Six
From Chuang Shu-tsu to Sung Hsiang-feng

Chuang Shu Tsu

The Kung-yang teachings that were transmitted from Chuang Ts'un-yü to his precocious grandson Liu Feng-lu were decisively mediated by Chuang Shu-tsu. When Shu-tsu was ten years old (according to Chinese count), his father Chuang P'ei-yin passed away, in part (say the accounts) because of his excessive remorse over his own father's death that same year. Raised by his uncle Chuang Ts'un-yü, Shu-tsu nevertheless maintained his status as the eldest male in his father's immediate line. Although he distinguished himself in the chin-shih examinations of 1780, Shu-tsu was cheated out of a high appointment by Ho-shen's cronies because of his ties to the opposing A-kuei faction (see chapter 3). Turning chiefly to a life of scholarship, Shu-tsu served in low-level provincial and county magistracies until 1797 when at age forty-six he retired forever from public office.

Barred from the Hanlin Academy during the Ho-shen era, Chuang Shu-tsu instead became a specialist in the k'ao-cheng fields of paleography (wen-tzu-hsueh ) and epigraphy (chin-shih-hsueh ), never achieving the dizzying heights of political prestige and position enjoyed by his distinguished father and uncle, both Hanlin academicians. Shu-tsu's collected works were published posthumously in 1837. Li Chao-lo, who had been introduced to Chuang Shu-tsu's classical scholarship by Liu Feng-lu, prepared a biography and a preface for this book, heaping praise on his impartial scholarship and concern for restoring the ancient learning (ku-hsueh ) bequeathed by the sages. In so doing, Li Chao-lo

documented the importance of the Chuangs in Ch'ang-chou scholarly circles at the turn of the nineteenth century.^[1]

When Chuang Ts'un-yü died in 1788, Liu Feng-lu (then twelve) continued his studies under the tutelage of Chuang Shu-tsu, together with his cousins, Chuang Shou-chia and Sung Hsiang-feng. They learned more about Chuang Ts'un-yü's Kung-yang teachings and were also introduced (as Chuang Shu-tsu's special protégés) to the philological techniques employed in k'ao-cheng studies. Although the Chuang lineage emphasized the examination-oriented Sung Learning traditions, Liu Feng-lu would develop an equal respect for Han Learning—a respect he learned from Chuang Shu-tsu. Apparently, k'ao-cheng studies had decisively penetrated the classical repertoire of the Chuang lineage between the line's twelfth generation of Ts'un-yü and P'ei-yin, and the thirteenth generation of Shu-tsu.^[2]

Unlike his lineage forebears, for whom classical scholarship and political position were inseparable, Shu-tsu's early recourse to a life of scholarship represented—however unintentionally—the distinctive career pattern of an eighteenth-century evidential research scholar. Although k'ao-cheng scholars often accepted official positions, they frequently retired from office as soon as it was feasible in order to devote themselves to specialized historical and classical research. But Chuang Shu-tsu was barred from office because of political pressures, unlike Chuang Ts'un-yü, who retired from office at age sixty-seven. Shu-tsu was therefore able to spend his most productive years in private scholarship.^[3]

In addition to his studies of the Spring and Autumn Annals, Chuang Shu-tsu wrote a number of technical Han Learning studies, including his highly praised Mao-shih k'ao-cheng (Evidential analysis of the Mao recension of the Poetry Classic ) and Shang-shu chin-ku-wen k'ao-cheng (Evidential analysis of the New and Old Text Documents Classic ). One of Shu-tsu's most ambitious projects was his reconstruction of Hsia (tr.

[1] See the biography of Chuang Shu-tsu in P'i-ling Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (1935), 21.26a-26b. A longer draft biography of Chuang appears in the archives of the Palace Museum, Taipei, Chuan-kao , no. 4470. See also Li Chao-lo's "Hsu" (Preface) to Chuang Shu-tsu, Chen-i-i i-shu . For Li's biography of Chuang Shu-tsu, see Li Chao-lo, Yang-i-chai wen-chi , 13.5a-6b.

[2] Wang Nien-sun, "Shen-shou fu-chün hsing-shu," 12.47a. See also Li Chao-lo, Yang-i-chai wen-chi (1852), 3.13b-14a, and Li's "Hsu" (Preface) to Chuang Shu-tsu's Chen-i-i i-shu. Cf. Hsu K'o, Ch'ing-pai lei-ch'ao , 69/28.

[3] Palace Museum, Taipei, Chuan-kao , no. 4470, and Li Chao-lo's "Hsu" (Preface) to Chuang Shu-tsu, Chen-i-i i-shu . On k'ao-cheng career patterns, see my Philosophy to Philology , pp. 95-137.

2205-1766?? B.C. ) and Shang (tr. 1766?-1122? B.C. ) classical texts,

whose importance he likened to that of the Chou dynasty (1122?-221 B.C. ) legacy.

The Reconstuction of Early Texts

Chuang Shu-tsu brought his talents in paleography and epigraphy to bear on a series of works that unraveled the original classical text of the Hsia-shih (Seasonal Observances of the Hsia) from a syncretic commentary known as the "Lesser Calendar of the Hsia." The version in the Record of Rites (Li-chi ) had hopelessly interpolated the original—a compendium of ancient lore dealing with astronomy, geography, animals, climate, and the calendar—with the commentary. Many scholars contended that Cheng Hsuan (127-200) and other Confucian scholars from the Han dynasties on had left the Seasonal Observances of the Hsia in a hopelessly mangled condition.^[4] Indeed, it had been presumed that the original classical text of the Hsia-shih was lost, survived only by its commentary.

During the Sung dynasty Fu Sung-ch'ing argued that the text of the original work and its later commentary had been combined. Ch'ing evidential research scholars had solved a similar puzzle with the Shui-ching chu (Notes to the Classic of Waterways). Pi Yuan, Sun Hsing-yen, and K'ung Kuang-sen all picked up where Fu Sung-ch'ing had left off and anticipated the efforts of Chuang Shu-tsu; Liu Feng-lu would later continue where Chuang left off.^[5] Eventually the "lost teachings" (chueh-hsueh ) of the Hsia dynasty were restored through careful k'ao-cheng analysis. As a result, the pre-Confucius classical legacy could be pushed back to early antiquity.

As a compendium of ancient lore, the Seasonal Observances of the Hsia was an obvious candidate for evidential research. Chuang Shu-tsu noted:

Confucius also ordered the Seasonal Observances of the Hsia . This work was drawn from writings on the four seasonal observances of the Hsia [dynasty] just as the Spring and Autumn Annals was drawn from the history of [the state of] Lu. The lessons of the sages are contained within in the form of "Greater and Lesser Calendars."^[6]

[4] Chuang Shu-tsu, "Hsu" (Preface) to the Hsia Hsiao-cheng ching-chuan k'ao-shih . The text of the Hsia Hsiao-cheng was included in the Li-chi classic in the edition prepared by Tai Te (fl. ca. second century B.C. ).

[5] Chuang Ya-chou, Hsia Hsiao-cheng hsi-lun , pp. 1-7. On the Shui-ching chu see my Philosophy to Philology , pp. 225-26.

[6] Chuang Shu-tsu, "Hsu" (Preface) to the Hsia Hsiao-cheng yin-tu k'ao , pp. 5a-6a.

To recapture statecraft traditions from the Hsia would confirm, Chuang Shu-tsu thought, the precedents and lessons recorded in the Annals:

Heaven has yin and yang to produce the myriad things. The production of them depends on the earth. Kingly affairs are modelled accordingly. Consequently, the stages [included in] the Seasonal Observances of the Hsia in general include three [levels]: (1) "Greater Calendar"; (2) "Lesser Calendar"; (3) "Kingly affairs." The "Greater Calendar" is modelled on Heaven. The "Lesser Calendar" is modelled after the earth. "Kingly affairs" are delegated to man. The heavenly way is round. The earthly way is square. The human way is benevolence [jen ]. Benevolence is the heart of Heaven and earth. It is the height of kingly affairs.^[7]

According to Chuang, study of the three commentaries on the Seasonal Observances of the Hsia paralleled the three commentaries on the Annals:

The meanings in the Spring and Autumn Annals are clarified by the three commentaries. The most reliable of these is the Kung-yang school tradition, whose general meaning Tung Ta-chung [Chung-shu, 1797-104? B.C. ] was able to encompass. Hu-wu Sheng [fl. ca. 1st century B.C. ] analyzed the organization of the Annals and then preserved and honored the [Kung-yang ] school tradition. Ho Shao-kung [Hsiu, 129-182] completed his Explication [of the Kung-yang Commentary ] in which he rectified morality and stressed correct conduct. After this, the extremely odd meanings and strange sayings in the Annals all received correct [attention]. All who study the Annals know that the Kung-yang school is true [to the Annals]. If the Ku-liang [Commentary ] cannot compare [to the Kung-yang ], how much more so Master Tso's version, which is not [even] a commentary to the Annals !

