The Five Phases (Wu Xing)
Water, fire, wood, metal, earth
- Earliest record
- the 230s BCEThe Lüshi chunqiu, whose preface is dated to the eighth year of Qin (239 BCE), runs the phases through the dynasties in 'Ying tong'. The Hong fan list is set by tradition at the Zhou conquest but is known from the received Book of Documents, so it is not dated here.
Sima Qian records that in 221 BCE the First Emperor, reckoning Zhou as fire, proclaimed Qin's virtue water, with black dress and six as the standard number. An Ziyu (2018) finds the reforms of six unmatched by Qin archaeology and older than Qin.
Sima Qian, Shiji 6, 'Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin', twenty-sixth year of King Zheng (221 BCE); An Ziyu, 'Qin "shu yi liu wei ji" yuanyuan kao', Zhongguo shi yanjiu 2018 no. 4 (abstract and text read on the Institute of History, CASS site)
Water, fire, wood, metal and earth: the five phases (wuxing) of Chinese cosmology, set in cycles of change.
More context
The Great Plan (Hong fan) of the Book of Documents lists five xing: water, fire, wood, metal and earth, each with its action and its taste. Sima Qian credits Zou Yan of Qi with tracing the turning of the five virtues through history, and Ban Gu's Han catalogue lists his books. The Huainanzi of about 139 BCE gives the generating cycle, water to wood to fire to earth to metal, and pairs the ten stems with the phases. Wang Chong's Lunheng, in the first century CE, quotes the overcoming cycle in order to dispute it. James Legge in 1879 doubted that 'elements' fitted, since xing means 'to move'.
Light
One small vocabulary joined seasons, directions, colours, tastes and planets, so the calendar, the sky and the kitchen could be read as a single order.
Shadow
The same scheme made conquest look like cosmic necessity: Qin claimed water's turn after Zhou's fire, and Wang Chong mocked the idea that animals fight by phase.