Bigu () is a Daoist fasting technique associated with achieving xian "transcendence; immortality". Grain avoidance is related to multifaceted Chinese cultural beliefs. For instance, bigu fasting was the common medical cure for expelling the sanshi "Three Corpses", the malevolent, grain-eating spirits that live in the human body (along with the hun and po souls), report their host's sins to heaven every 60 days, and carry out punishments of sickness and early death.
Avoiding "grains" has been diversely interpreted to mean not eating particular foodstuffs (food grain, cereal, the Five Grains, wugu, or staple food), or not eating any food (inedia). In the historical context of traditional Chinese culture within which the concept of bigu developed, there was great symbolic importance connected with the five grains and their importance in sustaining human life, exemplified in various myths and legends from ancient China and throughout subsequent history. The concept of bigu developed in reaction to this tradition, and within the context of Daoist philosophy.
Terminology The Chinese word bigu compounds bi "ruler; monarch; avoid; ward off; keep away" and gu or "cereal; grain; () millet". The bi meaning in bigu is a variant Chinese character for bi "avoid; shun; evade; keep away" (e.g., bixie or "ward off evil spirits; talisman; amulet"). The alternate pronunciation of pi "open up; develop; refute; eliminate" is a variant character for . The complex 14-stroke traditional Chinese character gu "grain" has a 7-stroke simplified Chinese character gu "valley; gorge." Although a few Chinese dictionariesE.g., , . gloss the pronunciation of bigu as pigu, the definitive Hanyu Da Cidian (1997) gives bigu.
English lexicographic translations of bigu are compared in this table. Chinese-English Dictionary Definition of / Giles "to give up eating the five cereals, with a view to immortality. Also, to refuse food, -- and starve" Mathews "to abstain from cereals in order to attain to immortality; to starve" Liang & Chang "to avoid eating cereals in order to obtain immortality" Lin "stop even vegetarian food, as a way of becoming Taoist immortal" DeFrancis "avoid eating cereals in order to gain immortality" Kleeman & Yu "refuse to eat grain"
Catherine Despeux lists synonyms for bigu "abstention from cereals": duangu "stopping cereals" (with duan "cut off; sever; break; give up"), juegu "discontinuing cereals" (jue "cut off; sever; refuse; reject"), quegu "refraining from cereals" (que "retreat; decline; reject; refuse"), and xiuliang "stopping grains" (with xiu "repair; trim; prune' cultivate" and liang "grain; food").
Juegu, unlike these other alternative expressions, had meanings besides Daoist dietary practices. For instance, the (c. 139 BCE) Huainanzi uses juegu in a traditional saying:Tr. . "Now, rejecting study because those who study have faults is like taking one instance of choking to refuse grain and not eat or taking one problem with stumbling to stop walking and not go [anywhere]." About one century later, Liu Xiang's Shuoyuan "Garden of Stories" rephrases this simile about choking once and discontinuing grains.
Agricultural mythology
Chinese folklore and mythology associated several divinities with agriculture and grains. Suiren "Firelighting Person" was a three-eyed sage who discovered how to make fire and invented cooking. This sui means "flint; bow drill; burning mirror". Shennong "Farmer God", also known as Wuguxiandi "Emperor of the Five Grains", taught humans agricultural techniques and herbal medicine. Shennong is specifically credited with teaching humans to cultivate and eat the five grains. The list of which grains were counted varied, but the various lists generally include the leguminous soybean, according to Lihui Yang. The (139 BCE) Huainanzi describes Shennong transforming human society from hunter-gatherer to agriculture. In ancient times, the people fed on herbaceous plants and drank [only] water, picked fruit from shrubs and trees and ate the meat of oysters and clams. They frequently suffered tribulations from feverish maladies and injurious poisons. Consequently, the Divine Farmer first taught the people to plant and cultivate the five grains. He evaluated the suitability of the land, [noting] whether it was dry or wet, fertile or barren, high or low. He tried the taste and flavor of the one hundred plants and the sweetness or bitterness of the streams and springs, issuing directives so the people would know what to avoid and what to accept. At the time [he was doing this], he suffered poisoning [as many as] seventy times a day. (19)Tr. . Houji "Lord Millet" is the god or goddess of agriculture and ancestor of the Zhou people. The Shijing poem Shengmin "Birth of the [Zhou] People" praises Houji for inventing both agriculture and sacrifices. Hou Tu "Lord Earth" was the god or goddess deity of the soil, and supposedly the progenitor of the giant Kua Fu. Worshipped at sheji altars.