For Confucius, the universal influence of benevolence—which permeated the realms of heaven, earth, and man—was the central lesson from higher antiquity, best exemplified in the Hsia-shih and Kung-yang chuan. According to Chuang Shu-tsu, these works elucidated the meanings and precedents of the Hsia dynasty that were relevant for the Chou period.^[8]

Old Text vs. New Text Philology

Shu-tsu's interests in ancient history led him to reexamine the Later Hah records of an academic conference held in 79 A.D. at the White Tiger Hall. The meetings were convened under imperial auspices to dis-

[7] Chuang Shu-tsu, Wen-ch'ao , 5.7a-10a. See also Li Hsin-lin, "Ch'ing-tai ching chin-wen-hsueh shu," p. 178.

[8] Chuang Shu-tsu, "Hsu" (Preface) to the Hsia Hsiao-cheng yin-tu k'ao , pp. 5a-5b.

cuss the New Text-Old Text controversy, which had become a prominent debate among Confucian erudites since the downfall of Wang Mang six decades earlier. Participants at the conference reaffirmed the New Text Classics as the orthodox locus of sagely teachings. Unlike an earlier conference held at Shih-ch'ü in 51 B.C. (which debated the relative merits of the Kung-yang chuan vs. Ku-liang chuan as the New Text commentaries on the Annals ), the meetings at the White Tiger Hall displayed the characteristic respect and support of Later Han Confucians for the Old Text Classics. In fact, the record of the meetings—entitled Po-hu t'ung-i (Comprehensive discussions at the White Tiger Hall)— reveal that efforts were well under way in the first century A.D. to reconcile the Old Text and New Text positions.^[9]

In 1777 Lu Wen-ch'ao, a major figure in the transmission of Hah Learning to Ch'ang-chou, convened a meeting in Nan-ching concerning the Po-hu t'ung-i. He wanted to collate the most reliable edition of the White Tiger Hall discussions; Chuang Shu-tsu was one of the scholars who came. Such efforts were considered the best means to restore the classical learning of the Han dynasties to their rightful prominence in contemporary eighteenth-century academic circles. Chuang Shu-tsu's influential Po-hu t'ung-i k'ao (Study of the comprehensive discussions at the White Tiger Hail), published in 1784 with a preface by Lu Wench'ao, was a product of the Nan-ching meeting.

Shu-tsu used his research on the White Tiger Hall meetings to elaborate on the Kung-yang studies his uncle Chuang Ts'un-yü had initiated. Working within a Han Learning research agenda that appeared to continue the work of Hui Tung (1697-1758) and others, Chuang Shu-tsu was in effect rewriting the history of New Text Confucianism during the Later Han. He appealed to the Kung-yang chuan as the accepted commentary of the day and noted that the Tso chuan's interpretations of the Annals had not been discussed at the White Tiger Hall conference. Moreover, he noted that "the teachings of the Annals were grasped through the interrelation between the phraseology [of the Annals ] and its comparative evaluation of historical events [shu-tz'u pi-shih ]." Such explicit references to his uncle's classical agenda made it clear that for Chuang Shu-tsu as for Chuang Ts'un-yü, Han Learning meant New Text learning.^[10]

[9] Tjan Tjoe Som, Po Hu T'ung . See also Hihara, "Byakko tsugi^[*] kenkyu^[*]   choron," 63-64.

[10] Chuang Shu-tsu, Po-hu t'ung-i k'ao , pp. 1a-6a. See also the "Chiao-k'an-chi" section, ibid., 4.5a-6a.

Although he dismissed the Tso chuan as an irrelevant commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals, Shu-tsu would later collaborate with his landsman Sun Hsing-yen on the recollation and revision of Tu Yü's famous Explication of Precedents in the Annals, which eighteenth-century scholars saw as the most important work from the Later Hah dynasty "schools system" that preserved the teachings on the Annals (see chapter 5). Based on the Yung-lo ta-tien (Great Compendium of the Yung-lo era [1403-25]) edition, the version compiled by Chuang Shu-tsu and Sun Hsing-yen was republished in 1802 by the Imperial Printing Office (Wu-ying-tien ). In his preface to the 1802 edition, Sun Hsing-yen noted that he and Chuang favored Tu Yü's edition because Tu "has preserved many ancient words and was unlike T'ang [Confucians] such as Tan Chu [725-70] and Chao K'uang [fl. eighth century A.D. ], who had enjoyed making arbitrary interpretations and had attacked the meanings and etymologies of earlier [that is, Han dynasty] Confucians." Tu Yü's proximity to the Han Learning era made his writing an invaluable source for Ch'lng k'ao-cheng scholars.^[11]

The Precursor of New Text Studies

As a result of his contact with mainstream Han Learning scholars, Chuang Shu-tsu was not yet a vocal proponent of New Text studies, continuing to acknowledge the importance of Old Text traditions. Unlike Chuang Ts'un-yü, however, Shu-tsu placed his sympathies for New Text learning within the philological discourse of contemporary Han Learning. A scholar first, Shu-tsu differed from Ts'un-yü on the scholarly issues of the day. Therefore, the political threat Han Learning posed to the Sung Learning orthodoxy did not affect his private scholarship. But philological controversies over the Old Text-New Text debate did attract Chuang Shu-tsu's attention. In fact, he had already considered many of the philological points upon which Liu Feng-lu would later construct a consistent New Text position. His classical studies, for example, demonstrated an awareness of Liu Hsin's ominous role in promoting the Old Text Classics during the usurpation of Wang Mang. Suspicious of Liu's claim that the Tso chuan had originally contained many ancient forms of writing (ku-tzu ), Shu-tsu therefore wondered why the present version had so few ancient characters. It was clear, he concluded, that the ancient version of the Tso chuan had been subjected

[11] For Chuang Shu-tsu's contributions to Tu Yü's Ch'un-ch'iu shih-li , see the "Hsu" (Preface) to Tu Yü, Ch'un-ch'iu shih-li .

to such extensive textual changes that the present version "was not the authentic text transmitted during Han dynasty times."^[12]

At first, Shu-tsu attributed the changes in the Tso chuan to Wei-Chin (220-316) Confucians, who had also been responsible for changing other Classics after the Later Han dynasty fell. But in his later discussions on the complementarity of classical studies and paleography, Chuang Shu-tsu would accuse Liu Hsin of interpolating the Tso chuan. Shu-tsu surmised that Liu did not understand the ancient seal forms of writing (chuan-shu ) and had therefore replaced them with the more acceptable "modern" clerical script (li-shu ). It is interesting that the initial suspicions about Liu Hsin among Ch'ang-chou scholars occurred in paleographical discussions about alternative writing forms (see figs. 1-3) during the Hah dynasties.

Such issues led Shu-tsu to reconsider the textual basis for the so-called New Text Documents Classic. Like Yang Ch'un before him (see chapter 4), Chuang contended that New Text was a relative term because it came into use only after seal forms of writing had been converted to the Han dynasty clerical script. Yang Ch'un had already noted that the "New Text" classics had previously been written in ancient seal forms that antedated the third century B.C.^[13]

Although he did not accuse Liu Hsin of forgery, Chuang Shu-tsu did impute some ignorance to him. The forgotten similarities between the New Text Classics and earlier seal forms of writing, for instance, suggested that Confucian scholars during Wang Mang's reign could fake the ancient seal script with relative impunity. General ignorance of these similarities allowed Liu Hsin and his followers to manipulate the texts written in ancient seal script that had survived in the imperial archives. Both the Tso chuan and the I Chou-shu (Leftover portions of the Chou Documents ), Shu-tsu maintained, had been tampered with.

Chuang also argued that the origins of the sixteen authentic Old Text chapters of the Documents Classic were questionable too. He claimed that the version found by Liu Hsin and his followers in the Imperial Archives may have been altered extensively by Wang Mang's Old Text ideologues. Accordingly, it, too, hardly resembled the original version purportedly rediscovered in Confucius's former residence. In a letter to

[12] Chuang Shu-tsu, Li-tai tsai-chi tsu-cheng lu , 1.20a.

