Michael Nylan

CONSTRUCTING LINEAGES AND INVENTING TRADITIONS THROUGH EXEMPLARY FIGURES IN EARLY CHINA

One major obstacle to understanding the early history of China is the still-prevalent notion that discrete schools of thought contended in the Warring States and Han periods, and that these schools of thought were text-centered. 2 A second is the propensity to conflate quite separate accounts of the same events, institutions, concepts, and taxonomies, for the purpose of devising a neater record. Some historians of early China, recognizing these obstacles, have sensed that the word jia 家 does not mean only “schools” or “scholastic lineages” (as it is typically translated). Still more argue against the notion of a China that is homogeneous and unchanging. A majority, however, continue to treat the terms “Ru” and “Dao” as direct and unproblematic references to two scholastic “isms,” Confucianism and Daoism, and to ignore discrepancies among the rhetorical constructions in the early sources.3 This essay aims

Textual Authority in Pre-Han and Han

a big book like Mark lewis’s Writing and Authority in Early China comes along in our field about once every ten years, providing a benchmark against which the rest of us measure our own efforts, inviting us to recast our own views of the past in unforeseen ways. More often than not, these books assert that much if not all of what happened in the area we now know as China can best be understood through a single dominant concept reflected in and reinforced by a unitary institutional framework. In a previous influential work by Lewis, the concept was sanctioned violence. Here it is writing’s authority. According to Lewis, from early Western Zhou (ca. 1050 b.c.), if not earlier, the written word enjoyed unparalleled authority—so much so that opponents of the state who chose the brush as the instrument by which to skewer the state survived, usually, unscathed and even admired. Of this exalted status, Lewis says, “[E]ven as they increasingly wrote for kings and included kings within their teaching scene, their claims to direct the conduct of kings remained an assertion of ultimate authority” (p. 63). At the same time, the capacities of the written word to expatiate and expound at great length prompted the eventual creation of works of truly encyclopedic nature, which only enhanced writing’s already considerable thrall. Then, at one specific point in time, 134 b.c., a corpus of texts, the Five Classics and their attached traditions, and most especially the Gongyang 公羊, came to put a sharper impress on the shape of the contemporary body politic than either the ruling dynasts or their bureaucratic functionaries, all of whom had to acknowledge its unchallenged sway. Throughout the remainder of Han, according to Lewis, writing functioned as “textual double of the polity” and as “the imaginary realm . . . against which actual institutions were measured” (p. 4). Lewis locates in writing itself a wonderfully potent site, thereby departing from more

Sima Qian: A True Historian?

This essay seeks to argue the merits of one approach to reading the Shiji , which casts the complex text more as a product of contemporary religious beliefs than as the product of either the taishi s individual genius or desire for historical objectivity. By the religious reading, Sima Qian fulfilled some part of his filial obligations when he honored his fathers dying wish to “continue our ancestors” by bringing together the tales they had gathered. Equally importantly, insofar as Sima Qian had restored to life an array of remarkable men and women from the Central States, he lived in the pious hope that these especially potent spirits among the civilized dead would choose in return to confer benefits on Sima Qian and his family as long as the Shiji continued to be read. When compared with the more standard readings, this proposed reading strikes the author not only as less anachronistic for the period,but also as more fully reflective of the whole text, including the eloquent appraisals appended to the end of each chapter in the Basic Annals, Hereditary Houses, and Biographical Traditions sections.

Comparative Political Philosophy and Liberal Education: "Looking for Friends in History"

importance (since part of liberal education is coming to terms with a particular historical past or tradition); the extent to which they are open to conflicting interpretations (since critical interpretation and argument about the meaning of words and things is the practice that defines the liberal classroom); and the extent to which they can be read with an eye to questions and problems of the present (since liberal education is justified largely by its capacity to encourage deliberation and informed action in the

Manuscript Culture in Late Western Han, and the Implications for Authors and Authority

A long-standing interest in material culture led me to reconstruct the material conditions associated with the massive library project initiated at the late Western court of Han Chengdi (r. 33–7 BC), for which very little material evidence now remains other than two small hills tentatively identified as the former sites of the Tianlu ge and Shiqu ge palace libraries. Research into that library project of 26–6 BC has prompted new insights into manuscript culture in early China, especially as it relates to questions of authorship and what was considered “fine writing,” shedding light on the methods and goals of the haogu 好古 (“loving antiquity”) project at Chengdi’s court led by the three most impressive thinkers of the two Han dynasties. That research also suggests that many, if not most of the so-called Zhanguo texts that we know today underwent substantial changes at the hands of the activist editors at Chengdi’s court.

Rafe de Crespigny, Fire over Luoyang: A History of the Later Han Dynasty, 23–220 AD. Sinica Leidensia, 134. Leiden – Boston: Brill, 2017. xii, 580 pp. Illustrations, Maps, Tables, Bibliography, Index, and Glossary. € 167 (HB). ISBN 978-90-04-32491-6

form a practical package of primary sources that historians of maritime Asia can safely rely on for their research. At the same time there is something very special about LDHL: This is the first major anthology of Chinese traditional texts with nautical data. As such it is a very innovative source – a collection that comes at a right point in time: The ongoing discussion of the “one belt one road” initiative implies the idea of reviving Asia’sMaritime Silk Route in a different format. This calls for new studies of China’s maritime past. Nautical knowledge of a practical kind was always essential for managing trade and traffic along traditional sailing corridors. The LDHL collection, I am sure, will become an excellent platform and indispensible tool for new investigations on that aspect. Therefore one ought to congratulate the editors for having prepared this wonderful work.

