, “Pen Cheng-
kuo will die!” And when Pen Chengkuo met his death, the disciples
asked, “Master, how did you know he was about to meet his death?”
Mencius said, “As a person, he was small in terms of capability,
and he had not yet heard of the great Way of the noble person.
And that was simply just enough to kill his mortal coil.” 20
The qu, then, is a diminished body marked by deficiencies and
incapacities. Qu mortal coils are measurable in length (as indicated by
the size of the seven-foot mortal coil whose ears and mouth are four
inches apart), but in terms of character they are marked primarily by
smallness and diminishment. Disconnected from learning and from the
great Way, they are foils against which the fine bodies of noble people
stand in contrast.

X i n g forms

Xing forms might be the forms of anyone, noble or petty. Sivin

notes that “the only term for the body that has nothing to do with the
person seen whole, hsing 形, literally means ‘shape.’ It often refers to
the body’s outline rather than to its physical identity.” 21 Similarly,
Ames says of the xing that it is “the form or shape, the three-dimen-
sional disposition or configuration of the human process.” 22 Xing has
two primary valences of meaning: first, as Sivin and Ames note, it re-
fers to a visible or solid form, shape, mass, or physical frame whose

xue” 勸學, pp. 12–13; see also John Knoblock, Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete
Works (Stanford: Stanford U. P., 1988–94) 1, p. 140.
20 Mencius 7B.29; D.C. Lau, Mencius (Hong Kong: The Chinese U.P., 1984), pp. 296–97.

21 Sivin, “State, Cosmos, and Body,” p. 14.

22 Ames, “Meaning of Body,” p. 165. For the various usages of xing, see also his Sun-tzu: The

Art of Warfare (New York: Ballantine Books, 1993), pp. 82–83 and 114–16; Mark Csikszent-
mihaly, Material Virtue: Ethics and Body in Early China (Leiden: Brill, 2004), pp. 281–82 and
312–20; and Huang Junjie 黃俊傑, “Mawangdui boshu Wuxing pian ‘Xing yu nei’ de yihan”
馬王堆帛書五行篇形於內的意涵, in Yang, ed., Qilun ji shenti guan, pp. 353–67.

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boundaries, outlines, and external features are clearly discernible on

the surface to the naked eye. These are often solid, discrete forms that
do not overlap with other xing forms. Second, it refers also to nonvis-
ible structures, patterns, or matrices that lie beneath the surface of a
visible form and give it its shape or structure. Nonvisible structures may
be solid, such as the skeleton of the living human body (xing hai 形骸),
which provides an invisible framework for the soft tissue that is visible
to the naked eye. Forms may also be very subtle, like the forms of the
mind described in the “Inner Training” of the Guanzi. Xing can refer
also to the conformation of the terrestrial landscape, its geographic or
political boundaries, or to the configuration and direction of military
maneuvers on the surface of the earth. The opening lines of the “Ap-
pended Statements” of the Book of Changes claim that “in heaven are
completed the images; on earth are completed the forms 在天成象; 在地
成形.” 23 Ti bodies differ from xing forms in that ti bodies are primarily
understood in terms of the relationship between whole and part; xing
forms, on the other hand, are more commonly understood in terms of
relationships between inner and outer, subtle and manifest, or depth
and surface. Xing forms, unlike ti bodies, do not readily multiply into
parts that are consubstantial with, or analogous to, a larger wholeness.
Xing forms can be divided, but division is likely to result in death rather
than reproduction, and xing is one of the terms used for a dead body.
Ti bodies are wholenesses that can be divided from within; xing forms
are templates that can be shaped from without. Ti, when used as a verb,
means to embody within; when xing is used as a verb, especially when
it appears as the variant xing 刑, it is associated with recision or mod-
eling from without.
Ti bodies are not necessarily structured, but xing is inherently
structured; there are no “shapeless” forms, which by definition would
be “formless,” or wu xing 無形, “without form.” Xing forms are bounded
by formlessness itself; they exist at a more primordial or elemental
level than do ti bodies and are sometimes described as coming into
existence prior to the ti body. In some texts that describe the early
developmental stages of a human being, form (variants xing 刑 or xing
形) is contrasted with the formlessness of liquid conditions (flowing,
variously liu 流 or 溜) or darkness. According to the Book of the Genera-
tion of the Fetus (Tai chan shu 胎產書) from the Mawangdui texts, at the

23 Zhou Yi zhengyi 周易正義 (SSJZS edn.), p. 75. In the Rites of Zhou, the master of the con-

formation of territories (xing fang shi 形方氏) supervised configurations of states and enfeoff-
ments. Sun, annot., Zhouli zhengyi, “Xing fang shi,” pp. 2700–1.

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earliest stages of pregnancy, the nascent human form flows into being
from an amorphous state of darkness (ming ming 冥冥).
When human beings are generated, they enter the vast darkness
and emerge from the vast darkness, and then they first become
human beings (ren 人). The first month is called “flowing into the
form” (liu xing 留刑). 24
The expression “flowing into form” (written as 溜刑) appears also in
the “Ten Questions” (Shi wen 十問 of the Mawangdui texts, in a passage
where the Yellow Lord asks Master Rong Cheng how human life forms
come into being from shapeless inchoateness. Note that the xing form is
developmentally earlier than the ti body in this passage, for only when
the form is complete does the ti body come into existence.
In the beginning, when from that expanse of inchoateness there
is flowing into the form, what do the people obtain such that
they become alive? When flowing into the form completes (cheng
成) the body (ti), what is lost such that they [eventually] become
dead? 25
It is perhaps this incomplete, primordial, or elemental quality of the
xing form that precludes it from playing a significant role in discussions
of ritual performance, where the ti aspect of the human body (which
is often associated with the quality of being complete, or cheng) more
commonly comes into play.
Xing forms, when understood in their subtle sense, can exist as
multiple or overlapping phenomena within one physical human frame.
Those multiple forms, however, unlike the multiple aspects of a ti body,
are not analogous to the whole and are not simulacra of the whole. They
can exist at a level that is more subtle than, and prior to, conditions of
completeness, awareness, consciousness, or communicability. In the
“Inner Training” (Nei ye 內業) chapter of the Guanzi, for example, the
mind has subtle forms that pre-exist human speech.
Within the mind there is also a mind. Regarding this mind of
the mind, there is thought that pre-exists speech. When there is
thought, then there are forms; when there are forms, then there
is speech. 26

24 Mawangdui Han mu boshu 4, p. 136; Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, p. 378.
25 Mawangdui Han mu boshu 4, p. 146, and Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, p.
393. In the Mawangdui texts ti is commonly written with the flesh radical instead of the radi-
cal for bone. See also Csikszentmihalyi, Material Virtue, p. 321.
26 Following the Chinese text and translation in Harold D. Roth, Original Tao: Inward Train-

ing and the Foundations of Taoist Mysticism (New York: Columbia U. P., 1999), pp. 72–73.

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 ti body

Cultivating the form (or forms) when it is understood in this subtle or

almost physiological sense is difficult, for the xing form is not readily
accessible to conscious effort. Mencius acknowledges this difficulty,
saying that “one must be a sage, and only then can one develop the
form [or forms]” (jian xing 踐形). 27 The form cannot usually be affected
by reflection or cogitation, but it can sometimes be developed through
simple body placement: in the “Inner Training,” the form is devel-
oped physiologically through alignment, or zheng 正 (following Roth’s
translation of the term); if it is aligned properly, it might manifest in-
ner power, or de. 28 The aspect of the body or self most readily acces-
sible to cultivation and development is not the form, however, but is
instead the shen body.