[13] Chuang Shu-tsu, Shuo-wen ku-chou shu-cheng mu , p. 25a. See also Chuang Shu-tsu's letter to Sung Hsiang-feng on this matter in Chuang's Wen-ch'ao , 6.26a-27b. Cf. Chuang Shu-tsu, Li-tai tsai-chi tsu-cheng lu , 1.3a-3b.

his nephew Liu Feng-lu, Shu-tsu delineated the possible ramifications of the Wang Mang era for the classical tradition: an erroneous understanding of ancient seal characters had led to the officially sanctioned establishment of a questionable series of Old Text Classics, which were translated into Hah dynasty clerical script and placed in the Imperial Academy.^[14] Moreover, Shu-tsu acknowledged that the twenty-five Old Text chapters of the Documents Classic, which appeared in the fourth century A.D., were forgeries. In his work on the Documents , Chuang followed the lead of the Ch'ang-chou Han Learning advocate Sun Hsing-yen. Sun used the Old Text and New Text variants of the Documents as the organizational basis for assembling annotations from the Hah through T'ang dynasties on the authentic chapters of the classic.

Shu-tsu was integrating his own research into Han dynasty epigraphy, working from Tuan Yü-ts'ai's assertion that there were in fact two families of authentic texts—one New Text and the other Old. Tuan and Sun Hsing-yen regarded the Old Text recension of the Documents as more reliable because it was linked to the more ancient, authentic Old Text chapters said to have been rediscovered in Confucius's former home and then later lost.^[15]

Although most Han Learning scholars acknowledged the spuriousness of the present twenty-five Old Text chapters, they still contended that the original sixteen Old Text chapters, long since lost, had been authentic. This was a crucial claim, for these chapters were the basis on which Tuan Yü-ts'ai and Sun Hsing-yen affirmed the priority of the authentic Old Text recension of the surviving Old and New Text chapters. But Chuang Shu-tsu, as well as the Fu-chien textual scholar Ch'en Shou-ch'i (1771-1834), were among the first to recognize the possible superiority of the New Text recension of the Documents. In an 1829 study on the New Text and Old Text Documents, Liu Feng-lu did very much what Tuan and Sun had done, but he also pushed forward Chuang Shu-tsu's analytical framework. So, instead of automatically favoring the Old Text variants, as Tuan and Sun had done, Liu held that the New Text recension was more reliable.^[16]

[14] For Chuang Shu-tsu's remarks on inscriptions on Han dynasty stone drums see his Wen-ch'ao , 5.27a-28b. On the I Chou-shu see Wen-ch'ao , 5.31a-32b. For Shu-tsu's letter to Liu Feng-lu see Wen-ch'ao , 6.23a-23b.

[15] Chuang Shu-tsu, Shang-shu ching-ku-wen k'ao-cheng . For a discussion see my Philosophy to Philology , pp. 207-10.

[16] Chuang Shu-tsu, Shang-shu chin-ku-wen k'ao-cheng , and Liu Feng-lu, "Hsu" (Preface) to his Shang-shu chin-ku-wen chi-chieh.

Once New Text scholars such as Liu Feng-lu could demonstrate that their position was based on sound philological arguments, they could apply the epistemological leverage gained thereby in order to validate the political vision of Kung-yang Confucianism previously enunciated by Chuang Ts'un-yü. In the process, New Text Confucianism emerged as a wedding of Kung-yang theory and New Text philology. As we shall see in chapter 7, Liu Feng-lu combined Ts'un-yü's theories and Shu-tsu's philological research to form a comprehensive agenda for New Text studies.^[17]

Chuang Yu-K'E

Like Chuang Shu-tsu, Chuang Yu-k'e (a member of another line in the second branch of the lineage) incorporated the research techniques of technical philology (hsiao-hsueh ) into Chuang scholarly traditions. Despite, or perhaps because of, his philological expertise, Chuang Yu-k'e was unsuccessful in the civil service examination system. He thus devoted most of his life to his research interests. His philological studies dealt with most of the issues and texts that Han Learning scholars typically investigated.^[18]

The son of a poor family in his lineage, Chuang made his living as a teacher and compiler, which subsidized his years of k'ao-cheng research. In this, he was leading the life of a typical Han Learning scholar, who because of difficulty in obtaining examination degrees and official positions during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries turned to teaching in order to supplement his research activities. Among his various occupations, in 1792 Yu-k'e helped to check for accuracy the thousands of volumes in the "Complete Works in the Imperial Library," which were deposited at the Wen-su ko (Pavilion of Literary Traces) in Feng-t'ien (present-day Shen-yang in Manchuria). In 1801 Chuang taught in He-fei, An-hui, where he also helped to compile the county gazetteer. During his stay there, Yu-k'e's son Chuang Hsien-nan achieved chin-shih status and, after the Ho-shen era, entered the Hanlin Academy in Peking.^[19]

His scholarly career spanning four decades, Chuang Yu-k'e pored

[17] Chou Yü-t'ung, Ching chin-ku-wen hsueh , pp. 28-29.

[18] Chuang Yu-k'e's biography is at the Palace Museum, Taipei, Chuan-kao , no. 4470, under Chuang Shu-tsu. See also the "Nien-p'u" (Chronological biography) for Yu-k'e in the P'i-ling Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (1935), 12A.36a-39b.

[19] P’i-ling Chuang-shih tseng.hsiu tsu-p'u (1935), 5.74.

over the Classics and produced a list of published works not matched in the Chuang lineage before or since. By the time he was fifty-five, he had already completed 500 chüan (scrolls, that is, text divisions) on the Classics. Although unheralded outside of Ch'ang-chou, Yu-k'e, according to his biographers, ranked with more prominent scholars such as Chang Hui-yen, Hung Liang-chi, Chuang Shu-tsu, and Yun Ching as the greatest local talents in classical studies during the Tao-kuang era (1796-1820).^[20]

New Text Paleography

Like Chuang Shu-tsu, Yu-k'e became interested in the paleographical issues of the Old Text-New Text debate. In their correspondence, Shu-tsu marveled at Yu-k'e's broad scholarship (po-hsueh ), praising his mastery of the Shuo-wen chieh-tzu (Analysis of characters as an explanation of writing) dictionary. Such careful philological research, Shu-tsu noted, enabled Chuang Yu-k'e to trace the evolution of "borrowed characters" (chia-chieh-tzu ) during the crucial transition from Chou dynasty seal script to Han dynasty clerical forms of writing. Again, the history of writing forms was the key to understanding the distinction between Old and New Text recensions of the Classics.

Yu-k'e's most representative works concentrated on the Change Classic and the Spring and Autumn Annals. The bibiliography of the Combined Gazetteer for Wu-chin and Yang-hu Counties, for instance, listed five of his works on the Change and twelve on the Annals. Most were annotations of alternative recensions for these two classics, while others examined the place-names and persons mentioned in them. His Ch'un-ch'iu hsiao-hsueh (Philological inquiry into the Spring and Autumn Annals ) is a representative work. Compiled in 1797 while he was teaching in Shun-te at the Lien-ch'eng Academy (in the Chih-li capital region), this study of the Annals was part of a larger project designed to apply rigorous k'ao-cheng techniques to the Five Classics and their chief commentaries.^[21]

Yu-k'e's k'ao-cheng methods were also applied to the Documents and Poetry Classics, as well as to the Rituals of Chou. He produced two

[20] See the "I-wen-chih" (Bibliography section) of the Wu-chin Yang-hu hsien ho-chih (1886), 32.4a, 32.5b, 32.7a, 32.10a-10b, for the list of Chuang Yu-k'e's published works on the Classics. See also my Philosophy to Philology , pp. 130-33, on the transformation of literati roles.