While traditional Chinese mythology depicted cooking and agriculture as key elements of civilization, the Daoists created a "counter-narrative" to justify the idea of grain avoidance. For example, the Confucianist Xunzi and Legalist Hanfeizi describe Suiren as cultural folk hero. In the earliest times ... the people lived on fruit, berries, mussels, and clams – things that sometimes became so rank and fetid that they hurt people's stomachs, and many became sick. Then a sage appeared who created the boring of wood to produce fire so as to transform the rank and putrid foods. The people were so delighted by this that they made him ruler of the world and called him the Fire-Drill Man (Suiren ). (Hanfeizi 49)Tr. . In contrast, the Zhuangzi "Mending Nature" chapter mentions Suiren first in a list of mythic sage-rulers – Fu Xi, Shennong, Yellow Emperor, Tang of Shang, and Yu the Great, traditionally credited with advancing civilization – but depicts them as villains who began the destruction of the primal harmony of the Dao. Campany calls this "the decline of Power and the ever-farther departure from the natural Dao into systems of social constraint and what passes for culture." The ancients, in the midst of chaos, were tranquil together with the whole world. At that time, yin and yang were harmoniously still, ghosts and spirits caused no disturbances; the four seasons came in good time; the myriad things went unharmed; the host of living creatures escaped premature death. ... This condition persisted until integrity deteriorated to the point that Torchman [Suiren] and Fuhsi arose to manage all under heaven, whereupon there was accord, but no longer unity. Integrity further declined until the Divine Farmer and the Yellow Emperor arose to manage all under heaven, whereupon there was repose, but no longer accord. Integrity declined still further until T'ang and Yu arose to manage all under heaven. They initiated the fashion of governing by transformation, whereby purity was diluted and simplicity dissipated.Tr. .
Grains in Chinese agriculture and culture The traditional Chinese symbol for civilization and state was gu "grains; cereals" (a synecdoche for "agricultural products").
The Wangzhi "Royal Regulations" chapter of the Liji uses cooking food and eating grains to culturally classify the Chinese "Middle Kingdom" bordered by the "Four Barbarians" (eastern Yi, southern Man, western Rong, and northern Di). Thus the people of the five regions ... each had their several natures, which they could not be made to alter. Those of the east were called Yi; they wore their hair unbound and tattooed their bodies, and some of them ate their food without cooking it. [The people of] the south were called Man; they tattooed their foreheads and had their feet turned in toward each other, and some among them ate their food without cooking it. [The people of] the west were called Rong; they wore their hair unbound and wore skins, and some of them did not eat grain. [The people of] the north were called Di; they wore feathers and furs and lived in caves, and some of them did not eat grain.Tr. . Kwang-chih Chang interprets this Liji context to mean, "One could eat grain but also eat raw meat or one could eat his meat cooked but eat no grain. Neither was fully Chinese. A Chinese by definition ate grain and cooked his meat."
During the first dynasties of the Qin and Han, when Daoism simultaneously became a mass movement, Chinese agricultural techniques were revolutionized. Applying methods from the (256 BCE) Dujiangyan Irrigation System, arable land was converted into rice fields, with two or more harvests annually, resulting in widespread deforestation.
The nong "peasant; farmer" was second-highest of the Four Occupations under the traditional Chinese feudal system. Kristofer Schipper says, The peasants depended entirely on agriculture and were forever tied to their land through all kinds of fiscal and administrative measures. As a result, the rural communities became an easy prey to all the ills of sedentary civilization: ever-higher taxes, enslavement to the government through corvée labor and military draft, epidemics, periodic shortages and famines, and wars and raids by non-Chinese tribes from across the borders. When natural or human catastrophes occurred, the peasants could take refuge in non-arable regions of mountains and survive on wild foods other than grains.
The sheji (") altars to soil and grain gods" were the ritual center of a Chinese state. Originally, she was the "god of the land" and ji the "god of the harvest" (cf. Houji above), and the compound sheji "gods of soil and grain" metaphorically means "the state; the nation". The Shiji says establishing a new dynasty required eliminating the sheji altars of the preceding dynasty and erecting one's own.
Offerings of grain, liquor (a grain product), and meat were necessary not only for sheji sacrifices but for ancestral sacrifices. The obligation to feed the ancestral dead was fundamental to Chinese society. Campany summarizes the cultural importance of sacrificing "grains" to feed both natural and ancestral spirits. Grain was, in short, a symbol and summation of culture itself, or rather of nature acculturated, as well as of the completely human community. A natural locus of nutritive "essence" (jing), grain nevertheless required cooperative, communal and differentiated stages of production—planting, tending, harvesting, storing, thrashing, milling, mixing, and cooking—to be transformed into food. Thus transformed, it was perhaps the most culturally celebrated food of humans (both living and dead) and of gods. The Chinese character for jing () "spirit; essence of life; energy" is written with the rice radical ().
Early textual references The first textual references to "avoiding grains/cereals" are found in Chinese classics from the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), Qin dynasty (221–206 BCE), and Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE).
A (c. 3rd century BCE) Zhuangzi chapter describes a shenren "divine person" who does not eat grains but mysteriously helps them grow. Far away on Mount Kuyeh there dwells a spirit man whose skin is like congealed snow and who is gentle as a virgin. He does not eat any of the five grains, but inhales the wind and drinks the dew. He rides on the clouds, drives a flying dragon, and wanders beyond the four seas. His spirit is concentrated, saving things from corruption and bringing a bountiful harvest every year. (1)Tr. . In this passage, Maspero recognizes the principal Daoist practices that were current during the Six Dynasties period: "(1) abstention from Cereals, (2) respiratory exercises, and (3) concentration and meditation. The "journey beyond the Four Seas" (4) corresponds to a manner of directing ecstasy," resembling astral projection.