T he socialized , cultivatable , and linear she n body

Xing is usually below the level of conscious reflection for people

other than sages, and for most people, it is the shen body, person, or
self that is self-aware and is the site of inner reflection and cultivation.
The ti body, in contrast, is usually not. Shen is the socially constructed
self that is marked by signs of status and personal identity, and it is the
accumulated corpus of a person’s moral values, character, experience,
and learning. Having a xing form prevents one from being formless in
the cosmos, but having a shen body places one in more specific, par-
allel relationships with other human shen bodies, with one’s clan, and
with the state. Shen bodies are more often associated with the qualities
of parallellism or of linear contiguity, but not commonality; ti bodies,
on the other hand, are associated with undelineated commonality. Shen
bodies, other than the bodies of family members, are much less likely to
overlap than ti bodies, and even when they do, they are more likely to
overlap only contiguously, linearly, and segmentally. Within the fam-
ily, relationships between shen bodies might be understood in terms of
contiguity, that is, the quality of being “next to” someone else – either
horizontally, within one’s own generation, or vertically, to past and fu-
ture generations. Relationships between parents and children can be so
intimate as to be virtually consubstantial. Relationships between nonkin
shen bodies, however, are at best parallel but do not overlap.

27 Mencius 7A.38. Lau, Mencius, p. 281. Mencius’s notion of jianxing is analyzed in Yang,

Rujia shenti guan, pp. 43–53; see also idem, “Zhili yu jian xing” 支離與踐形, in Yang, ed.,
Qilun ji shenti guan, pp. 415–49.
28 Roth, Original Tao, pp. 56–57, 66–67, and 110–11.

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deborah sommer

Shen bodies, even though they are living physical frames, are less
circumscribed by the flesh than are ti bodies; shen bodies may routinely
be developed through thought and reflection, but ti bodies rarely are.
One might reflect on one’s shen body and thus transform it, but one
could not do so with one’s ti body or xing form. The shen is the site
where personal values and moral autonomy are constructed, and it is
an inner focal point of awareness to which one returns after being in-
volved in the external world. This inward turn is exemplified most fa-
mously by Zengzi’s thrice-daily reflections on his shen body to examine
his loyalty, trustworthiness, and ability to enact what he had learned
(Analects i/4). Shen bodies are allied with values but also maintain a
reflective distance, both temporal and emotional, from them. They
can be consciously acted upon and may be cultivated (zhi 治or xiu 修);
they can also be treated badly. Confucius stated that people of noble
character would have nothing to do with people who treated their shen
bodies badly (Analects xvii/7).
As in the case of the ti body, plant metaphors also inform the un-
derstanding of the shen body, but the metaphors operate more linearly
than do those associated with the ti body. In a passage from the Book
of Rites spoken in the voice of Confucius, shen bodies of children are
likened to branches growing outward from the trunk (ben 本, “trunk,”
“basis,” or “foundation”) of their parents’ bodies and are thus linear
segments or extensions outward of their parents. Confucius explains
how bodies of family members overlap.
Children are the descendants of their parents. How could one
not but revere them? Noble people are always reverent, and be-
ing reverent about the body (shen) is of greatest importance. The
body is a branch of one’s parents, so how could one be irreverent
in this regard? Irreverence towards one’s own body wounds one’s
parents; when the parents are wounded, the trunk is wounded, and
when the trunk is wounded, the branch perishes. 29
At the level of the shen body, children are not discrete, autonomous enti-
ties (although they might be so understood at the level of the xing form),
and the overlap with their parents’ bodies is so complete that physical
harm to one party is felt (metaphorically at least) by the other.
In this sense, understandings of the shen body and ti body share
much in common. But for nonkin shen bodies, such imbrication does
not occur, for they might be parallel but do not overlap; overlapping
29 Liji zhengyi (SSJZS edn.), “Ai Gong wen” 哀公問, p. 1612. See also Legge, Li Ki, vol.

28, p. 266.

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 ti body

nonkin bodies are usually ti bodies. Nonkin shen bodies can nonethe-
less resonate empathetically with one another provided certain forms
of behavioral symmetry – usually a form of linear rectitude – are fol-
lowed. Such mutual response is reflected in Confucius’s saying that as
long as one’s own shen body is aligned (zheng 正, aligned or upright in
terms of both physical bearing and moral rectitude), then others will
respond appropriately and comply without even being ordered to do
so. 30 Conversely, a lack of alignment will cause others to not comply
even when ordered to do so (Analects xiii/6). It is the term shen that is
used for the body or self when a person is spoken of in terms of his or
her relationship to (but not necessarily incorporation with – a condition
more characteristic of the ti body) the clan, the ruler, or the state. This
is seen most readily in the eight aspects of the Great Learning, where
the shen is the pivotal point between a person’s inner life of the mind
and intentionality, on the one hand, and family, state, and all-under-
heaven, on the other. Speaking of relationships between self and ruler,
Confucius’s disciple Zixia spoke admiringly of those who could extend
(zhi 致, to reach to or develop) their shen bodies to the utmost in service
to their sovereigns (Analects i/7). But to extend oneself toward another
is not to be consubstantial with them; when the bodies of rulers and
subjects are described as being as one, the word ti is usually used, not
shen, as discussed below.
Extendibility of the branching shen body is characterized by lin-
earity and segmentability. Shen is a linear form measurable in length,
conceptually segmented horizontally into qualitatively different parts
at the neck and waist. At the neck, the shen is distinguished from the
head (tou 頭) or face (mian 面). Xunzi’s “Against Physiognomy,” for
example, recounts how physiognomers describe the purportedly mis-
shapen faces and shen bodies of culture heroes and sages. 31 An imagi-
nary snakelike creature recorded in the “Water and Earth” (Shui di
水 地) chapter of the Guanzi has one head but two shen bodies. 32 And
the Annals of Master Lü (Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋) reports that the ding 鼎
bronze vessels of the Zhou bear taotie 饕餮 designs; having a head but
no shen body, however, the taotie can eat people but cannot swallow
them. 33 The shen is also divided horizontally at the waist: Analects x/6
30 I follow Roth in understanding zheng as “aligned.” Roth, Original Tao.
31 Wang, annot., Xunzi jijie, “Fei xiang” 非相, pp. 73–75. See also Knoblock, Xunzi 1, pp.
203–4.
32 Li Mian 李勉, annot., Guanzi jinzhu jinyi 管子今註今譯 (Taipei: Shangwu, 1988), “Shui

di,” p. 677. See also W. Allyn Rickett, Guanzi: Political, Economic, and Philosophical Essays
from China, Volume 2 (Princeton: Princeton U.P., 1998), pp. 105–6.
33 John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, The Annals of Lü Buwei (Stanford: Stanford U.P.,

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deborah sommer

states that one type of gown is half the shen, or body, in length. But
the shen body is rarely bisected vertically from top to bottom so as to
divide the body into right and left sides that are mirror images of one
another; such a vertical division is more characteristic of the ti body,
whether of humans or sacrificial animals.
Shen bodies are measurable in terms of length (that is, height) and
temporal lifespan. In Xunzi’s “Against Physiognomy,” the shen body of
a minister named Gongsun Lü is “seven feet (chi 尺) in length.” 34 Else-
where in that chapter, Xunzi uses xing 形 for the human body (a term
useful to the physiognomist concerned with the body’s visible form),
but he employs shen when Gongsuns’s body is measured. Zhuangzi
notes that Robber Footpad’s shen body is eight feet, two inches long. 35
Measurability of the surface area of the shen body is seen in Mencius’s
assertion that one’s shen does not have one foot or inch of skin one
does not cherish. 36 Length of the shen is also measured in days and
years, and the shen can be the living physical body or its temporal life
span. It is often synonymous with sheng 生, life itself; the expression
zhong shen 終身 , literally, “until the end of one’s body,” means “until
death.” 37 In Analects xv/9, it is the shen that is subject to death. Per-
sons of humaneness, Confucius asserts, do not injure that humaneness
by seeking inappropriately to stay alive but would rather kill the body
(sha shen 殺身) and thus complete humaneness. Ti bodies, on the other
hand, are not ordinarily subject to measurement, and their boundar-
ies extend beyond one physical human frame. They are also rarely re-
ferred to as being dead.
Boundaries of the shen body do not overlap significantly with the
shen bodies of other people (other than the bodies of one’s parents or
children), but they are nonetheless socially permeable: they absorb dis-
honor, disgrace, or other kinds of pollution and experience honor or

2000), “Xian shi” 先識, p. 376. For the Chinese text of the Annals I have followed Knoblock
and Riegel. Oddly, this entry concludes that the taotie thus harms its shen body – a body it
supposedly does not have.
34 Wang, annot., Xunzi jijie, “Fei xiang,” p. 73; see also Knoblock, Xunzi 1, p. 204.