[21] Wu-chin Yang-hu hsien ho-chih (1886), 32.4a, 32.10a-10b. For Chuang Shu-tsu's letter to Yu-k'e, see Chuang Shu-tsu, Wen-ch'ao , 6.25a-25b.

works on the Rituals, which Chuang Ts'un-yü praised very highly. Like Ts'un-yü, Chuang Yu-k'e was aware of the long tradition of doubt concerning the authenticity of the Chou-li, doubts most recently reopened in Ch'ang-chou by Yang Ch'un. Again like Ts'un-yü, however, Yu-k'e affirmed the centrality of the Chou-li for understanding the world-ordering institutions of antiquity. His Chou-kuan chih-chang (Directives and institutions in the Offices of Chou), for example, was a detailed discussion of one hundred political institutions (tien-chang ) bequeathed by the Rituals of Chou .^[22]

The Old Text Documents Controversy

In bis research on the Documents Classic, Yu-k'e accepted the conclusions of Yen Jo-chü and Hui Tung concerning the inauthenticity of its Old Text chapters. As a teacher and scholar of the Classics, with no ties to the political issues long associated with classical studies, Chuang Yu-k'e did not hestitate, for example, to dismiss the validity of the jen-hsin Tao-hsin (human and moral mind) passage in the Old Text "Counsels of Yü the Great" ("Ta Yü mo") chapter of the Documents. We have seen that the debate over this passage had become a cause célèbre of Han Learning. As spokesman for imperial rule in the 1740s, Chuang Ts'un-yü thought the passage essential for legitimating the political and social order. By way of contrast, however, Yu-k'e decried in typical Hah Learning fashion the Buddhist doctrines that presupposed the bifurcation between the human and moral mind:

What makes a person a person is simply his mind. The mind is equivalent to the principles of Heaven. Accordingly, it is the master of the person. Thus, all the sense organs and the body obey it. Heaven does not have two principles. A person does not have two rulers. The mind, therefore, is not two things. How can there be two names for it?

When the forged Old Text Documents appeared, [the forger] had lifted remnants of the Hsun-tzu [text into the Documents ] and thereby missed the point . . .. If Confucius and Mencius did not have this theory, how can one say that Yao [tr. r. 2356-2256?? B.C. ] and Shun [tr. r. 2255-2205??] had it? When the Buddha spoke of "many minds" [to-hsin ] and "conquering the mind" [hsiang-fu ch'i hsin ], this is probably in agreement with the human mind passage in the [forged] Old Text Documents.^[23]

[22] P'i-ling Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (1935), 12A.36b. See also Chuang Yu-k'e, "Hsu" (Preface) to his Chou-kuan chih-chang .

[23] Chuang Yu-k'e, Chin-wen Shang-shu chi-chu . See also Yu-k'e, Mu-liang tsa-tsuan , 2.9a-9b.

In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, prominent k'ao-cheng scholars such as Tai Chen and Juan Yuan had concluded that Neo-Confucians such as Chu Hsi and Wang Yang-ming had both been guilty of reading Buddhist doctrines into the Confucian Canon and of turning the Classics into a sourcebook for spurious metaphysical doctrines. In their discussion of other key concepts such as jen (benevolence), Ch'ing dynasty evidential research scholars maintained that after the fall of the Han dynasty, native traditions of "mysterious teachings" (hsuan-hsueh ) had been mixed together with Buddhism.^[24]

Later Neo-Confucians, Tai and Juan argued, had fallen under the spell of such otherworldly teachings and mistakenly incorporated them into orthodox Confucian doctrine. Buddhist penetration of Confucian teachings became a frequent theme in Han Learning criticism of the Sung Learning orthodoxy based on the Ch'eng-Chu school. Chuang Yu-k'e agreed that Buddhist doctrines must be weeded out of the Confucian Canon.^[25]

Although he disagreed with Chuang Ts'un-yü on the jen-hsin-Tao-hsin debate, Chuang Yu-k'e nonetheless added philological precision to the emerging New Text position on the Classics. His defense of the Rituals of Chou shows that he still valued the Old Text tradition, as had Ts'un-yü, and did not advocate the superiority of the New Text Classics as a whole. Attacks on the Old Text chapters of the Documents Classic were, however, the first link in a chain of philological debate during the eighteenth century that in the nineteenth century would tie all Old Text versions of the Classics together into questionable texts. Chuang Ts'unyü had not envisioned this possibility partly because of his political commitment to a classical ideology that legitimated the Confucian im-perium and partly because of his animus toward philological research.

It was left to Chuang Yu-k'e and Shu-tsu to mine this valuable lode of Han Learning, which in the hands of Liu Feng-lu would become full-blown "New Text Confucianism." In this way, Kung-yang theory was combined (uncritically to be sure) for the first time with Han Learning philology. What was interesting was that members of the Chuang lineage continued to call for a more comprehensive vision of Confucianism, one that would go beyond the limited textual studies of most k'ao-cheng scholars.

For Chuang Yu-k'e as for Chuang Shu-tsu, the lessons bequeathed by

[24] For a discussion see my "Criticism as Philosophy."

[25] See, for example, Juan Yuan, Yen-ching-shih chi , vol. 1, pp. 213-14.

Ts'un-yü and the Chuang lineage remained important. Han Learning had to be informed by theoretical and statecraft issues and was not an end in itself. Yu-k'e wrote:

There are many people all over the realm who read books voraciously. The only book they do not know how to read is the Spring and Autumn Annals . . .. I have been studying the Annals for over thirty years, but I [still] sigh in wonder that the meanings and principles in it are boundless . . .. [The Annals contains] the Tao that encompasses a thousand changes and ten thousand transformations. It never fails to amaze me that in this book I can find the essentials [of the Tao].

The Chuangs contended that without an understanding of the "esoteric principles" (wei-li ) in the Spring and Autumn Annals, which informed New Text "Han Learning," the Five Classics would remain inexplicable.^[26]

Chuang Shou-Chia

During his years under Chuang tutelage, Liu Feng-lu formed a close relationship with his cousins Chuang Shou-chia and Sung Hsiang-feng. Each went on to stress somewhat different aspects of the teachings they received from Ts'un-yü and Shu-tsu, but they were all committed to wedding k'ao-cheng techniques to the more theoretical concerns of Kung-yang Confucianism. Li Chao-lo, a friend of both Liu Feng-lu and Chuang Shou-chia, observed that Liu continued Shu-tsu's Kung-yang studies while Shou-chia advanced his uncle's Han Learning interests.

Li also described the close friendship that developed between himself, Chang Hui-yen, Liu Feng-lu, Sung Hsiang-feng, and Tung Shih-hsi in Ch'ang-chou scholarly circles. They were successors to an entire generation of Hah Learning scholars in Ch'ang-chou (see chapter 4) that had centered on Hung Liang-chi, Sun Hsing-yen, Chao Huai-yü, and Huang Ching-jen, among others. But between these two generations the unanimity of Han Learning was slowly eroding as the Former Han New Text vs. Later Han Old Text "schools system" was reconstructed and reevaluated.^[27]

[26] Chuang Yu-k'e, "Hsu" (Preface) to the Chin-wen Shang-shu chi-chu , and Chuang, Mu-liang tsa-tsuan , 1.la. See also Chuang Shu-tsu, Li-tai tsai-chi tsu-cheng lu , 1.1a-21b, for the letter's contributions to this position. Cf. Chuang Shu-tsu's Wen-ch'ao 6.25a-25b.

[27] Li Chao-lo, "Hsu" (Preface) to Chuang Shu-tsu, Chen-i-i i-shu , p. 2a. See also the biography of Chuang Shou-chia, included under Chuang Shu-tsu at the Palace Museum, Taipei, Chuan-kao , no. 4470, and Li Chao-lo's biography of Shou-chia in Li's Yang-i-chai wen-chi , 12.31b-33b.

As a lineage member and direct follower first of Chuang Ts'un-yü and then of Chuang Shu-tsu, Chuang Shou-chia developed a position on the Classics that is representative of the learning of the Chuang tradition (chia-hsueh ) as it entered the nineteenth century. As with Chuang Shu-tsu and Yu-k'e, Shou-chia devoted most of his career to scholarship, never achieving prominence in the examination system or in official life. His own works were left unpublished during his own lifetime because of his commitment to ensuring that Chuang Ts'un-yü's writings were finally published. When the latter was achieved in 1828, Chuang Shou-chia died at the untimely age of fifty-four.

Because of the opposition between the Chuangs and Ho-shen in the 1780s, the prominence of the Chuang lineage by the nineteenth century in fact depended more on scholarly prestige than on official position. After 1800 only two members of the lineage—Chuang Hsien-nan and Chuang Shou-ch'i—reached the Hanlin Academy, and only five passed the metropolitan examinations. This diminished success contrasted sharply with the Chuangs illustrious achievements of the eighteenth century, when seventeen lineage members achieved chin-shih status and seven were placed in the Hanlin Academy (see chapter 2).^[28]

The Importance of Paleography

In continuing his uncle Shu-tsu's textual scholarship, Chuang Shou-chia also emphasized the importance of paleography for classical studies. For Shou-chia, knowledge of ancient seal writing forms was essential for deriving the original, and therefore correct, meaning from the subsequent Han and Tang dynasty writing forms. Research on the evolution of these writing forms unmasked the true distinction between Old Text and New Text. This distinction largely derived from the loss of the ancient seal versions of the Classics after the Ch'in dynasty policy of "burning of the books" between 221 and 207 B.C.

