Fengshan Ritual

CORE DEFINITION

Fengshan (shàn) is a classical sacrificial ritual in which an emperor, having received the Mandate of Heaven, offers sacrifices. Because Fuxi, the first of the Three Sovereigns, ruled the world with the virtue of wood and was revered as the common lord of all under heaven, his sacred site was Mount Tai, and as wood corresponds to the east, he was also called the Green Emperor. Later generations refer to the pinnacle as 'Mount Tai and the Big Dipper,' which originates from Mount Tai symbolizing the common lord of the world, the first of the Three Sovereigns, the Green Emperor Fuxi, the first of the Five Emperors (Green, Flame, Yellow, White, Black). Emperors who believed their achievements would last for ages often performed the Fengshan ritual to worship and report their merits to Fuxi, thereby strengthening the mandate inscribed on the imperial seal: 'Receiving the Mandate of Heaven, may it be long and prosperous.' This ritual continued into the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, when Confucian scholars of Qi and Lu considered Mount Tai the highest mountain in the world, and the highest ruler on earth should go to this highest mountain to worship the supreme deity; Mount Tai was the boundary between Qi and Lu. Later, the ritual of worshipping Mount Tai in Qi and Lu expanded into the imperial sacrificial ceremony of the unified empire, named 'Fengshan.' In the term Fengshan, 'Feng' means sacrificing to Heaven, and 'Shan' means sacrificing to Earth. The ritual of Fengshan first appears in the 'Fengshan Chapter' of the Guanzi, but this chapter is now lost. According to the 'Fengshan Book' in the Records of the Grand Historian, Guan Zhong discussed Fengshan: there were 72 generations of emperors who performed Fengshan at Mount Tai and Liangfu, and Guan Zhong himself remembered twelve. From the Wuhuai clan to King Cheng of Zhou, all performed the Fengshan ceremony after receiving the Mandate.