35 Guo Qingfan 郭慶藩, annot., Zhuangzi jishi 莊子集釋 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1961), “Dao

zhi” 盜跖, p. 993. See also Victor Mair, Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Para-
bles of Chuang Tzu (Honolulu: U. of Hawai’i P., 1994), p. 301. For Zhuangzi’s notion of the
body, see Wu Guangming 吳光明, “Zhuangzi de shenti siwei” 莊子的身體思維, in Yang, ed.,
Qilun ji shenti guan, pp. 393–414.
36 Mencius 6A.14. Lau, Mencius, pp. 236–37.

37 Analects xv/24 and ix/27. For other associations between the body and temporality,

see Robin D. S. Yates, “Body, Space, Time and Bureaucracy: Boundary Creation and Con-
trol Mechanisms in Early China,” in John Hay, ed., Boundaries in China (London: Reaktion,
1994), pp. 56–80.

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 ti body

purity. Zilu, commenting sanctimoniously about the recluse in Analects

xviii/7, implies that not serving in office or maintaining other important
human relationships results in the shen not being clean. Confucius once
remarked that Bo Yi and Shu Qi, who starved themselves to sustain
righteousness, did not disgrace their shen bodies by doing so (Analects
xviii/8; see also xvi/12). Confucius noted that two other forthright men
were pure of body (shen zhong qing 身中清; Analects xviii/8). Xing forms
might be physically harmed, but they are not subject to the trauma of
disgrace, and neither are ti bodies. The Mozi describes how incompetent
rulers can end up “injuring their forms (xing) and wasting their spirit,
afflicting their minds and belaboring their thoughts, such that the state
runs headlong into danger and their persons (shen) run headlong into
disgrace.” 38 The xing is injured; the shen, disgraced. The shen body can
become ill and feel pain and other physical sensations (and is the term
most commonly used for the physical frame in the Mawangdui healing
texts), although it is not as commonly associated with the sense facul-
ties of the eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as is the ti body.

T he go n g body of ritualized conduct

One might, like Zengzi, internally reflect on one’s shen body three
times a day, but if one were to display one’s trustworthiness and loy-
alty to others, then those values might instead be conveyed publicly
through one’s gong 躬 body. Gong is particularly associated with, and
largely limited to, the deliberate public display of virtuous conduct. It
most often signifies a body in the process of personally and consciously
performing an action, usually in a ritual context before an audience,
that demonstrates visually the virtuous character of the actor. Actions
performed by the gong body most often occur in a situation – such as
an appearance at court – where an audience can directly discern the
moral tenor of the actor. Hence, the gong body can be understood as
a living, physical human frame that is the site of publicly displayed,
performed values. The conduct of the gong body is ritualized, stylized,
nonspontaneous, and guided by traditional mores and social obliga-
tions. As gong in an expanded sense refers to the sum total of the self
or person that is created by those actions, it can also be translated as
“person” or “personally,” and it appears frequently with the character
qin 親, “to do in person.” In Analects iv/22, for example, the people of
antiquity were said to be shamed lest they not personally (gong) live up
38 Sun Yirang 孫詒讓, annot., Mozi xiangu 墨子閒詁 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001), “So

ran” 所染, p. 18. See also Yi-pao Mei, The Ethical and Political Works of Motse (London: Ar-
thur Probsthain, 1929), p. 11.

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deborah sommer

to what they said. Confucius himself lamented his perceived inability

to enact personally (gong xing 躬行) the conduct of the noble person
(Analects vii/33).
Gong bodies endure hardship and perform exemplary physical
labors, often in paradigmatic ritual contexts. Such toil is virtuous con-
duct, for the laboring body displays efforts performed not for personal
gain but on behalf of society at large. Confucius himself recommends
being hard on oneself, that is, being hard on one’s gong body (gong zi
hou; 躬自厚) and easy on others (Analects xv/15). Hardship and suffer-
ing are humbly endured even by persons of royal status or by culture
heroes who substitute their own suffering or labor for the suffering of
others. The culture hero Tang is lauded in the final book of the Analects
for personally (gong) vowing to ritually take upon his own person (gong)
the mistakes of all his people. 39 Gong bodies perform agricultural la-
bor. According to the Analects, even the mythic hero Yu (who dredged
canals from primordial wetlands and created a structured order out
of amorphous chaos) and the legendary Hou Ji (who developed plant
husbandry) experienced hardship when they labored in the wetlands
and fields (gong jia 躬稼; Analects xiv/5). Ancient spring rites whereby
the ruler and highest ranking ministers personally performed the first
plowing were called gong geng 躬耕, literally “plowing in person.” 40 Royal
women labored when they performed the spring sericulture rites, as
recorded in the “Ordinances of the Months” in the Book of Rites: the
queen and her entourage, after fasting and performing sacrificial vigils,
went in person to pick mulberry leaves (gong sang 躬桑). 41
How might the gong body be compared to other kinds of bodies?
The gong body is heavily inscribed with social responsibilities, but rarely
does it enjoy the fruits of those labors. That role falls more often to the ti
body, which can enjoy pleasurable sensations and eat the food produced
by labor. Ti bodies can move and perform labor, but those labors are
not necessarily performed in ritual contexts. When the ti body appears
in ritual contexts, as it often does, it is more likely to be associated with
containment than performance. Unlike the ti body, whose boundaries
are indeterminate, the gong body has clearly delimited boundaries; it
is coextensive with the human physical frame and does not exceed it.
Gong, unlike shen, is not usually the experiencer of self-reflection, nor
is it measured spatially or temporally. Gong almost always refers to a

39 Analects xx/1.
40 Liji zhengyi, SSJZS ed., “Yue ling”月令, p.1356. See also Legge, Li Ki, vol. 27, pp. 254–55.
41 Liji zhengyi, SSJZS ed., “Yue ling,” p. 1363. See also Legge, Li Ki, vol. 27, p. 265.

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 ti body

human body, not to an animal body or to nonhuman phenomena (such

as those sometimes denoted by xing or ti). It cannot be multiplied by
division, and gong bodies do not overlap with one another.

T i B odies D ivided and M ultiplied

The ti body, on the other hand, is amenable to various kinds of

division and overlapping. When it is fragmented or divided, its parts
are more likely to exhibit similitude or consubstantiality. Ti bodies
can overlap in ways that other kinds of bodies cannot. Shen bodies can
overlap, at least in the case of parents and children, but shen bodies
of persons who have no kin relationship rarely do. One human frame
contains only one shen body or person, but a single human frame might
contain several ti bodies, and one ti body might also extend across sev-
eral human beings. 42 It is at the level of the ti body – not the gong, shen,
or xing bodies – that one sees the greatest erasure of the boundaries
between individual identities. Multiple ti bodies might be conceptually
fused with those of another person. People who are not kin – rulers
and ministers, husbands and wives, or kings and their people – might
share in the same ti body or bodies, and many different people might
together form yi ti 一體, or one ti body.
According to the Annals of Master Lü, one’s shen body is but one as-
pect of a larger ti body that includes the physical frames both of one’s
self and one’s parents. Master Lü writes, “Zengzi said that the body (shen)
is the bequeathed body (yi ti 遺體) of one’s father and mother. When
putting into action this bequeathed body of one’s father and mother,
does one dare be irreverent?” 43 According to this understanding, one’s
individual shen body inhabits the larger somatic realm encompassed by
a larger ti body that extends across generations. Elsewhere, the Annals
of Master Lü states that parents and children are actually one body in
two parts, or yi ti liang fen 一體兩分:
[The relationships between] father and mother and their child,
and between the child and its father and mother, is that of one

42 But see the unusual statement in Annals of Master Lü, “You shi” 有始 that “heaven and

earth and the ten thousand things are the shen body of one person, which is called a great com-
monality (da tong 大同).” Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, p. 282.
43 Annals of Master Lü, “Xiao xing” 孝行. Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, p. 303.