In a letter to Shou-chia, Li Chao-lo, for instance, discussed the centrality of the Ch'in-Han calligraphic transition for the study of antiquity, tying the changes in writing forms to the prominence of parallel-style prose (p'ien-t'i-wen ) during the Han dynasty. Elsewhere,

[28] P'i-ling Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (1935), 9.6b-8a, 9.19a, and Wu-chin Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (ca. 1840), 13.25a-26a. See also Li Chao-lo's preface to Chuang Shou-chia's She-i-pu-i-chai i-shu , pp. 1b-2a.

Li Chao-lo claimed that later terms such as "Old Text" and "ancient-style prose" represented post-T'ang dynasty coinages that misconstrued the original meaning of ku-wen during the Ch'in and Han dynasties. Calligraphic styles had become confused with literary styles.^[29]

Writing to Shou-chia along the same lines, Chuang Shu-tsu discussed ancient large seal (ta-chuan ) and small seal (hsiao-chuan ) forms of writing. Noting that the latter were Ch'in dynasty precursors of the clerical script of the Han dynasties, Shu-tsu asserted that "Old Text" had emerged as a calligraphic term because of these later developments. After the appearance of Ch'in dynasty small seal script, earlier forms were designated "large seal." Similarly, after the spread of Han clerical script (so-called New Text), Ch'in dynasty small seal script was retrospectively labeled "Old Text."

Shu-tsu explained to Shou-chia that, by the Han dynasties, large seal script was for the most part lost or indecipherable. Ch'in small seal script alone was wrongly considered "Old Text" when in fact large seal forms, Shu-tsu went on, were rightly "Old Text" because of their greater antiquity. He concluded that ancient seal forms of writing contained important clues to the provenance of classical texts that had survived the disastrous Ch'in-Hah transition.^[30]

Chuang Shou-chia's Shih shu-ming (Explication of writing and names) was a preliminary history of ancient calligraphy that elaborated on the paleographic issues raised by Chuang Shu-tsu. After reviewing the early history of Chinese writing forms (which he linked to ancient cosmograms and the eight trigrams of the Change Classic ), Shou-chia turned to the distinction between Old Text and New Text calligraphy. He argued that the distinction developed after the Chou dynasty, when ancient forms of writing had been either lost or remained indecipherable. "Old Text," then, simply referred to later antiquity and its more modern forms of calligraphy. These forms, although predating Han clerical script (called "New Text" for the first time in the second century B.C. ), were not the actual forms in use during much of early antiquity.^[31]

When the Old Text Classics were discovered in Confucius's former residence, they were called "tadpole-like writing" (k'e-tou shu ) because

[29] Wu-chin Chuang-shih tseng-hsiu tsu-p'u (ca. 1840), 22.55b. See also Li Chao-lo, Yang-i-chai wen-chi, 18.4b-5a, and Li Shen-ch'i nien-p'u, 2.7a-7b, 3.30b.

[30] Chuang Shu-tsu, Wen-ch'ao, 6.26a-27b.

[31] Chuang Shou-chia, Shih shu-ming, pp. la-6a.

the seal forms were no longer understood. Shou-chia claimed that when the latter were compared with and "translated" into the calligraphic styles of the Former Han, the older forms were lost. Owing to the intervention of Liu Hsin, Shou-chia went on, the Old Text Classics (now in their "New Text" guise thanks to scholars who never recognized the complexity of the paleographical and etymological issues) were established as the principal corpus of the Confucian Canon. The ancient seal forms for the Classics were irrevocably lost in the process. Like Shu-tsu, Shou-chia charged Liu Hsin and other Later Han Confucians with ignorance. Their emendations and interpolations of the Five Classics had created a major vacuum in the classical legacy, and as a result the original forms of the Classics had been discarded.^[32]

According to Shou-chia, the role of philology in general (hsiao-hsueh ) and paleography in particular (wen-tzu-hsueh ) should be to recapture antiquity via the reconstruction of ancient forms of writing. In order to "return to the origins and resurrect the ancient" (fan-pen hsiu-ku ), according to Chuang, one first had to master the history of calligraphy and the stages of written forms. Lurking within the New Text agenda for questioning the Old Text Classics lay a remarkable call to recover the "true" Old Text and to replace the false "Old Text." Paleography, accordingly, provided a key epistemological weapon in the New Text assault on Old Text. Without fully realizing it, both Chuang Shu-tsu and Shou-chia added philological ammunition to the New Text position.^[33]

The Priority of New Text

In addition to his writings on paleography, Chuang Shou-chia also prepared a work that examined "variances" in the Documents Classic. In his introduction, Shou-chia described how he and Liu Feng-lu had built on different but still complementary aspects of their uncle Chuang Shu-tsu's classical studies. He said that Liu stressed the Change Classic and Spring and Autumn Annals, while he himself focused on the Poetry and Documents classics. Liu Feng-lu's scholarly focus suggests his closeness to their grandfather Chuang Ts'un-yü, who also had emphasized the Change and Annals.^[34]

By using a variety of sources—including epigraphical remnants of

[32] Ibid., pp. 7a-10b.

[33] Ibid., pp. 6a, 10b-19b.

[34] Chuang Shou-chia, Shang-shu k'ao-i hsu-mu, p. la.

the Classics carved into stone during the Later Han dynasty—Chuang Shou-chia traced the surviving New Text and Old Text recensions of the authentic chapters of the Documents back to the different "schools system" of the Former and the Later Han dynasties. In this manner, he hoped to restore the original "Old Text" version from which both later recensions were derived. Again, the criticism of Han dynasty "Old Text" was premised on the existence of a more ancient version of "Old Text."

To supplement this strategy, Shou-chia also drew on the invaluable research of earlier k'ao-cheng scholars who had glossed the etymology of key words in the authentic chapters of the Documents. He drew on an impressive list of scholars, among whom were the major figures in Ch'ing dynasty evidential research: Yen Jo-chü, Hui Tung, Tai Chen, Ch'ien Ta-hsin, Wang Ming-sheng, Sun Hsing-yen, Tuan Yü-ts'ai, and Tsang Lin. This roll call of Ch'ing scholars suggests that Chuang Shou-chia perceived his research as a tributary of mainstream Ch'ing k'ao-cheng studies. Through etymology (hsun-ku-hsueh ), another major field of philology, Shou-chia sought to restore the "general meaning" (ta-i ) of the Documents Classic.^[35]

Despite the influences of Han Learning, Chuang Shou-chia bent the concerns of Han Learning to accommodate the Kung-yang Confucianism enunciated by his grandfather, Chuang Ts'un-yü, and later reaffirmed by both Shu-tsu and Yu-k'e in a more philological form. In his collected essays, for example, Shou-chia was critical of the Tso chuan and especially Liu Hsin's role in establishing it as the orthodox commentary on the Annals. In particular, he rejected the claim that the classical precedents of the Annals were incorporated into the Tso chuan. Chuang maintained that this claim was an Old Text fabrication, which overlooked the priority of the Kung-yang chuan in decoding the Annals. Under the influence of Liu Hsin, Later Han Confucian erudites had been hoodwinked into accepting a text that was not, as claimed, a commentary to the Annals .^[36]

Throughout his scholarly writings, then, Chuang Shou-chia affirmed the centrality of the Kung-yang chuan for Ch'un-ch'iu studies and the importance of the Annals for classical studies as a whole. Sung Hsiang-feng and Liu Feng-lu, as Shou-chia's relatives, classmates, and colleagues, added their own distinctive touches to the Ch'ang-chou New Text position on the Classics.

[35] Ibid., pp. 1b-2b.

[36] Chuang Shou-chia, Wen-ch'ao , pp. 9a-13b.

Sung Hsiang-Feng

One of Chuang Shu-tsu's lesser-known students, Sung Hsiang-feng never went beyond chü-jen degree status, which he achieved at age twenty-four in 1800. Sung thus never held high office beyond county magistrate and is primarily remembered for his classical studies, which were closely tied to Ch'ang-chou New Text studies. According to his biographers, Hsiang-feng was a specialist in etymology (hsun-ku ming-wu ); his research efforts included a work on the Erh-ya (Progress toward correctness) dictionary, the chief repository of Han dynasty glosses on the Classics.

