Ge Hong - Early Reclusion and Writing

Early Reclusion and Writing

Rather than return north, Ge refused other honors and remained in the south, living as a recluse on Mount Luofu for the next eight years before returning to his native Jurong around 314. The decision meant that Ge avoided much of the political upheaval that ravaged the Jin state, as various contenders for the throne pillaged Luoyang over the next several years. It was probably during this time on Mt. Luofu that Ge began his relationship with Bao Jing (260-327). According to the biographies of both Bao Jing and Ge, Bao was an adept in a wide variety of esoteric studies, including medicine, and transmitted his techniques and knowledge to Hong. Conversely, Bao Jing "valued Ge very much, and married a daughter to him". Evidence for the precise timing of their initial meeting is largely circumstantial. Around 312, Bao was appointed Governor of Nanhai prefecture, not far from Mt. Luofu. Some sources suggest that Bao Jing often traveled to Mt. Luofu to study esoteric arts, during which time he would have certainly met Ge. While such accounts may be apocryphal, timing and proximity raise the possibility that the two men began their relationship while Ge lived in the far south.

This period of reclusion appears to have been a time of great literary productivity for Ge. In addition to a remarkable body of writing that is now sadly lost, he also composed those extant works for which he is known today, the Baopuzi, and the Shenxian zhuan. It is nearly impossible to narrow down precisely the dates of composition for Ge’s surviving work. Autobiographical statements within the Baopuzi seem to indicate quite clearly that by the end of his residence on Mt. Luofu, or soon thereafter, Ge had written the Baopuzi as it exists today, arranged into "Inner" and "Outer" sections of twenty and fifty chapters, respectively, and had moreover composed a work called Shenxian zhuan.

Several modern scholars (notably Chen Feilong) have speculated based on close textual study that Ge revised or rewrote these twenty chapters after his final retirement in 331, and that the "Inner Chapters" mentioned here might be an altogether different edition of the work that exists today by that title. This notion, whether or not it is correct, points more generally to the difficulties of working in a textual tradition, rich in editorial revision and forgery. Robert Campany’s (2002) painstaking attempt to reconstruct the Shenxian zhuan illustrates many of the problems confronting modern scholars of Ge and early Chinese texts. According to Campany, the Shenxian zhuan as it now exists, is riddled with amendments, errors, and later additions. None of the current editions, collected within various encyclopedia of early texts, can be said to be the Shenxian zhuan, written by Ge. Campany’s study suggests that many problems of authorship and editorial corruption in Ge’s surviving work remain to be solved.