The notion that one should preserve the body bequeathed by one’s parents is also attributed
to Zengzi, and ultimately to Confucius, in the succeeding entry in the “Xiao xing.” There it is
called, unusually, the bequeathed gong body. Perhaps this is because the body in question has
been injured in a ritual context while descending from a hall; it might be an indirect allusion
to the gong body described descending from a hall in Analects x/4.

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deborah sommer

body in two parts, of a common qi in two breaths. They are like

grasses and plants from the same flowers and fruit, like trees from
the same rootstock (lit., “root mind,” gen xin 根心). They may be
in different places, but they communicate with one another; they
may have unseen intentions, but they are known to one another;
one may be sick or in pain, and the other will try to help them;
one may be worried or anxious, and the other will sense it; when
one is alive and flourishing, the other is happy; when one dies,
the other is sad. Such is what it means to have the close intimacy
of bone and flesh. 44
Plant analogies are important in this passage: parents and children are
of the same gen xin, the same “root mind,” rootstock, or heartwood.
Spatial boundaries of the ti body in this case are of little concern, for
even though parent and child are in different places, they nonetheless
share the same sensations. This passage recalls the entry from the Book
of Rites where children are extended branches of their parents’ shen
bodies. Here, however, the fusing of identities is expanded, and the
emphasis is placed on the wholeness that is the one body and on com-
monalities shared at cognitive, physical, and emotional levels.
The Mohists discuss ti at the very beginning of the Mohist “Can-
ons” (Jingshang 經上, Canons Part I, and Jingxia 經下, Canons Part II). 45
The “Canons” explores the dimensions, boundaries, relationships, com-
monalities, and distinctions between different phenomena. Graham un-
derstands the “Canons” in terms of optics, mechanics, and geo­m etry,
but since they also define such intangible phenomena as ritual, hu-
maneness, and even dreams, their scope is clearly not limited to me-
chanical calculations. 46 In the “Canons,” ti is understood foremost as
something that can be divided. 47 The ti body (for Graham, the ti “unit”)
is associated with wholeness, entirety, or completeness (jin 盡); with
commonality (tong 同); and with being of a kind (lei 類). 48 Just as form
44 Annals of Master Lü, “Jing tong” 精通. Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, p.

221. The expression yi ti liang fen is very similar to Mohist definitions of the ti body, as dis-
cussed below.
45 The “Canons” (Mozi juan 40) and “Explanations of the Canons” (Mozi juan 41, “Jingshuo

shang” 經說上 and “Jingshuo xia” 經說下, parts 1 and 2, respectively) are translated in A. C.
Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (rpt. Hong Kong: The Chinese U.P. 2003),
pp. 265 and 499. I read this phrase the opposite of Graham, who translates as follows: “A t’i
(unit/individual/part) is a portion in a chien (total/collection/whole).” Graham, p. 265. I un-
derstand ti as whole and jian as part.
46 Graham, Later Mohist Logic.

47 Sun, annot., Mozi xiangu, “Jing shang” 經 上, p. 309. Ames has also noted that for Mozi,

the ti is “a share of the whole.” Ames, “Meaning of Body,” p. 169.

48 Sun, annot., Mozi xiangu, p. 316; Graham, Later Mohist Logic, pp. 329–30 and 500.

310
 ti body

is bound by formlessness, so ti, for the Mohists, is bound by dimen-

sionlessness. The “Canons” assay the outer parameters of ti: at their
most incipient, or qian 前, points, they are dimensionless, or wu hou 無
厚. They are also bounded by duan 端: edges, starting points, or incipi-
encies. 49 Mencius also understands ti in terms of duan, but he adds to
them a moral dimension, as discussed below. For Zhuangzi, ti is also
a wholeness, as seen in the expression “the body is wholeness without
limit 體盡無窮.” 50 The wholeness of the Mohist ti is divisible into jian
兼, or parts: “Ti is divisible into parts 體分於兼也.” 51 Jian parts are not
random fragments but are counterparts that exhibit mutual kinds of
symmetries. Elsewhere in the Mozi, the notion of jian as counterpart
or mutuality becomes important ethically in the chapters on jian ai 兼
愛, or “mutual concern,” a concern for others that implies a relational
symmetry between counterparts from different groups. 52 According to
this principle, one should feel a similar concern toward both one’s own
parents and toward their counterparts in other families – the parents
of other children.
Symmetry between counterpart sections of ti bodies is found also
in the Zuo zhuan, where the human body can be halved into right and
left sides that are mirror images of one another. Complementary sides
of the human body are signs of an elaborate cosmic system of counter-
parts, matches, doubles, and pairs.
Things are given life (sheng 生) in twos (liang 兩), in threes, in fives,
and in paired doubles (pei er 陪貳). Hence, heaven has the three
constellations, earth has the Five Phases, and the body (ti) has its
left and right sides. Everything has its counterpart (fei ou or pei ou
妃耦). Kings have their dukes, the marquises have their chief offi-
cers – each has its paired double. Heaven has given birth to the Ji
clan that it might be a double (er) for the Marquis of Lu. 53
Pairs, counterparts, and doubles did not figure in the language
of the shen, xing, or gong bodies. But here, the ti human body is itself
doubled, as are the constituents of the body politic, where phenomena
are naturally produced in twos, doubles, and counterparts. Some pair-
ings are conceptually hierogamous, for they are described as helpmeets

49 Sun, annot., Mozi xiangu, p. 312. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, pp. 310 and 499.
50 Guo, annot., Zhuangzi jishi, “Ying diwang” 應帝王, p. 307. See also Mair, Wandering
on the Way, p. 71.
51 Sun, annot., Mozi xiangu, p. 309.

52 Mozi 14, 15, and 16, “Jian ai,” Parts I, II, and III, respectively.

53 Zuo zhuan, Duke Zhao 昭 32. See also Legge, Tso chuen, pp. 739 and 741. I have read

fei as a variant of pei 配.

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deborah sommer

or espoused couples (fei ou or pei ou): kings and dukes, marquises and
officers, the Marquis and the entire Ji clan, each has its helpmeet in
the body politic. In fact, rulers, ministers, and even the people are de-
scribed as inhabiting a single body, as discussed below.
Ti bodies can be conceptually quartered as well as divided into
paired halves, and one human frame is often said to contain within it
four ti bodies (si ti 四體), often understood as the body’s four limbs (si
ti, or si zhi 四肢), each of which has a certain degree of autonomy and
can move independently. The limbs are often associated with move-
ment, as in the following passage from the Analects, where a farmer
derides Zilu for his idleness.
Once when Zilu accompanied [Confucius], he fell behind, and he
ran into an elderly gentleman who was carrying his work baskets
hoisted on his cane over his shoulder.
Zilu asked, “Sir, have you seen the Master?”
The elderly man replied, “Your four limbs don’t belabor them-
selves 四體不勤, and you can’t tell one crop from another – just
who might ‘the Master’ be?” He planted his cane in the ground
and continued weeding. 54
These four ti bodies, like gong bodies, labor, but the efforts of the
ti body are less ritually circumscribed than those of the gong body. Gong
bodies of rulers and queens ritually set plowing and sericulture in mo-
tion for the whole realm, but the ti bodies of the ordinary farmer in
this passage – who virtually plants himself in the field with his cane –
simply tend their fields. Zilu’s inactive bodies are associated with his
ignorance about, and distance from, the world of food production (and
the ti body is the body that eats), although the farmer eventually invites
a repentant Zilu to share a meal of meat and grain.
One’s four bodies, or four limbs, can conceptually overlap with
the body of another person. Such somatic fusions most often occur in
the bodies of kings and their ministers. 55 In the Book of Documents, for
example, the minister Yue is likened to the four limbs of the king. The
king notes, “just as the legs and arms constitute the human being, so
does a good minister constitute the sage [ruler].” 56 Similarly, the Zuo
54 Analects xviii/7.
55 For comparative studies of the overlapping bodies of European rulers, see Alan Bou-
reau, Le simple corps du roi (Paris: Les Éditions de Paris, 1988); Ralph E. Giesey, The Royal
Funeral Ceremony in Renaissance France (Geneva: Librairie E. Droz, 1960), and Ernst H. Kan-
torowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton
U. P., 1957).
56 Book of Documents, “Yue ming xia.” Legge, Shoo king, p. 262. The bodies of the king and