Sung complemented his etymological interests with research aimed at reconstructing the "schools system" of the Former Han dynasty so that the original "esoteric words containing great meanings" (wei-yen ta-i )—by this time a code expression for New Text studies of the Former Han—would again achieve preeminence in Confucian discourse. In this effort, Sung transmitted the scholarly teachings of Chuang Ts'un-yü and Chuang Shu-tsu to students such as Tai Wang, who carried the New Text position into the late nineteenth century.^[37]

"Meanings" in the Annals

Affirming the priority of Kung-yang Confucianism, Sung Hsiang-feng contended that "meanings" (i), and not "precedents" (li), were central in the chronicles of the Spring and Autumn Annals. By continuing a line of criticism on the Annals that dates back to the Ming dynasty, Hsiang-feng rejected as misguided Tu Yü's long-admired Tso chuan -based itemization of historical precedents in the Annals (see chapter 5). "As the list of precedents piled up," Sung claimed, "the meaning of the Annals became increasingly obscured, reaching the point that all understanding [of the intent of the Annals] was lost." Such tedious interpretations of the Annals, according to Sung Hsiang-feng, had led directly to calls by Sung dynasty scholars to remove the Annals from official authorization in the examination system. Wang An-shih had gone so far as to label the Annals as "irrelevant reports" (tuan-luan ch'ao-pao) precisely because of Tu Yü's relegation of the Annals to a casebook of historical precedents.^[38]

[37] See Sung Hsiang-feng's biography, which is kept at the Palace Museum, Taipei, under Liu Feng-lu, Chuan-kao , no. 4455(1). See also T'ang Chih-chün, "Ch'ing-ta Ch'ang-chou ching chin-wen hsueh-p'ai yü Wu-hsu pien-fa," pp. 73-76.

[38] Sung Hsiang-feng, P'u-hsueh-lu wen-ch'ao , pp. 3a-3b.

The triumph of historical erudition had brought in its wake a loss of historical meaning. This emphasis on precedents in the Annals required a level of knowledge that, for ali its precision, missed the forest for the trees. Seeking to strike a balance between classical erudition and classical meanings, Sung Hsiang-feng called for a synthesis of Han Learning philology and Sung Learning theory:

If one orders the Classics and does not order the Histories, then one understands principles [li ] but not affairs [shih ]. If one orders the Histories but not the Classics, then one understands affairs but not principles. If one can unify the [two different approaches], then no harm will result from the division.

In antiquity, those who studied the Classics did not drown in etymological glosses. They did not wind up in farfetched explanations. Neither were they deluded by debates and theories, nor did they get stuck in airy and distant [irrelevancies]. In this way, they knew the constant Tao of the sages and thus were outstanding scholars.

The study of etymology became prominent in the Hah and was completed in the T'ang. Study of theory began in the T'ang and became prominent in the Sung. Both [traditions] went a little too far, however. Etymologists, if they reach farfetched explanations, and theorists, if they wind up in airy and distant studies, must both be criticized.^[39]

Sung Hsiang-feng's call for a synthesis of Hah and Sung Learning was emblematic of the nineteenth-century social and political context for Confucian scholars. They were faced with questions and problems from which eighteenth-century Confucians for the most part had been spared. For instance, the introductory essay to Confucian scholarship (Ju-lin ), included in the 1814 Wu-hsi-Chin-k'uei county gazetteer, stressed the centrality of textual studies for Confucian discourse while also calling for a balance between Sung and Han Learning approaches.

Like his Chuang lineage relatives in Ch'ang-chou, Sung called for an encompassing vision of Confucianism that would reassert the moral principles proclaimed in Confucius's Annals. In the Ch'ang-chou New Text agenda, k'ao-cheng research was informed by theoretical and ethical issues and was not an end in itself. By taking a strident position that linked scholarship to social and political order, Sung Hsiang-feng made his commitment to Confucian practice very clear: "Accordingly, if the Tao is not put into effect, then the empire will not be ordered. The blame will fall on no one else but on scholars.^[40]

[39] Ibid., pp. 5Aa-5Ba (original mistakes in pagination).

[40] Ibid., pp. 5Ca-SDa (original mistakes in pagination). See Wu-hsi Chin-k'uei hsien-chih, (1814), 21.1b. See also my Philosophy to Philology , pp. 233-48.

New Text studies contributed to the general nineteenth-century reaction against what Ch'ang-chou scholars had long considered sterile philological studies. In addition, increased interest in the Kung-yang Commentary helped to stimulate a nationwide revival of the seven-teenth-century statecraft orientation, which in Ch'ang-chou, the home of Tung-lin activism, had never really been lost. Ch'ang-chou's intimate links with the Tung-lin legacy in Wu-hsi and Wu-chin counties placed the Chuang and Liu lineages, among others in Ch'ang-chou, in a better position to appreciate the statecraft sensibilities of their seventeenth-century predecessors.

Reconstructing the New Text Confucius

Both Sung Hsiang-feng and Liu Feng-lu sought to demolish the Old Text image of Confucius by reconstructing New Text interpretations of the Analects (Lun-yü ). They turned from the Kung-yang chuan to Confucius's Analects to confirm their grandfather Chuang Ts'un-yü's reliance on Ho Hsiu. For Ts'un-yü, Ho Hsiu was the most dependable Later Han transmitter of the New Text "schools system." In chapter 7 we shall discuss Liu Feng-lu's reconstruction of Ho Hsiu's lost commentary on the Analects. But we will first evaluate Sung Hsiang-feng's parallel demonstration that the Analects itself was replete with doctrines that confirmed the Kung-yang "meanings" in the Annals.

Like Liu Feng-lu, Sung Hsiang-feng sought to overturn prevailing interpretations of the Analects that had been inspired by Old Text studies. According to Hsiang-feng, in the Analects Confucius had presented his views in esoteric form (wei-yen ) for transmission by his most trusted followers. According to this point of view, the Analects elaborated the "great meanings" (ta-i ) in the Annals. Sung used the Analects as collateral evidence for understanding the Kung-yang interpretation of the Annals. Controverting the traditional belief that the "esoteric words and great meanings" had been lost after the deaths of Confucius and his immediate disciples, Sung Hsiang-feng concluded:

After Confucius perished, the "esoteric words" were still not cut off. After [his] seventy disciples passed away, the "great meanings" were still not betrayed. Confucius's intent was complete in the records of the commentaries. For hundreds and thousands of generations, [his intent] was not covered up. Its [recovery], therefore, is the duty of all who love learning and think profoundly.

The vision had not been lost; it had been whitewashed.^[41]

In order to controvert the Old Text position on the Analects and Annals, both of which were based on historical accounts given in the Tso chuan, Sung Hsiang-feng worked from the Kung-yang Commentary. He asserted it was the repository of the true teachings bequeathed by Confucius himself in the Annals and then by his disciples in the Analects. Reappearing in Sung's reassessment of the Analects was the apocalyptic and messianic picture of Confucius dating from the Former Han. Tai Wang, Sung's student and a follower of Liu Feng-lu, described the implications of this reinterpretation of the Annals vis-à-vis the Analects:

Confucius himself was an "uncrowned king." He wished to serve as the ruler of the empire like Yao, Shun, T'ang [r. 1766?-1744? B.C. ], and Wu [r. 1122?-1116?] and to achieve [like them] an era of great peace [t'ai-p'ing ]. Therefore, he made the "Sayings of Yao" the final chapter [of the Analects ]. Similarly, the text of the Spring and Autumn Annals concluded with the lesson of the coming of the lin [unicorn]. It is clear that Confucius respectfully discoursed on Yao and Shun . . .. The reason for his straightforward writings [in the Annals], such as "the institutional reform of the three dynasties" [san-rai kai-chih ], was to extend the lessons that Yao had enunciated.

For the Former Han Confucian Tung Chung-shu (1797-1047 B.C. ), the capture of the lin was a concrete omen of Confucius's status as an "uncrowned king." In his Ch'un-ch'iu fan-lu (The Spring and Autumn Annals' radiant dew), Tung wrote that shortly before his death in 479 B.C. Confucius had received from heaven (t'ien ) its mandate (or decree [ming ]):

When Yen Yuan died, Confucius said: "Heaven has caused me this loss." When Tzu-lu died, the master said: "Heaven is cutting me off!" When a lin was captured in a hunt in the west, Confucius said: "My way has come to an end! My way has come to an end!" Three years later he was dead. From this [omen] we see that the sage knows the efficacy of Heaven's mandate and that there are situations in which one cannot escape one's fate.

