The Document on Rain (Yushu 雨書): Weather and Prognostication in Early China

Abstract

The Document on Rain (Yushu 雨書) is a short manuscript that forms part of the Beijing University collection of Han slips. This text, divided into two sections, has thus far garnered little scholarly attention. However, it presents to us an unusual example of a daybook (rishu 日書)-type manuscript, one which is primarily concerned with the weather. The Document on Rain, while sharing many characteristics of excavated daybooks, is unusual in its treatment of humans. Rather than providing advice on whether or not one should undertake activity on a certain day or engaging in the discourse about whether or not humans can manipulate the weather, the Document on Rain represents an understanding of the weather as a phenomenon that cannot be manipulated by humans, but one which can, perhaps, be understood. The Document on Rain integrates practices of prognostication based on calendrical and sexagenary cycles with theories about rain and its relationship to the symbolic characteristics of the twenty-eight lodges (ershiba xiu 二十八宿). This article analyses some of the predictive methods in the text and situates it within a longer tradition of meteoromantic practices.