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zhuan states that “The Minister of Command is the side (pian 偏) of the
sovereign and is his four bodies (si ti)”; when someone injures the minis-
ter of command, he also injures the king’s body. 57 Somatic connections
also tie rulers to their people. In the “Black Robes” (Zi yi 緇衣) chapter
of the Book of Rites, the ruler is the mind or heart (located somatically in
the chest rather than the head), and the people are the body; the ruler’s
physical survival hinges upon the survival of the people.
The people consider the sovereign to be the mind/heart, and the
ruler considers the people to be the body (ti). When the mind is set-
tled, the body is at ease. ... The mind/heart is made complete through
the body and can be harmed through the body; the ruler survives
by means of the people and perishes by means of the people. 58
Just as harm to the child could be felt by the parent, so harm to the
people is felt by the ruler. Rulers, their ministers, and/or the people
can also form one body, as discussed below.
Mencius conceptually both halves and quarters the body into dou-
ble and quadruple ti, which he understands as corpuses of potentiality
latent within one physical frame. Conceptually dividing the human con-
dition into overlapping halves, he observes a “great” or “large body”
(da ti), which he associates with the mind and its ability to think and to
guide the sense faculties; the second is a “small” or “petty body” (xiao
ti), which he associates with the sense faculties only, which cannot think
and can be obfuscated by external things. “Those who follow their great
body become great people,” he writes, “and those who follow their petty
body become petty people.” 59 When asked where these bodies come
from, Mencius replied, “These are what heaven has given me. If one
first stands by what is great, then what is petty cannot usurp that.” 60

of Yue overlap in many ways in this account, for Yue is a body-double of the king that has
emerged from the king’s dream-like condition of mourning austerities.
57 Zuo zhuan, Duke Xiang 30. Legge, Tso chuen, pp. 554, 558. The passage could be read

to mean either that the minister stands at the side of the king or constitutes his side. Medieval
European body metaphors and the body politic are discussed in Jacques Le Goff, “Head or
Heart? The Political Use of Body Metaphors in the Middle Ages,” in Michel Feher, ed., Frag-
ments for a History of the Human Body (New York: Zone Books, 1989) 3, pp. 13–27.
58 Liji zhengyi, “Zi yi,” p. 1650. See also Legge, Li Ki, vol. 28, p. 359. A slightly differ-

ent version of this passage appears in the Guodian Zi yi, which says “the people consider the
ruler to be the heart, and the ruler considers the people to be the body. When the mind is at
fond ease (xin hao 心好), the body will be stable (ti an 體安); when the ruler is at fond ease,
then the people will delight (min yu 民欲). Hence, the mind perishes by the body (xin yi ti fa
心以體廢), and the ruler perishes (wang 亡) by the people.” Jingmenshi bowuguan 荊門市博
物館, Guodian chu mu zhujian 郭店楚墓竹簡 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1998), p. 129. I read fa 法 as
fei 廢, following ibid., fn. 27, p. 132.
59 Mencius 4A.15. See also Lau, Mencius, pp. 238–39. 60 Ibid.

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One human frame, then, has within it these two different somatic pos-
sibilities, either of which might take on a life of its own.
Dividing the body into four, Mencius finds it suffused with the
well-known four moral potentialities of humaneness, rightness, ritual,
and wisdom, which he somatically associates with the “four bodies,”
or four limbs. Employing metaphors of plant roots characteristic of the
ti body in the Odes, and employing language similar to the gen xin, or
“root mind,” of the Annals of Master Lü, Mencius claims that when the
mind is literally rooted (gen 根) in the four moral potentialities, then
this will “spread to the four bodies; the four bodies do not speak, but
they will communicate.” 61 His very disclaimer that the bodies/limbs
do not speak implies that they actually just might: rooted in common
ethical virtues, the four bodies here also take on lives of their own and
develop the ability to communicate, thus becoming simulacra of the en-
tire physical human frame. Mencius elsewhere, in 2A.6, uses the same
language as the Mohists in determining the boundaries of ti bodies: he
counterposes ti with duan, edges, starting points, or incipiencies. The
Mozi does not define incipiency in moral terms, but Mencius associates
the four ti with the well-known four incipiencies of humaneness, right-
ness, ritual, and wisdom. “People have these four incipiencies (si duan),”
he writes, “just as they have the four bodies (si ti, four limbs).” 62 One
physical human frame, then, might have within it multiple ti bodies,
each of which demonstrates a certain autonomy; it does not, however,
have comparable multiple shen bodies, gong bodies, or xing forms.

T i bodies that eat and are eaten

Zilu’s four bodies did not belabor themselves, but through the cour-
tesy of the farmer, he was able to eat. Gong bodies perform agricultural
labor, but they do not taste the fruits of their labors; that is done instead
by the ti body, which eats its fill and becomes pleasantly corpulent.
For it is the ti body that eats – and is eaten. Ti is the term used both for
the human being that eats the sacrificial animal and for the flesh of the
livestock consumed. Gong, qu, and shen bodies are rarely associated with
ordinary food intake: the dysfunctional qu vomits, and hence does not

61 Mencius 7A.21. Lau, Mencius, pp. 270–71.

62 Mencius 2A.6. Lau, Mencius, pp. 66–67. Cf. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, pp. 310 and 499;
Sun Yirang, annot., Mozi xiangu, p. 312. Mencius is otherwise fond of plant metaphors (the
uprooted seedlings of 2A.2 and the vegetation on Ox Mountain in 7A.8, for example), but I
do not see duan as “sprout” in an organic sense, as it is understood in Sarah Allen, The Way
of Water and Sprouts of Virtue (Albany: State U. of New York P., 1997), pp. 87 and 113–14.
I instead understand duan more generally as incipiency.

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consume, and the shen bodies of Bo Yi and Shu Qi were not affected by
their starvation. The ti body eats real food with a real mouth; the xing
form is not usually associated with the mouth but absorbs the energies
of the cosmos at a much subtler level. Xing forms are more likely to be
developed metabolically, to use a modern term, and are associated with
qi, essence, and shen 神, or spirit – elemental components that suffuse
both living beings and the cosmos itself. Characters for qi 氣 and es-
sence 精 both contain the radical for grain – mi 米 – implying that one’s
life energy stems ultimately from the food the body consumes. But the
xing form is rarely associated with the actual consumption of grain or
other foods; eating is a communal ritual activity more closely associ-
ated with the ti body, which might become pleasantly fat through food
consumption. 63 Nonetheless, the xing form can be harmed by excessive
amounts of food or by overly restricting food intake. 64
Rarely subject to the various forms of cultivation imposed upon
the shen body, ti bodies are instead more likely to be nourished (yang
養) or fed. 65 Nourishment can take the form of food, but it can also be
supported by other means. For Mencius, one is what one eats. Noting
how strongly environment and food influence the body, he states that
“where one abides changes one’s qi, and one’s nourishment changes
one’s body 居移氣養移體.” 66 Ti bodies, unlike xing forms, do not readily
reveal their external or internal shapes, dimensions, structures, bound-
aries, or sizes. Conceptually they are more commonly associated with
containment, as they are sometimes conceptualized as containers that
can be filled and expanded from within. 67 The notion of containment
informs Mencius’s statement that the body is full of qi: “Qi,” he writes,
“is that which fills the body (ti). 68 Shen bodies might be suffused with
moral qualities such as inner virtue and might experience emotional
phenomena such as honor and disgrace, but the ti body is more of-

63 See, however, the “Discussion of Heaven” (Tian lun 天論) section of the Xunzi, where

the xing is paralleled with the ear, eye, nose, and mouth. Wang, annot., Xunzi jijie, p. 309;
Knoblock, Xunzi 3, p. 16.
64 Roth, Original Tao, pp. 90–91.

