Who Was Responsible for the Weather? Moral Meteorology in Late Imperial China

ONE VIEW IN LATE IMPERIAL CHINA was that people were responsible for their weather. Rainfall and sunshine were thought to be seasonal or unseasonal, appropriate or excessive, according to whether human behavior was moral or immoral. The effects were statistical. Bad individuals in a community could benefit from the goodness of the majority; good individuals could suffer if the majority were evil. Some counted for more than others. The emperor's conduct was of preeminent importance; bureaucrats came in second place; and the common people ranked last. All or any of these could be decisive in a particular case. Further, since weather was mostly regional, there was a corresponding regionality of rewarded or sanctioned behavior; and the weather around the Capital was thought to have particular relevance to what Heaven thought of the emperor's conduct. This was only one view, of course. It was linked to the ethical rationality of the Confucian miracles that rewarded filial sons and daughters and faithful widows. Other contemporary views denied that immoral human behavior was necessarily the cause of disasters, which might be attributed tosome particular deity, such as the God of the Sea in the case of coastal floods, and explicitly not to Heaven.' At other times, the meteorological benevolence of Heaven might be called into question, but troubles with the weather could just as well be seen as caused by the God of the Soil or by inappropriate r lations between the yin and the yang, the dark and the bright cosmic forces. Trying to divine the year's weather in advance-and hence predicting the harvest-was a common peasant practice, but would have made little sense had it not been seen as predetermined.2 The tension between moral and material causation as explanations for meteorological, celestial, and other phenomena was well developed in late imperial China. Heaven was also subtle. In past times, at least, It