According to Tung Chung-shu, heaven granted Confucius its mandate to correct the faults of his age and to establish the institutions of a new ruler and new dynasty. Although the mandate could not be effected during his own lifetime, Confucius was nonetheless able to speak as a ruler and to prophesize "a great unity" (ta i-t'ung )—that is, the Han

[41] Sung Hsiang-feng, Lun-yü shuo-i, 398.3b.

dynasty—to come. New Text studies were moving from complicated philological debate to reaffirmation of an older vision of Confucius and of the classical legacy.^[42]

Freeing the Analects from its Later Han Old Text interpretive moorings, Sung Hsiang-feng argued that the words of Confucius recorded by his closest disciples in the Analects were best evaluated in light of the "meanings" encoded in the Annals. In effect, Sung was grounding the interpretation of the Analects in the Kung-yang tradition of the Annals. The Kung-yang Commentary and the Analects, when taken together, gave overlapping clues to the holistic vision of the sage as "uncrowned king." The Old Text portrait of Confucius was pointedly redrawn in New Text strokes:

The Analects represents the theories of the New Text [tradition]. New Text school members transmitted the Annals and Analects as the means to grasp the intent of the sage. As erudites, what the New Text school members transmitted was derived from [Confucius's] seventy disciples through direct transmission. Reaching back to the [Former] Hah, this link had still not been broken.

Hsiang-feng argued that the direct transmission from Confucius to the officially appointed New Text erudites (via the seventy disciples) had been interrupted by the confusion brought on by the Wang Mang interregnum. Championed by Liu Hsin, the Old Text Classics briefly displaced the New Text Classics in official circles:

Ever since the Old Text school members recovered the Classic "Offices of Chou" [Chou-kuan , that is, the Chouli ] from the wall [in Confucius's former] residence, what had been a trivial record [mo-lu ] in the archives of the Western Hah [suddenly] was attributed to the Duke of Chou [himself]. Whatever was found in the other Classics to disagree with the "Offices of Chou" was all dismissed as derivative from the Hsia and Shang dynasties. In reality, the Annals was finalized by Confucius. It is true to the intent of Yao, Shun, and King Wen and discoursed upon the institutions of the Three dynasties [Hsia, Shang, and Chou].^[43]

Here Sung has clearly linked New Text studies to the history of skepticism concerning the provenance of the Rituals of Chou. And in so doing Sung brought together what had been two parallel but disparate

[42] Tai Wang, Lun-yü chu , 20.3b. See the biography of Tai Wang, included after Liu Feng-lu and Sung Hsiang-feng at the Palace Museum, Taipei, Chuan-kao , no. 4455(1). See Su Yü's edition of Tung's work entitled Ch'un-ch'iu fan-lu i-cheng, 5.4a, 6.4b. For a discussion see Fung, History of Chinese Philosophy , vol. 1, pp. 71-72. Cf. Wakeman, History and Will, pp. 105-106.

[43] Sung Hsiang-feng, Lun-yü shuo-i, 389.1b, 389.3a.

problems. Where Chuang Ts'un-yü in the eighteenth century had seen the Annals and Chou-li as compatible and complementary, Sung Hsing-feng in the nineteenth saw them as just the opposite. Though Yang Ch'un and others had earlier dismissed the Rituals of Chou as a forgery first manipulated by Wang Mang and then by Wang An-shih, they had not linked the forgery to the Old Text tradition. Although Sung pointed to Liu Hsin as the betrayer of the Annals, he did not accuse him of forging the Chou-li. Sung's contribution to the evolution of the New Text position on the Annals and Chou-li was nevertheless important.^[44]

The differentiation of the Former Han from Later Han classical "schools system" now began to center on distinguishing the Annals from the Rituals of Chou. Henceforth, champions of New Text and defenders of Old Text would disentangle the two Classics from their supposed web of compatibility; two competing classical visions would now be read into the Annals and the Rituals of Chou. The questionable provenance of one of the "Nine Classics"—which according to Sung Hsiang-feng, "had no transmission of teachings"—was now used to increase the legitimacy of Confucius over the Duke of Chou and, concomitantly, of the Annals over the Chou-li. For Hsiang-feng, Later Han chia-fa was inferior to the tightly spun threads of transmission that bound together the "schools system" of the Former Han.^[45]

New Text Exotericism

Sung's reaffirmation of Confucius as an "uncrowned king" gained additional support from the efforts of his contemporaries to reconstruct the ch'an-wei apocrypha texts of the Former Han dynasty. During the Han New Text theory had been combined with prognostication and prophecy. An affirmation of Confucius as an "uncrowned king" was an implicit reaffirmation of Confucius as heaven's choice, in a time of chaos and decline, for receiving the mandate of heaven. Sung Hsiang-feng noted: "Contemporary rulers and officials all did not know Confucius. Only Heaven knew Confucius, causing him to receive the Mandate of Heaven as an uncrowned king." Such rhetoric was neither reducible to the rational principles of Sung Learning nor to the empirical verifications of evidential research. Instead, it harkened back to belief in the prophetic meaning of Confucius's life. The mysterious circumstances

[44] Ibid., 396.3a.

[45] Ibid., 389.3b-4a.

under which Confucius composed the Annals now competed for scholarly attention with the rational historical accounts of Confucius in the Tso chuan.

The capture of a marvelous creature known as a lin, coming as it did at the very end of the Annals, took on special significance for New Text scholars. The Kung-yang Commentary (appended as one of two orthodox New Text commentaries [the other was the Ku-liang ] on the Annals during the Former Han dynasty) discussed the capture of the lin in apocalyptic terms:

Why was this entry made? In order to record an extraordinary event. What was extraordinary in this? It was not an animal of the central states. Who was the one who hunted it? Someone who gathered firewood. One who gathers firewood is a man of mean position. Why does the text use the term "hunt" in this context? In order to magnify the event. Why magnify it? It was magnified on account of the capture of the lin .Why so? The lin is a benevolent [jen ] animal. When there is a true king it appears. When there is no true king it does not appear. Someone informed [Confucius] saying: "There is a fallow-deer and it is horned!" Confucius said: "For whose sake has it come?" He turned his sleeve and wiped his face. His tears wet his robe. When Yen Yuan [Confucius's chief disciple] died, the master said: "Alas! Heaven has caused me this loss." When Tzu-lu [another disciple] died, the master said: "Alas! Heaven is cutting me off!" When a lin was captured in a hunt in the west, Confucius said: "My way has come to an end!"^[46]

In the Han apocrypha, Confucius as uncrowned king took on touches of divinity that startle those more accustomed to conventional portrayals of the sage. In the Apocryphal Treatise on the Spring and Autumn Annals: Expository Chart on Confucius (Ch'un-ch'iu-wei yen-K'ung-t'u ), he was apotheosized in the following manner:

On Confucius' breast there was writing which said: "The act of instituting fa new dynasty] has been decided and the rule of the world has been transferred." Confucius was ten feet high and nine spans in circumference. Sitting, he was like a crouching dragon, and standing, like the Cowherd [in the sky]. As one approached him he was like the Pleiades, and as one gazed upon him, like the Ladle. Sages are not born for nothing; they must surely institute something in order to reveal the mind of Heaven. Thus, Confucius, like a wooden-tongued bell, instituted the laws for the world . . ..

After the lin was caught, Heaven rained blood which formed into writing on the main gate [of the capital] of La, and which said: "Quickly prepare

[46] Ibid., 389.1b, 389.13b. See Ch'un-ch'iu ching-chuan yin-te , 487/Ai/14. See also Malmqvist, "Gongyang and Guuliang Commentaries," p. 218, and the account by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Shih.chi, vol. 6, p. 1942 (chüan 47), which is a summary of this position. For a discussion see Shimada, "Shinkai kakumeiki no Koshi^[*] mondai," pp. 5-8.

laws, for the sage Confucius will die; the Chou [ruling house], Chi, will be destroyed; a comet will appear from the east. The government of the Ch'in [dynasty, 221-207 B.C. ] will arise and will suddenly destroy the literary arts. But though the written records will then be dispersed, [the teachings of] Confucius will not be interrupted."

