Ge Hong - Early Life

Early Life

Ge was born in 283 in Jurong, just three years after the Jin conquest of Wu. He was the youngest of three sons, but no information exists concerning his older brothers. By his own account, Ge possessed a serious demeanor as a child, declining to play with other children or to participate in activities such as chess, gambling, or cock fighting. He was equally uninterested in serious study, and states that his indulgent parents never compelled him to pursue the kind of academic training that was probably expected for the offspring of an influential gentry family. Ge was only twelve years old when his father died in 295, an incident that seems to have inflicted some hardship on his family. He states that he personally engaged in plowing and planting, suffering from cold and hunger. The destruction of his father’s library by soldiers due to civil strife worsened Ge’s plight and, in one colorful passage from his postface, he describes how he used his meager income earned from chopping firewood to underwrite his education. Ge’s claim of extreme poverty is generally regarded as an exaggeration. It has been rightly observed that so distinguished a family, with such a long and prestigious record of government office, would not have declined so quickly into economic ruin.

It is probably true that the death of his father was a blow to Ge’s public aspirations, for it may have meant losing his father’s network of friends and allies that might have helped him find an official position. Several modern scholars have correctly pointed out that ordinary farmers could ill-afford such luxuries as books or the leisure time to read them. The possibility that Hong subsidized a broad education with manual labor is remote at best. Regardless, it is not hard to imagine that, upon his father’s death, Ge’s family underwent a period of relative hardship, during which he may have personally supervised the family estate, an activity that took time away from his studies.

The impressive range of Ge Hong’s early education and his youthful literary endeavors also cast doubt on claims of extreme poverty. According to his biography in the Jin shu (History of the Jin Dynasty), it was during this early period that Ge began his study of the canon of texts, generally associated with ru jia, often translated simply as "Confucianism". Ge states that he began to read classics such as the "Shi jing" (Book of Odes) at fifteen, without the benefit of a tutor, and could recite from memory those books he studied and grasp their essential meaning. His extensive reading approached "ten thousand chapters", a number meant to suggest the dizzying scope of his education. The "ten thousand things" is used often in Daoist texts to describe the vast manifestations, life forms or types of matter in the reality of the Dao.

In reality, his formal education probably began much earlier, as elsewhere in his autobiographical postface, Ge states that he had already begun to write poetry, rhapsodies, and other miscellaneous writings by the age of fourteen or fifteen (c. 298), all of which he later destroyed. Ge’s statements regarding early poverty and belated studies convey the sense that his education was largely the product of his own acumen and determination rather than his privileged social status. Such exaggerations may be regarded as literary conventions, intended to show the unique nature of his education in the face of financial difficulties brought on by his father’s death. Claims that he started his education as late as fifteen may also be an oblique literary reference to Confucius’ own statement in Lunyu (Analects) 2.4 that, "At fifteen, I set my heart on learning."

Around this time, or perhaps a little before (c. 297) Ge, then fourteen years old, entered into the tutelage of Zheng Yin, an accomplished classical scholar who had turned to esoteric studies later in life. According to Ge’s lengthy and colorful description of his teacher, Zheng was over eighty years old but still remarkably hale. He was a master of the so-called "Five Classics" who continued to teach the Li ji (Book of Rites) and the Shu (Documents), was a teacher of the esoteric arts of longevity, divination, and astrology, and was even an accomplished musician! Zheng Yin’s instruction in the esoteric arts emphasized the manufacture of the "gold elixir" or jin dan, which he considered the only truly significant means to achieve transcendence. His influence is reflected in portions of Hong’s writings that endorse alchemy, but are critical of dietary regimens, herbs, and other popular methods of longevity.

The process of learning alchemical recipes and receiving scriptures combined rituals, oral instruction, and textual transmission. Ge states that his master carefully limited access to these texts among his more than fifty disciples. He was only permitted to copy out a few, but lists the titles of many more in his own writings. Indeed, Ge’s "Inner Chapters" is remarkable for its extensive bibliography of alchemical scriptures, most of which exist only in fragments today. Only to Ge did Zheng Yin transmit texts such as the Sanhuang neiwen (Esoteric Writings of the Three Sovereigns), which Zheng considered to be among the most important alchemical scriptures. Ge also received three scriptures from the Grand Purity (Taiqing 太清) tradition that originated in northern China, along with their accompanying esoteric, oral instructions. These texts were relatively unknown south of the Yangtze River, and their transmission to Ge may be regarded as a rare event that owed something to Zheng Yin’s close relationship to Ge’s family. Zheng Yin was the pupil of Ge’s granduncle Ge Xuan, who was in turn the pupil of the well-known Han fangshi (occultist), Zuo Ci. Ge claims that these three texts were revealed through divine revelation to Zuo Ci, who later fled south to escape the chaos that followed the collapse of the Han dynasty.

References to canonical texts throughout Baopuzi raise the possibility that Ge received a well-rounded, if untraditional education, from Zheng Yin, who was a teacher of both the orthodox Han literary canon, as well as a master of esoteric studies. Ge’s description of his tenure as one of Zheng Yin’s students recalls a private school, complete with students doing work, such as sweeping the floors and chopping firewood, in addition to their studies. Traditional education in the so-called Confucian canon was out of fashion in Ge’s era. It may be the case that Ge, deprived of his father’s instruction and furthermore suffering the loss of his father’s library, attended a private school that emphasized the non-canonical education, popular after the dissolution of the Han. Zheng Yin’s close relationship to Ge’s family, through Ge Xuan, might have naturally led to Ge Hong’s privileged instruction in important esoteric texts.