65 But for an uncommon instance of nourishing the shen, see Mencius 6A.13.

66 Mencius 7A.36. See also Lau, Mencius, pp. 280–81.

67 Ames remarks on the container imagery associated with Western concepts of the body.

Ames, “Meaning of Body,” pp. 164–67. Even in the Mawangdui healing texts, which usually
speak of the body as shen, the term ti is used in reference to swellings that protrude outward
from the skin. Mawangdui Han mu boshu, pp. 59 and 85, and Harper, Early Chinese Medical
Literature, pp. 279 and 306, respectively.
68 Mencius 2A.2. Lau, Mencius, pp. 56–57. Yet see the almost verbatim passage where ti is

replaced by shen in Guanzi, “Xin shu xia” 心術下: “Qi is that which fills the shen.” Li Mian,
annot., Guanzi, p. 647. See also Rickett, Guanzi, Vol. 2, p. 59.

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ten filled with food and is not the site of emotional activity. The Great
Learning, for example, remarks how the ti body becomes pleasantly
plump – a desirable condition. Expansion of the mind is paralleled
with enlargement of the physical frame.
Prosperity adorns a house, and inner power adorns one’s own
person (shen). The mind is expanded, and the body (ti) becomes
plump (pang 胖). 69
In this passage, shen is the site of intangible inner power or virtue, but
it is the ti body that becomes fat. Similarly, the Guanzi notes that it is
the ti body that becomes fat or thin. Just as the willingness to accept
remonstrance makes a ruler’s place secure, so
food is what makes the body (ti) fat. If rulers do not like remon-
strance, they will not be secure; if someone does not like food,
they will not become fat. Hence it is said, “Those who do not like
food will not have fat bodies (ti).” 70
What grows fat can also be starved. Mencius notes that heaven, when
it readies people for great responsibilities, toughens them by starving
their ti bodies. 71
Ti bodies are elsewhere associated with food, the mouth, and the
containment of food. The Mawangdui medical texts usually employ
the term shen when discussing bodily phenomena, but when eating and
drinking are discussed, ti is used. The Mawangdui Ten Questions states
that “drink and food fill the body 飲食實體.” 72 Associations between
oral ingestion and the ti body are also evidenced in Mencius’s dispar-
aging remarks about someone who selfishly hoards food: such a person
merely “nourishes mouth and body 養口體” as opposed to nourishing
their intentionality (zhi 志). 73 In contrast, shen bodies are rarely associ-
ated with the mouth.
Ti bodies experience sense perceptions and are associated with
both touch and taste. When both Xunzi and Mencius discuss how the
physical body senses the world through the faculties of sight, sound,

69 Great Learning 6.4.

70 Li Mian, Guanzi, “Xingshijie” 形勢解, p. 945. See also W. Allyn Rickett, Guanzi: Po-
litical, Economic, and Philosophical Essays from China, vol. 1 (Princeton: Princeton U. P.,
1985), p. 75.
71 Mencius 6B.15; Lau, Mencius, pp. 260–62. The passage adds that heaven also empties

and exhausts their shen bodies.

72 Mawangdui Han mu boshu 4, p. 145; Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature, p. 387.

But note also that it is the shen that becomes warm after alcohol is drunk. Ibid., pp. 64 and
287, respectively.
73 Mencius 4A.19; Lau, Mencius, pp. 152–53.

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smell, taste, and touch, they both use the term ti – not shen or xing – as
the experiencer of touch. Describing the sense faculties and their ca-
pacity for satiety, for example, Mencius rhetorically asks King Xuan
of Qi whether his food is not sufficient for his mouth and his clothes
are not sufficient for his ti body. 74 In Xunzi’s well-known discourse
on ritual as nourishment, it is the ti body that is nourished. Describ-
ing how the senses are nourished by the material goods that are the
stuff of ritual praxis, Xunzi describes how the mouth is nourished by
“grass- and grain-fed animals, rice and millet, and the five flavors all
balanced and seasoned”; the body (ti), for its part, is nourished by
cushions, bolsters, and mats. 75 The Annals of Master Lü also associates
nourishing the body with comfortable surroundings and with eating
and drinking: “There are five ways (dao) of nourishment. To have well-
appointed halls and chambers, to have peaceful sleeping arrangements,
to moderate one’s drink and one’s food is the way to nourish the body
(ti).” 76 Like the Mencius and Xunzi, this text places the nourishment of
the body within the context of the nourishment of the eyes, ears, mouth,
and intentionality.
Animal bodies are also usually understood as ti bodies rather than
shen or gong bodies. A horse’s body appears in Zhuangzi’s “Autumn
Floods,” where it is a metaphor for the smallness of human endeavor. 77
Animals commonly eaten at ritual functions are usually referred to as
ti bodies. According to the Ceremonial and Ritual, animal bodies have
left and right sides, and hence they mirror the shape of the human ti
body; the text provides detailed instructions for butchering them into
segments. 78 According to the Rites of Zhou, inspecting, selecting, and
preparing the bodies of animal victims for sacrificial offerings was the
responsibility of the inner chefs (nei yong 內饔) and outer chefs (wai
yong 外饔), who oversaw food preparation for rituals inside and out-
side of the royal palace, respectively. 79 Rules for presenting whole
and cut-up animal ti at rituals are debated in the Zuo zhuan. 80 At ritual

74 Mencius 1A.7; Lau, Mencius, pp. 18–19.

75 Wang, annot., Xunzi jijie, “Li lun” 禮論, pp. 346–47. See also Knoblock, Xunzi 3, p. 55.
76 Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, “Xiao xing” 孝行, pp. 304–5.

77 Guo, annot., Zhuangzi jishi, p. 564; Mair, Wandering on the Way, p. 154.

78 Hu, annot., Yili zhengyi, “You si” 有司, pp. 2340–43. See also Steele, I-li vol. 2, pp. 183–

84. On the taxonomy of animals used in rituals, see Roel Sterckx, The Animal and the Daemon
in Early China (Albany: State U. of New York P., 2002), pp. 56–61.
79 Sun, annot., Zhou li zhengyi, “Nei yong” and “Wai yong,” pp. 268–69 and p. 277, re-

spectively.
80 Zuo zhuan, Duke Xuan 宣 16. Legge, Tso chuen, pp. 330–31.

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performances that nourish the human ti body (and the body politic),
animal ti bodies are dismembered, cooked, and presented in bronze
vessels, and are then consumed by and absorbed into the ti bodies of
human sacrificers. 81
Incorporating multiple bodies through ritual food exchange might
be understood in the light of Bruce Knauft’s studies of the human
body in Melanesia. Exploring how a Melanesian person is considered
to be but one part of a larger web of social and biological exchange,
Knauft demonstrates how in Melanesian traditions, the collectively
constituted body begins at conception; the body of the growing child
is slowly formed from food provided by relatives, who acquire food
through their own labor and by labor exchange with others who also
produce food. All who contribute food and/or labor to the creation of
the physical frame of the child then share in the child’s physical being.
Food consumption connects a human being to others, to the land, and
to the spirit world. Knauft writes,
The linkage between food and exchange in Melanesia informs im-
ages of the body in a number of different contexts. Perhaps most
basically, those whose food you consume are those whose labor,
land, and essence constitute your own being. Most Melanesians
concretely appreciate the physical energy used in subsistence cul-
tivation, and the way this is converted into bodily substance to
maintain health and well-being. . . . This makes a gift of food, in
a fundamental way, a gift of oneself. 82
Thus in Melanesia, as Mencius would say, you are what you eat;
moreover, you are also consubstantial with all the other people who
have labored to provide you with food. (Zilu’s ignorance of this, mani-
fested in his idle bodies or limbs, earned him the farmer’s scorn.) In
China, the ti body is incorporated with the bodies of one’s ancestors
(one is their “inherited body”), agricultural products (the ti bodies of
livestock), and with other members of one’s family and state. Connec-
tions between them are outlined in the Book of Odes in such verses as
“Thick Caltrops” (Mao. no. 209), which describes the cosmogonic sig-

81 When the human body is cannibalized and one human ti body becomes absorbed into

another, however, the cannibalized person is simply called rou 肉, or flesh, not ti. In the An-
nals of Master Lü, for example, when the Di people ate all of Duke Yi except his liver, he
was simply called flesh. Knoblock and Riegel, Annals of Lü Buwei, “Zhong lian” 忠廉, pp.
249–50. In the succeeding chapter, “Dang wu” 當務, is a bizarre account of two people who
attacked and ate one another until both died; they, too, are simply referred to as flesh and
not ti. Ibid., p. 252.
82 Bruce M. Knauft, “Bodily Images in Melanesia: Cultural Substances and Natural Meta-

phors,” in Feher, ed., Fragments 3, p. 223.

