The Protection of Flora in Wang Mang’s Edict and the Taiping jing in the Context of Disasters

This article analyzes prohibitions against the destruction of flora in the calendrical regulations of the late Western Han period and in the millenarian cosmological discourses in the Taiping jing 太平經 (Canon of Great Peace). The study focuses on the “Zhaoshu sishi yueling wushi tiao” 詔書四時月令五十條 (“Edict of Monthly Ordinances for the Four Seasons in Fifty Articles”) which was promulgated by Wang Mang in 5 CE. The Edict prohibited setting fire to forests and was intended to restore cosmic harmony. At the time, natural disasters and celestial anomalies were interpreted as signs of the loss of the Mandate of Heaven. Heavenly patterns and hemerology play a central role here by enabling environmental regulations to be incorporated into a political logic of legitimization. The Canon of Great Peace reinterprets these norms by replacing seasonal cycles with an interpretation of balance between yin and yang and by giving environmental prohibitions eschatological significance. Thus, calendrical regulations for natural resource management transform into an apocalyptic discourse in which the natural environment becomes the setting for cosmic disorder that must be avoided.