A man of Zitong studying in the capital, recorded as fond of large talk. He cast the bronze casket, wrote the eleven names inside it, added his own, and became a duke.
The Red Emperor's travelling seal, handed over to the Yellow Emperor's metal book of mandate.The second of the two sealed labels on the bronze casket he cast and presented; the Red Emperor is the Han's founding lord, named in the text by his given name — Hanshu, juan 99 upper and middle
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- Wang Mang patron — He was a man of Zitong studying in the capital, recorded as fond of large talk. He cast the casket, wrote the eleven names of the new emperor's assistants inside it, added his own, and was made a duke.
Myth vs record
Heaven's mandate arrived for the New dynasty in a bronze casket, with the names of its future ministers written inside.
It did, in the literal sense the record gives: a student in the capital cast the casket, wrote the list, put his own name on it, and was enfeoffed. The eleven names were real appointments, and the composition is in the book — eight were Wang Mang's actual ministers, two were men looked up in the registers because their surnames sounded auspicious, and the eleventh was the maker. Of the rest, one had kept a city gate and one had sold cakes in the market. Ban Gu's summary of this literature is the flattest sentence in the biography: its wording was elegant and borrowed from the classics, all of it manufactured argument, and its drift was that Mang should replace the Han and hold the empire.