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 ti body

nificance of communal agricultural labors and the commensal ritual

meals of thanksgiving to ancestral spirits. 83
The outermost boundaries of the ti body are difficult to define, for
many people might inhabit “one body” (yi ti) or a “common body” (tong
ti 同體). Just as one physical human frame might contain four bodies or
limbs, so might multiple people occupy one ti body. Such claims are
rarely if ever made for xing, shen, or gong bodies, whose boundaries are
far more circumscribed. The scope of the “one body” is sometimes so
large that it incorporates heaven and earth itself. Human members of
one body do not necessarily share kin relations, although they often
inhabit the same state.
Some people who are incorporated into one body do share kin or
marriage relations, as outlined in the “Mourning Attire” chapter of the
Ceremonial and Ritual. There, a father and the son who is appointed his
successor are described as being of “one body.” 84 That common body
is associated with the patriline, for should the father divorce the son’s
mother, the son does not wear mourning for her because he is of one
body with the father and subsequently does not wear mourning for
his “personal relatives” (si qin 私 親), that is, for his divorced mother.
Brothers of the same generation are also of one body: one wears mourn-
ing for paternal uncles, for they are of “one body” with one’s father. 85
Provided that husband and wife remain married, they still form one
body. All members of the nuclear family, in fact, constitute one body
that is conceptually halved or paired (the husband and wife) and quar-
tered (the siblings).
Father and child are one body, husband and wife are one body, and
elder and younger siblings are one body. Now father and child are
as head and feet; husband and wives are as two halves conjoined;
elder and younger siblings are as the four limbs (si ti). 86
A wife may be one with the husband, but a concubine is not, for “a con-
cubine is not of the body of her lord.” 87 According to the Ceremonial and

83 Legge, She king, pp. 368–73. See also Martin Kern, “Shi jing Songs as Performance Texts:

A Case Study of ‘Chu ci’ (Thorny Caltrop),” Early China 25 (2000), pp. 49–111. For the ritual
significance of food, see Gilles Boileau, “Some Ritual Elaborations on Cooking and Sacrifice
in Late Zhou and Western Han Texts,” Early China 23–24 (1998–99), pp. 89–123; Terry F.
Kleeman, “Licentious Cults and Bloody Victuals: Sacrifice, Reciprocity, and Violence in Tra-
ditional China,” AM 3d ser. 7.1 (1994), pp. 185–211; Roel Sterckx, ed., Of Tripod and Palate:
Food, Politics, and Religion in Traditional China (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).
84 Hu, annot., Yili zheng yi, “Sang fu,” p. 1409. See also Steele, I-li, vol. 2, p. 17.

85 Ibid. 86 Ibid.

87 Hu, annot., Yili zhengyi, “Sang fu,” pp. 1445 and also 1454. See also Steele, I-li, vol. 2,

pp. 22 and 24.

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Ritual, then, marriage allows the official wife to participate in the body
of her husband’s patriline; divorce dissolves those ties, and the status
of concubine is insufficient to permit such incorporation. Otherwise,
however, all other members of this body are related by blood.
References to somatic connections between blood relatives, how-
ever, actually occur less often than references to connections between
nonkin relations within the body politic. It has already been noted
above that the bodies of rulers and ministers are paired doubles and
that their limbs and organs overlap. Moreover, rulers, ministers, the
state, and the people might all variously participate within one body.
The Gongyang zhuan tersely asserts that “the state and the ruler are one
body 國君一體也,” rhetorically asking, as if by way of explanation, “How
are the state and the ruler as one body? It is because the ruler of the
state considers the state as the body.” 88 Other texts elaborate on the
relationship between rulers and their subjects: rulers are one part of the
body; ministers or subjects, another. In the Guanzi, rulers and ministers
have different purviews that are described somatically. The ruler gov-
erns through subtlety and appears to neither see nor hear, instead using
ministers to act as ears and eyes; both sides have different functions,
but they nonetheless tally together as one body (yi ti). 89 Moreover, the
Guanzi continues, the early kings, who harkened to what the people
said and acted in accord with them, were gifted at being of one body
(yi ti) with the people and governing them with a light hand. 90
Officials who did not embody 不體 ritual courted death. In the Zuo
zhuan, Confucius’s disciple Zigong, who was noted for keenly observing
court rituals, predicts the imminent demise of two officials whom he
observes do not understand how “ritual (li) is the body (ti) of dying and
living, of surviving and perishing. 91 Zigong’s sanctimonious predictions
are parodied, however, in the Zhuangzi, which ridicules those who do
not see that “dying and living, and surviving and perishing” are actu-
ally just “one body.” 92 Zhuangzi’s ti body is boundless, and its open-
ness is demonstrated at the funeral of the recently deceased Mulberry
88 Wang Jianwen 王健文 discusses somatic associations between rulers and their states, fo-

cusing particularly on the Gongyang zhuan 公羊傳 and Yili. See his “Guo jun yi ti” 國君一體,
in Yang, ed., Qilun ji shenti guan, pp. 227–60.
89 Li, annot., Guanzi, “Junchen shang” 君臣上 , p. 514. See also Rickett, Guanzi, Vol. 1,

pp. 404–5.
90 Li, annot., Guanzi, “Junchen shang,” p. 517. See also Rickett, Guanzi, Vol. 1, p. 410.

91 Zuo zhuan, Duke Ding 15; Legge, Tso chuen, pp. 790–791.

92 Guo Qingfan, annot., Zhuangzi jishi, “Da zong shi” 大宗師, p. 258. Mair, Wandering on

the Way, p. 57. Elsewhere in the Zhuangzi, Confucius instructs Ran Qiu on the “one body”
that encompasses both life and death. Guo, Zhuangzi jishi, “Zhi bei you” 知北遊 , p. 763. See
also Mair, Wandering on the Way, p. 221.

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 ti body

Door (Sang hu 桑戶), a character who, as his name indicates, is liminally

positioned to see through ordinary boundaries. When Zigong arrives
at the funeral, he is scandalized to find Door’s mourners gleefully sing-
ing over his corpse and claiming that Door had returned to the “real”
(zhen 真). “Might I ask,” says Zigong, “whether singing right over the
corpse can be considered ritual?” 93 The friends respond by laughing
at Zigong’s ignorance about the true meaning (or meaninglessness) of
ritual. Zigong returns to Confucius and asks who these people might
be who treat their forms (xing) as if they were something external to
themselves. Confucius explains that “they inhabit a common body (tong
ti 同體), forget about their livers and spleens, and cast away their eyes
and ears.” 94 Door’s friends turn the superficial uniqueness of discrete
forms inside out, embracing instead the essential commonality of their
ti body. Seeing through forms, they dispense with ordinary eyesight.
The Zigong of the Zuo is an astute observer of the body of ritual and
the bounds between life and death, but in the Zhuangzi he is blind to
the common ti body that incorporates them all.
Sages, too, could form one body with all things, claimed Zhuangzi.
They so thoroughly interweave themselves into the world that they form
one body with all around them 周盡一體, even without understanding
how that might be so – such was simply their natures. 95 Zhuangzi’s ex-
pansive vision of the profound connections and commonalities sages
share with others, however, did not appeal to everyone. Mencius, for
example, when asked whether some of Confucius’s disciples formed
“one body” with the master, refused even to entertain the question.
Mencius allowed that one human frame might potentially have a large
and small ti body or even four incipient bodies of moral conduct, but
he was uncomfortable with the notion that several human beings could
participate in a common ti body – at least, when one of the parties to
the body was Confucius. In Mencius 2A.2, the thinker Gongsun Chou
asks whether some of Confucius’s disciples were not of “one body” (yi
ti) or “replete in the body” with him. Gongsun asks Mencius,
I once heard it said that Zixia, Ziyou, and Zizhang were of one
body with the sage 聖人之一體; Ran Niu, Minzi, and Yan Yuan

93 Guo, annot., Zhuangzi jishi, “Da zong shi,” p. 267. See also Mair, Wandering on the

Way, pp. 59–61.

