Dao & Jian go far beyond their function as a weapon. There is some serious scholarship out there on the Dao and Jian - footnotes are rich - https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/10.781 ... 9b2d408cd7“Well, how'd you become king, then?” Swords in Early Medieval ChinaAuthor(s): Robert Joe Cutter
Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Vol. 132, No. 4 (October-December
2012), pp. 523-538
Published by: American Oriental Society
Stable URL:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7817/ja ... 132.4.0523From pp. 526 -528
Ancient and fugitive heirlooms like the nine tripod cauldrons and the Yellow River chart
were apotheoses of early Chinese royal regalia. But less shadowy objects, more akin to
those possessed by royalty even now, were also symbols of power and authority. Among
these were silk cords (zushou 組綬) and jade ornaments (pei 佩) worn at the waist, seals
(xi) 璽), sabers (dao 刀), and swords (jian 劍). 13 The possession of these symbolic objects was
not limited to the Zhou kings or to the emperors of imperial China. Subordinate rulers and
ministers of state also possessed such signs of status, although theirs differed in number and
style from those of the ruler. 14 The types of regalia remained rather consistent over time,
with specific objects varying in design. 15
Sabers and swords, many bearing names, are among the earliest royal possessions
recorded in old texts. In addition to a Yellow River chart, one of the other items on display at
the funeral of King Cheng was a red knife or saber. 16 The Han dynasty commentator Zheng
Xuan 鄭玄 (127–200) thought that this must have been an artifact from the time of conquest
of the last ruler of the Shang dynasty circa 1045 b.c.e. by King Cheng’s father King Wu 武
王 (r. 1049/45–1043 b.c.e.). 17 Later, the Yue jue shu 越絕書 says that King Goujian 句踐
(r. 496–465 b.c.e.) of Yue possessed five precious swords (bao jian 寶劍) that were known
throughout the subcelestial realm. 18 In this anecdote the swords are evaluated by the sword
connoisseur Xue Zhu 薛燭, who dismissively pronounces the first ones shown to him as
“not precious swords.” The sword named Chunjun 純鈞, however, was a different matter.
The king tells Xue that someone has appraised this sword as worth two districts with markets,
a thousand fine horses, and two towns of a thousand households each and asks if that is appropriate.
Xue Zhu replied, “No. At the time they made this sword, the mountain Chijin split open and
yielded tin; the creek Ruoye dried up and yielded copper.
it. 22 Ouye relied on his natural acuity and genius, expended all of his skill and artistry, and made
three swords of the larger type and two of the smaller. The first was called Zhanlu, the second
was called Chunjun, the third was called Shengxie, the fourth was called Yuchang, and the fifth
was called Juque. . . . Now the mountain Chijin is already sealed, Ruoye creek is too deep to
fathom, the many deities do not descend, and as for Master Ouye, he is dead. Even if you had a
city-full of gold and pearls and jade enough to stay the Yellow River, you still could not obtain
this singular object. Two districts with markets, a thousand fine horses, two towns of a thousand
households each—how are these worth mentioning?
薛燭對曰：「不可。當造此劍之時赤堇之山破而出錫，若耶之溪涸而出銅，雨師掃灑，
雷公擊橐，蛟龍捧鑪，天帝裝炭；太一下觀，天精下之。歐冶乃因天之精神，悉其伎
巧，造為大刑三、小刑二：一曰湛盧，二曰純鈞，三曰勝邪，四曰魚腸，五曰巨闕⋯今赤
堇之山已合，若耶溪深而不測．群神不下，歐冶子即死．雖復傾城量金，珠玉竭河，猶
不能得此一物，有市之鄉二、駿馬千疋、千戶之都二，何足言哉！23
This description depicts the creation of the Chunjun sword as an act requiring a combination of consummate human skill
and divine intervention, a trope common to early accounts of the manufacture of notable blades.