Zhuangzi: Closet Confucian?

Confucius (aka Kongzi) and Zhuangzi are the two most famous thinkers in all of Chinese history, aside from Laozi, the Old Master. They occupy positions in the history of Chinese thinking roughly comparable to those held by Plato and Epicurus in the Western narrative of civilisation, in that they offer visions of the engaged political life and the engaged social self to which later political theorists and ethicists invariably return. For the last century or so, if not longer, Sinologists and comparative philosophers have been apt to name Confucius the ‘founder’ of a Confucian ‘school’, and Zhuangzi, one of two ‘founders’ of a rival Daoist ‘school’, despite the lack of evidence for sectarian factions in early China. What is at stake in this essay is nothing less than a recasting of the entire early history of Chinese thinking in ways both bracing and potentially troubling to modern academics.

Exemplary Women of Early China: The Lienü Zhuan of Liu Xiang transed. by Anne Behnke Kinney

© 2016 by University of Hawai‘i Press the guṇas; Śakti and creation; avidyā, ignorance, on both a microand a macro-level; līlā and Īśvara’s play, etc.). We are all challenged in the post-Saidian context of the humanities to figure out how to represent non-Western traditions in ways that do not continue to perpetuate subtly condescending or elitist attitudes — I make a general point, here, and certainly not in reference to Nicholson’s work, which is otherwise perfectly sensitive to philosophical subtleties and religio-cultural considerations, and I do so to take this opportunity to contribute to this larger conversation. In my view words such as māyā should always be retained in the Sanskrit (as the author has done, e.g., for brahman, yoga, and dharma). The onus at this point in our cultural history is on the reader to stretch his or her philosophical horizons when engaging such texts, not the job of the scholar to mold such terms into inadequate crosscultural approximations. A good discussion of such terms in the introduction or in footnotes is all that is required to provide the unfamiliar reader with a map of the theological terrain that will be encountered. Other than this very minor point, Nicholson has done an excellent job giving us a very readable but accurate translation, preceded by a solid introduction of about the right length, breadth, and depth to be sufficient for all but specialists in this school. He provides thirty pages of commentarial endnotes, as well as the Sanskrit of the entire text at the end of the volume, along with a list of concordances to the Gītā and Upaniṣads. I envision this edition having wide usage; it could easily be used in a middle-level or advanced course on Hinduism, and certainly makes a welcome addition to the bookshelves of any scholar or specialist in the field.

Li Zehou's Lunyu jindu (Reading the Analects today)

This essay urges readers of modern Chinese to acquaint themselves with the distinctive readings that the erudite Li Zehou offers for the multiplicity of interpretive traditions attached to the Analects, in the hope that those with an interest in Chinese styles of thinking can advance this particular conversation in more complex and sophisticated ways. Perhaps more than any other scholar, Li demonstrates the enormous gaps separating pre-Han and Han assumptions from those most typical of late imperial China; Li also is thoroughly conversant with philosophy, East and West, in the twentieth century. While one notes what might be seen as Li’s occasional unreflective chauvinism and queries parts of his larger narrative regarding civilization and history, his desire (reminiscent in some ways of Bernard Williams’s project for the Greeks) to convey the superior flavor of the antique rhetoric to readers of today and in the future is to be applauded.

Xunzi: An Early Reception History, Han Through Tang

This chapter charts Xunzi’s influence from the Han through the Tang dynasties by (i) focusing on the histories of followers trained in Xunzi’s teachings; (ii) considering restatements of important themes in his work; (iii) searching for convergences between Xunzi’s prescriptions and actual institutions; (iv) ascertaining which problems Xunzi’s formulations appear to have resolved; and (v) tracing how Xunzi’s reputation fared over time, especially in comparison with rival masters. The extant sources for Xunzi’s influence during the Han show it pervading at least four aspects of elite culture: in the programmatic outline of the new imperial ideology and the arts of governing; in the philosophical underpinnings of penal and administrative law; in the articulation of a highly plausible picture of the physiology and psychology of human nature; and in the stark rejection of any role for abdication in matters of dynastic succession. Furthermore, Xunzi’s teachings inform discussions about direct vs. indirect remonstrance and technical discussions about logic. The sheer regularity with which Han thinkers advanced ever more “comprehensive” (i.e., systematic) solutions for society’s ills equally suggests the power of Xunzi’s persuasions. Tuning to the post-Han period, this essay disputes the commonly held view that esteem for Xunzi’s writings was in sharp decline by Sui-Tang times, especially in comparison with Mencius. Had Xunzi’s writings really been eclipsed by Mencius during the Six Dynasties, Sui, and Tang, scholars would find it hard to account for what texts from those periods reveal. Apparently, wherever we find the impulse to synthesize discrete areas of knowledge and create theories, thoughts of Xunzi arose, judging from our sources. Thus simple justice demands that we take seriously Sima Qian’s claim that Confucian teachings would never have achieved the prominence accorded them in imperial and post-imperial China, were it not for Xunzi’s making Kongzi’s teachings more “glossy and appealing.”