94 Ibid. Confucius’s disciple Yan Hui, however, acquitted himself more admirably in the

Zhuangzi, and by sitting in forgetfulness, forgot ritual and dropped off his ti body. Guo, annot.,
Zhuangzi jishi, “Da zong shi,” p. 284. See also Mair, Wandering on the Way, p. 64.
95 Guo Qingfan, annot., Zhuangzi jishi, “Ze yang” 則陽, p. 880. See also Mair, Wander-

ing on the Way, p. 255.

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[Yan Hui] were replete in this body but subtly so 具體而微. Where
do you stand on this?
Mencius replied, “Let us set this aside.” 96
Mencius, by refusing to respond to these questions, demonstrates his
discomfort with the notion that any of the six disciples participated in
Confucius’s ti body. The mere fact that Mencius’s refusal is recorded
suggests that he considered the questions sufficiently threatening to
his own understanding of Confucius’s perceived uniqueness that they
merited rebuttal.
The specific distinctions Gongsun Chou makes between the two
groups of disciples are not clear. What qualities might Zixia, Ziyou,
and Zizhang have that they might be “of one body” with the sage? The
three of them appear far less frequently in the Analects than some of
the more famous disciples. But they dominate Book 19, appearing in
sixteen of the twenty-five verses of that book, although competition
between them is palpable. 97 Competition aside, however, the fact that
they dominate this chapter suggests that at some point in the compila-
tion of the Analects, they were perceived as sharing a common legacy
from their teacher. That legacy was perhaps what informed Gongsun’s
question – which is nonetheless unusual, as I know of no other cases
in early received texts where anyone posits that a teacher and disciple
might be of one body.
Does being “of one body” with Confucius differ, if at all, from be-
ing “replete in this body but subtly so” (ju ti er wei), as Ran Niu, Minzi,
and Yan Hui were said to be? Did one group of disciples embody
Confucius more thoroughly? Or did they merely embody sagehood in
general? What ti means in this passage is problematic, and commen-
taries offer little insight. 98 Comparisons with a similar expression in
the “Canons” and “Explanations of the Canons” in the Mozi, however,
might shed light on the meaning of ju ti er wei 具體而微 in the Mencius.
The passage qi ti ju ran 其體具然 , literally, “the body is complete in it,”
appears in Mozi’s discussions optics, mirrors, and reflections. 99 The
96 Mencius 2A.2. Lau, Mencius, pp. 58–59.
97 In that chapter, Zixia appears in verses 3–13; Ziyou, in 12, 14, and 15; Zizhang, 1–3 and
15–16. For an interpretation of the structure of this chapter, see E. Bruce Brooks and Taeko
Brooks, The Original Analects (Columbia U. P., 1998), pp. 244–45. Ziyou says of “my friend
Zhang” that Zizhang “cannot yet be considered humane” (ren; 19.15); and when Ziyou claims
that Zixia’s disciples are “lacking in fundamentals,” Zixia retorts that Ziyou is “mistaken” about
“the Way of the noble person” (19.12).
98 Lau understands this to mean that the first three disciples had “one aspect of the sage”

whereas the second three “were replicas of the sage in miniature.” Lau, Mencius, p. 59.
99 For a discussion of Mohist optics and a translation of the relevant passages from the

“Canons” and “Explanations,” see Graham, Later Mohist Logic, 372–87 ff.

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Mohists were aware that the shape, size, and inversion of reflections
in mirrored surfaces depended upon such criteria as the concavity of
the mirror and the distance and angle that obtained between the object
(that is, the body or the “unit,” following Graham) being reflected and
the mirror itself. A mirror reflects everything in its range; by looking
into it at different angles, one can see that the reflections in it greatly
exceed the small surface of the mirror’s plane. Hence, large people can
look into a mirror that is much smaller than a person’s own body, and
as the Mohists say, “their body (ti) will be completely there in it (qi ti
ju ran), mirrored in its parts (fen).” 100 That is, one would not be able to
see a whole body reflected at once in a mirror that is only about eight
inches round, but by looking into it at various angles to the body, one
could see all its parts mirrored therein.
Perhaps Gongsun Chou was trying to make an analogous point
about the relationship between Confucius and his disciples: looking at
Ran Niu, Minzi, or Yan Hui at different angles, so to speak, one could
see all of Confucius somehow mirrored there, if only subtly or faintly.
One cannot definitively know whether Gongsun Chou’s questions were
shaped by Mohist discussions on optics and semblance, but Mohists
and followers of Mencius shared a common discourse. Both the Mozi
and Mencius record direct meetings between the two groups. 101 The Mozi
records that disciples of Zixia – the very disciple who was said above
to be of “one body” with the master – met directly with Mozi himself,
and the Mencius describes face-to-face encounters between Mencius
and the followers of Mozi. 102 At any rate, Mencius in the end rejects
the notion that anyone could be of one body with Confucius, and he
concludes that “from the birth of the people until now, there has never
been another Confucius.” 103 The boundaries of Confucius’s body, for
Mencius at least, are closed to others.

100 Following the punctuation of the Daozang 道 藏 edition of the text in Graham, Early

Mohist Logic, pp. 379 and 509. Cf. Sun, annot., Mozi xiangu, p. 366.
101 Most of the terms found elsewhere in Mencius 2A.2 concerning degrees of likeness and

similitude – ti 體, tong 同, lei 類 , and yi 異 – are defined also in the “Canons” and “Explana-
tions of the Canons” chapters of the Mozi.
102 According to the Mozi, Zixia’s student was humiliated on this occasion, as recorded in

Mozi 46, “Geng Zhu” 耕 柱, which immediately follows the “Canons” chapters. See also Mei,
Works of Motse, p. 215. Zizhang, Zixia, and Ziyou are derided by Xunzi in his “Against the
Twelve Masters.” Knoblock, Xunzi 1, pp. 219–20. For the meeting with Zixia’s disciples, see
Sun, annot., Mozi xiangu, “Geng Zhu,” pp. 428–29. Mencius humiliated a Mohist in Mencius
3A.5 and derides Mozi in 3B.9, lamenting that Mozi’s ideas are wildly popular everywhere.
103 Mencius 2A.2. Lau, Mencius, pp. 60–61. Mencius 3A.4 is also uncomfortable with You

Ruo’s perceived semblance to Confucius; some of the surviving disciples wanted to serve him
as if he were the master.

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Such delimitations of the ti body, however, are very unusual, and

that fact alone helps Mencius make that much more dramatically his
point about the singularity of Confucius. In most other instances, ti de-
notes a corpus of indefinite boundaries that might encompass multiple
people. The ti body is, as Sivin defined it above, that which “refers to
the concrete physical body, its limbs, or the physical form generally.”
But one can see from the discussion above that it also extends beyond
the concrete physical body and extends far beyond the physical frame
of one human being. It exists at many levels, both concrete and con-
ceptual, and operates according to its own scales of multiplicity and
unity. It does not lose its wholeness when it is fragmented: and the
boundaries of the field of a ti body can include many people (and even
animals) at once, yet each element of the ti retains its own particular
focus. Its circumference is everywhere, but its center is everywhere as
well. A ti can be one person, one family, and one body politic of an
entire state. Understood in its broadest sense, ti is a wholeness that can
encompass life and death and heaven and earth, and it is a corpus of
such scale that it can incorporate all under heaven. Thus the logician
Hui Shi could say that “if there is broad concern (ai) for the ten thou-
sand things, heaven and earth are one body.” 104 This encompassing
commonality is a wholeness rarely if ever expressed by other terms
for body in early received texts. Thus Sivin’s immortals might ti the
Dao – but they could not shen the Dao, xing the Dao, gong the Dao, and
certainly not qu the Dao – and could thus embody the cosmos within
themselves, and embody themselves within the cosmos.

104 Guo, annot., Zhuangzi jishi, “Tian xia” 天下, p. 1102. See also Mair, Wandering on the

Way, p. 344.

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