Although the so-called superstitious elements of ch'an-wei apocrypha remained anathema for most Han Learning scholars, the provenance of such texts in the Former Han dynasty justified their use in reconstructing more reputable, but contemporaneous, classical writings of the Former Han. As Kondo Mitsuo explains, most k'ao-cheng scholars knew apocryphal texts were useful in research dealing with the Han dynasties. In fact, leading k'ao-cheng scholars such as Ch'ien Ta-hsin and Wang Nien-sun (1744-1832) frequently referred to apocrypha for textual corroboration. Consequently, the Han Learning legitimacy that carried over from the Later Han Old Text tradition to the New Text Classics of the Former Hah also carried over to Former Han ch'an-wei apocryphal texts.^[47]

Huang Shih, among others, made serious efforts in the nineteenth century to reconstruct the apocryphal texts in toto and to reestablish the links between the Confucian Classics and the prophecies contained in the wei texts. The ch'an-wei revival eventually transcended its limited philological purposes and influenced the less rationalistic and more messianic tendencies that characterized New Text Confucianism in the late Ch'ing, when K'ang Yu-wei and others were appealing to a more religious Confucian agenda. Philology had reopened the door to ideas and doctrines that Later Han and post-Han Confucians had long since avoided as inappropriate for serious consideration among educated Chinese.^[48]

Sung Hsiang-feng's use of Kung-yang interpretations of the Annals to establish a New Text reading of the Analects coincided with efforts

[47] Fung, History of Chinese Philosophy , pp. 129-30. See also Su Yü, Ch'un-ch'iu fan-lu i-cheng , 7.13a-14b; Dull, "Apocryphal Texts of the Hah Dynasty," pp. 28-29, 524-26. The Cowherd, Pleiades, and Ladle belong to the twenty-eight constellations. The "wooden-tongued bell" is an allusion to the Analects. See Lun-yü yin-te , 5/3/24. "Destroying the literary arts" refers to the "burning of the books" carried out in 213 B.C. during the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B.C. ). Cf. Kondo, "Shincho^[*]   keigaku to isho," pp. 251-69.

[48] See Harada, "Shimmatsu shisoka^[*] no isho kan," pp. 273-99. See also Li Hsin-lin, "Ch'ing-tai ching chin-wen-hsueh shu," pp. 156-57. The usual view of Old Text as "rationalistic" and New Text as "superstitious" is simplistic. Liu Hsin, for example, extensively used the apocrypha for his Old Text position, as did Cheng Hsuan during the Later Hah. See Tjan Tjoe Som, Po Hu Tung, vol. 1, pp. 141-54, and Yang Hsiang-k'uei, Ching-shih-chai hsueh-shu wen-chi , pp. 139-42.

to fill in the apocryphal elements in Han dynasty classical studies. Sung, for example, elucidated the connection between the omissions (pu-shu ) in the Annals and Confucius's silence (wu-yen ) on many issues in the Analects. Sung argued that the omissions and silences were evidence of the esotericism of Confucius's "subtle words" (wei-yen ).^[49]

Old Text scholars had maintained that Confucius's silence in the Analects on such theoretical constructs as "nature" (hsing ) and "external necessity" (ming ) demonstrated his aversion to pure speculation and useless discussion. In Old Text interpretations of the Analects, then, Confucius appeared skeptical and disinclined to theorize. This portrait of Confucius, painted with powerful rationalistic strokes, has been the most influential one in Western scholarship—so much so that Herrlee Creel and others have argued that there is no evidence to support the claim that Confucius even compiled the Annals because the Analects makes no mention of such a work. Creel carried the Old Text position further than its original proponents had intended, with Confucius emerging as an "agnostic" scholar who steered clear of superstitions.^[50]

By reversing the Old Text priority, Sung Hsiang-feng made the Analects subject to the Annals. If used in conjunction with the Analects, the Annals, Sung thought, revealed that the "silence" in the former was equivalent to the "omissions" in the latter. The "subtle words" and "esoteric meanings" in the Annals, accordingly, could be used to understand the doctrines encoded in the Analects. Far from being skeptical, Confucius had presented his views in esoteric form for transmission by his most trusted disciples. Han Learning scholars, by following the Old Text tradition, had, according to Hsiang-feng, misrepresented not only the Analects and Annals but also, by implication, the Five Classics as well:

There are those who say that Confucius did not speak of nature [hsing ], external necessity [ming ], or the Heavenly Way. Scholars mistakenly say that Confucius's sayings represented the unity of nature [tzu-jan ] and the Heavenly Way. They err not merely in terms of the words and sentences, but in reality are also badly misrepresenting Confucius's intent and lessons.^[51]

To demonstrate the esoteric doctrines that Confucius included in the Annals and his disciples recorded in the Analects, Sung Hsiang-feng made reference to the intellectual climate in the middle of the first mil-

[49] Sung Hsiang-feng, Lun-yü shuo-i , 391.6a.

[50] Herrlee Creel, Confucius and the Chinese Way, 103-104. See also Creel's "Was Confucius Agnostic?"

[51] Sung Hsiang-feng, Lun-yü shuo-i , 391. 6a.

lennium B.C., when the two texts had been compiled. Remarkably, Sung also referred to the Taoist philosopher Lao-tzu, putatively a contemporary of Confucius, who like the sage had drawn on the naturalistic teachings of the Yellow Emperor (Huang-ti, tr. r. 2697-2597?? B.C. ). Such teachings, Sung contended, were included in the Kuei-tsang dj-vination texts, which furnished much of the underlying cosmology seen in the Change Classic. According to Hsiang-feng, Confucius's inclusion of the Change in his syllabus demonstrated that Confucius, like Lao-tzu, was interested in the theoretical vision bequeathed from antiquity. Therefore, Sung concluded, the " Annals was the locus for the esoteric words" Confucius derived from the Change Classic .^[52]

In arguing that "the Tao of Lao-tzu and Confucius derives from a common source," Sung Hsiang-feng controverted Han Learning scholars of the Ch'ing who used Confucius's "silence" in the Annals in order to reject speculation in favor of moral practice. By turning Han Learning inside out, Sung could reverse the k'ao-cheng rejection of Sung Learning moral theory. Confucius's "silence" demonstrated the theoretical poverty of Old Text Confucianism. Sung commented on a passage in the Analects in which Confucius's disciple Tzu-kung said: "One can get to hear about the Master's accomplishments, but one cannot get to hear his views on human nature and the Way of Heaven." Hsiang-feng noted that the Old Text interpretation missed the point of Confucius's efforts to compile the Five Classics. The Master's teachings were confirmed, not repudiated, by his silence.^[53]

Even his disciples had misunderstood Confucius's intent: "The Master said, 'I am thinking of giving up speech.' Tzu-kung said, 'If you do not speak, what would there be for us your disciples to transmit?' The Master said, 'What does Heaven ever say? Yet there are the four sea-

[52] Ibid., 392.1b-3a. Cf. Shchutskii, Researches on the I-ching, pp. 95-98. Sung Hsiang-feng's use of Lao-tzu to demonstrate that Confucius was not an "agnostic" rationalist—at first sight eccentric—was not at all so. Wei Yuan, the New Text statecraft scholar, later reevaluated the quietistic, Buddhistic elements that had dominated Taoism since the fall of the Later Han dynasty in an effort to restore the reachings of Lao-tzu to their pre-Hah naturalism and statecraft—traditions that were derived from the Yellow Emperor and encoded in the Change. Confucian and Taoist naturalism and statecraft, in the hands of nineteeneth-century New Text scholars, became complementary rather than antagonistic elements in New Text Confucianism. This reconstructed synthesis of ancient Confucianism and Taoism should not surprise us if we recall that the New Text Confucian orthodoxy forged by Tung Chung-shu in the Former Han represented an extraordinary confluence of Confucian, Taoist, and Legalist doctrines that formed a viable ideological legitimation for the Han Confucian state.

[53] Sung Hsiang-feng, Lun-yü shuo-i , 391.6a-8b, 393.1a-2a. See also Lau, trans., Confucius , p. 70; Lun-yÿ yin-te 8/5/13.

sons going round and there are the hundred things coming into being. What does Heaven ever say?'" Sung added that Confucius meant by "giving up speech" (wu-yen ) "esoteric words" (wei-yen ) that transcended normal discourse. Thus, discussion of "nature" and "external necessity" were esoteric doctrines that could not be grasped in normal terms. Confucius "spoke" as Heaven "spoke"—for those who could "listen."^[54]

The Taoist overtones of this remarkable passage were not missed by New Text scholars, who saw in the Analects confirmation of the vision of the Annals. As retrievers of the esoteric teachings, New Text Confucians such as Sung Hsiang-feng could claim an intimacy with the Han classical legacy. Referring to the capture of the lin at the close of the Annals and to the sense of cultural crisis in the Analects, Sung concluded that both texts had been encoded with "esoteric words," which, in a time of depravity and chaos, an "uncrowned king" was bequeathing to posterity. After centuries of dormancy, the voluntarist image of Confucius as sage-king was reemerging just in time for a new period of chaos.

[54] Sung Hsiang-feng, Lun-yü shuo-i, 397.5b-6a. Cf. See also Lun-yü yin-te, 36117/ 17, translated in Lau, Confucius , p. 146.