In fact, Yue really was known for its fine swords. 24 A stunning bronze sword of complex structure, with an inscription explicitly identifying King
Goujian as its owner, was excavated from a Chu 楚 tomb near Jiangling 江陵 in Hubei province in 1965, and is one of the chief treasures of the Hubei Provincial Museum. 25
19 Rain Master swept and sprinkled, the Lord of Thunder pumped the bellows;
20 a jiao dragon held the furnace, the Celestial Thearch stoked it with charcoal;
Great Unity descended to watch,21 the celestial essence came down to
13. On the importance of swords in the ancient southern kingdoms of Wu 吳 and Yue 越, see Chapin, “Toward
the Study of the Sword as Dynastic Talisman,” 27; Milburn, “The Weapons of Kings,” 423–37. Ching (“Son of
Heaven,” 3, 25) also mentions swords and seals as regalia items. On swords as regalia in Europe, see the beautiful
catalogue of the 2011 exhibit of swords at the Cluny Museum: L’Épée: Usages, mythes et symboles, ed. Almudena
Blasco et al. (Paris: Grandpalais, 2011), 53–83.
14. In 109 b.c.e., for example, after the king of Dian 滇 surrendered to Han forces, Emperor Wu of Han 漢武帝
(r. 140–87 b.c.e.) had seals symbolizing his kingship presented to him; Sima Qian 司馬遷 (ca. 145–ca. 86 b.c.e.),
Shi ji 史記 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1959), 116.2997. See also Burton Watson, tr., Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, rev. ed. (Hong Kong: The Chinese Univ. of Hong Kong Research Centre for Translation and
Columbia Univ. Press, 1993), 258. For a photograph of a seal of the king of Dian from about that time, see Michèle
Pirazzoli–t’Serstevens, The Han Dynasty, tr. Janet Seligman (New York: Rizzoli, 1982), 86.
15. Du You 杜佑 (734–812), Tong dian 通典, ed. Wang Wenjin 王文錦 et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1988),
63.1751–70.
16. This seems likely to have been a weapon made of copper. See Donald B. Wagner, Iron & Steel in Ancient
China, rev. ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996), 99. See also Chapin, “Toward the Study of the Sword as Dynastic Talisman,” 39–40; Ching, “Son of Heaven,” 20.
17. Shang shu zheng yi, 18.11b, 12b.
18. A still later story in the Shi yi ji 拾遺記, a work attributed to Wang Jia 王嘉 (d. before 393 c.e.), says Goujian had eight swords made; Wang Zinian Shi yi ji 王子年拾遺記, in Han Wei congshu, 732. For translations of the
Shi yi ji entry, see Lawrence Chapin Foster, “The Shih–i chi and Its Relationship to the Genre Known as Chih–kuai
hsiao–shuo” (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Washington, 1974), 303; Chapin, “Toward the Study of the Sword as Dynastic
Talisman,” 2–5 (and 49–50 on the discrepancy in numbers). On the Shi yi ji, see Robert Ford Campany, Strange
Writing: Anomaly Accounts in Early Medieval China (Albany: State Univ. of New York Press, 1996), 64–67.
19. Both of these places were south of Shaoxing 紹興 in modern Zhejiang province. Tin and copper, of course,
are the constituent elements of bronze.
20. These deities appear together, for example, in the poem “Yuan you” 遠遊 [Far Roaming] of the Chu ci 楚
辭, where we read, in Paul W. Kroll’s translation, “On the left the Rain Master was bid to attend me on the path—/
To the right the Lord of Thunder served as my paladin” (Paul W. Kroll, “On ‘Far Roaming,’” JAOS 16 [1996], 662).
See Hong Xingzu 洪興祖 (1090–1155), ed., Chu ci bu zhu 楚辭補注, 5.8b, in Sbby.
21. Celestial Thearch (Tiandi 天帝) appears in a variety of texts from different periods as a supreme god resident
in the heavens. Great Unity (Taiyi 太一) here refers to the “supreme stellar deity . . . who resides in the large reddish
im realy looking forward to mext week 
