Week 9 Session: Comparative systems

Two bestiaries that never needed a species concept, read for their organising principle rather than ranked against ours. Both sort by what a creature is for the reader, and then the same test is turned back on 其状如.

3 May 2027 · Phase 3, Take it apart and rebuild

The rule this week states

Other bestiaries sort by what a creature is for the reader, so their top division is a fact about the reader rather than about the creatures.

What this week does

Week 8 left the name field broken and no repair that did not assume its own conclusion. Before rebuilding, this week reads two bestiaries that were never built the way ours was, and asks the uncomfortable question in the other direction: not whether they are worse, but whether ours has been one of them all along.

Three sections:

  1. Two systems that never needed a species concept, and what each puts at the top of its division.
  2. A classifier that is a price — 驺吾, where our own material makes the same move.
  3. What 其狀如 was always doing — 烛阴, and a column this course has leaned on since week 2.

Two systems that never needed a species concept

The medieval European bestiary descends from the Physiologus. Its entries describe an animal and then say what the animal means. The lion, the pelican and the phoenix sit in one book on equal terms, because the criterion for inclusion is signification and not existence. Nobody in that tradition is embarrassed by the phoenix. Signification is the field, and the phoenix fills it well.

Japanese 妖怪 (yōkai, strange creatures) catalogues sort differently again. 鳥山石燕 (Toriyama Sekien)‘s 画図百鬼夜行 (Gazu Hyakki Yagyō, The Illustrated Night Parade of a Hundred Demons) and its successors give each creature a name, a picture, and often nothing else. The unit is the encounter: where you meet it, at what hour, and what happens to you. A great many of them have no body beyond the one drawn for them, and the catalogue is not diminished by that, because it never promised a diagnosis.

Both sort by what a creature is for the person reading. Neither claims to sort by what it is.

Diagnostic, not inferior

Read these two for their organising principle, not as earlier attempts at what we are doing. Neither was trying to produce a diagnosis and failing.

The reason to read them at all is that a system’s top division is the hardest part of it to see from inside. Ours is easier to see once you have looked at two that chose differently.

珍獸 is a price, not a kind

Specimen

驺吾 zōuwú

Zouwu quinquecolorum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text

Kind
獸, the word the record uses
Form
the size of a tiger, bearing all five colours, its tail longer than its body
Habitat
林氏國, in the inner north
Use
乘之日行千里 — ride it a thousand 里 in a day
Record

  1. 海內北經Within the Seas, North

    林氏國有珍獸，大若虎，五采畢具，尾長于身，名曰騶吾，乘之日行千里。

    In 林氏國 there is a treasure-beast, as big as a tiger, bearing all five colours, its tail longer than its body. It is called 騶吾. Ride it a thousand 里 in a day.

Called a 珍獸, a treasure-beast, which is a value and not a kind. The only entry whose most specific classification is a price.

Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.

The most specific classifier in that line is 珍獸, a treasure-beast. It is not a kind. It is a price. The record goes on to give a size by comparison, a colour count and a proportion, and then the only quantity in it: a thousand 里 in a day, which is a measurement of the journey somebody else takes. Filed by what it is worth to whoever owns it.

Specimen

夔 kuí

Kui unipedatum binomial assigned by this course, not by the text

Kind
獸, the word the record uses
Form
like an ox, grey-bodied, hornless, one-footed; its light is the sun and moon, its voice is thunder, and going in and out of water it brings wind and rain
Habitat
a mountain in the great wilds of the east
Record

  1. 大荒東經Great Wilds, East

    其上有獸，狀如牛，蒼身而無角，一足，出入水則必風雨，其光如日月，其聲如雷，其名曰夔。

    On it there is a beast, shaped like an ox, grey-bodied and hornless, with one foot. Going in and out of the water it always brings wind and rain. Its light is like the sun and the moon, its voice like thunder. It is called 夔.

One foot, as 畢方 has one foot, with nothing else in common. The epithet repeats across genera, which is ordinary Linnaean practice and worth saying out loud once.

Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.

夔 (kuí) would classify perfectly in a Physiologus. An ox with one foot whose light is the sun and moon, whose voice is thunder, and whose passage through water brings wind and rain: read as a sign the entry is complete. Read as an animal it is a list of weather.

九尾狐 (jiǔwěihú), which week 7 showed has no name in the edition at all, is the creature a signification-based bestiary handles most easily of any in our bestiary. Significance is exactly what later readers supplied to it. The system that files it best is the one whose field our records never filled.

What 其状如 was always doing

其狀如馬. Like a horse. That slot is informative only to somebody who has seen a horse, which makes every comparison in the book a proposition about the reader’s prior acquaintance. This course has called it a morphological character since week 2. It is a statement of familiarity, and week 3 already met the case that proves it: the comparison slot on 帝江 holds a sack.

Specimen

烛阴 zhúyīn

Zhuyin diurnale binomial assigned by this course, not by the text

Kind
神, the word the record uses
Form
human-faced, snake-bodied, red, a thousand 里 long; its eyes open are day and closed are night, its 吹 is winter and its 呼 is summer
Habitat
below 鍾山, in the outer north
Record

  1. 海外北經Beyond the Seas, North

    鍾山之神名曰燭陰，視為晝，瞑為夜，吹為冬，呼為夏，不飲，不食，不息，息為風，身長千里。

    The god of 鍾山 is called 燭陰. When it looks, it is day; when it closes its eyes, it is night; when it blows, it is winter; when it breathes, it is summer. It does not drink, does not eat, does not breathe, for its breath would be wind. Its body is a thousand 里 long.

Its form field would have to hold the seasons. Nothing in the record is a measurement, and it is still the most precisely specified creature in the book.

Quoted from 山海經 (the Classic of Mountains and Seas), 四庫全書本，郭璞注 — the Siku Quanshu text with 郭璞's (Guō Pú) commentary. Interlinear notes removed; the base text is otherwise unaltered.

烛阴 (zhúyīn) makes the same point at the other end of the entry. Exactly one clause in that record measures the creature: 身長千里, a thousand 里 long. Every other clause specifies what its states do to an observer — eyes open are day, eyes closed are night, 吹, a sharp blow, is winter and 呼, a warm breath out, is summer, and its resting would be wind. It is among the most precisely specified records in the book, and the precision is almost entirely about us.

So the answer to the question this week opened with is yes. Our top division is not a fact about the reader in the way the Physiologus’s is, but two of our columns are, and we did not put them there deliberately. We inherited them from a text that was answering a different question.

What you leave with

One creature moved into one of the two systems above, with what the move costs and what it recovers, which is the reclassification essay due at the end of week 10. An essay arguing that nothing is lost has not looked hard enough.

Also a list, for your own system, of every column that encodes a reader rather than a creature. There are at least two. Week 10 runs creatures through two systems at once and compares what each filing threw away, which is the test that turns this week’s reading into a result.

The spec

What you bring to the session. Written so a reader can tell whether it has been met without asking you.

Teaching team