Genealogy and History in Neo-Confucian Sectarian Uses of the Confucian Past

Genealogy and History in Neo-Confucian Sectarian Uses of the Confucian pastAuthor(s): Thomas A. WilsonSource: Modern China, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan., 1994), pp. 3-33Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/189294Accessed: 16/11/2010 17:23

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Genealogy and History in Neo-Confucian Sectarian Uses of the Confucian Past

THOMAS A. WILSON Hamilton College

GENEALOGICAL HISTORY

How did "Neo-Confucians" understand the history of Confucian- ism?' How did they articulate this understanding in books about the Confucian past? One of the earliest and most widely read books about the Neo-Confucian tradition is Reflections on Things at Hand (Jin si lu), compiled by Zhu Xi (1 130-1200) and Lu Zuqian (1137-1181) in 1175. This text is one of over a hundred anthologies compiled by Confucians from the Song dynasty (960-1279) well into the Qing era (1644-1911). Before the Song there were no such texts in the Confu- cian tradition. Although the emergence of Neo-Confucian anthologies is historically significant, these texts have not been systematically analyzed as a distinct genre which can tell us about how Confucians from the Song on understood-or constructed-the Confucian tradition.

Prior to the sixteenth century most Neo-Confucian anthologists closely followed the organizational template found in Reflections on Things at Hand: selections of passages from the writings of a small number of literati concerning fourteen topics, such as substance of the Dao, investigation of things, moral self-cultivation, and regulating the household. There are at least a dozen other anthologies that use the same title, with certain modifications, and the fourteen topics of Reflections as a framework for selecting and ordering the writings of other Confucians. For example, Liu Qingzhi (1139-95) compiled Reflections on Things at Hand, Continued (Jin si xu lu), an anthology

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The author would like to thank Benjamin Elman, Conrad Schirokauer and John Chaffee for their comments on an earlier draft of this article.

MODERN CHINA, Vol. 20 No. 1, January 1994 3-33 ? 1994 Sage Publications, Inc.

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of the Cheng brothers' disciples. This "Reflections template" was largely, if inexactly, redeployed in a more comprehensive anthology of Dao School (Dao xue) writings called Great Collection on Nature and Principle (Xing li da quan, 1415), compiled by order of the throne to standardize the curriculum for students preparing for the civil service examinations. Another subgenre of the Confucian anthology emerged in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century when Confucians began to compile anthologies comprising biographies and selections of philosophical or doctrinal writings divided into chapters devoted to an individual literatus, rather than the topical arrangement of Reflections on Things at Hand. For example, in 1606 Zhou Rudeng (1547-c. 1629) compiled Orthodox Transmission of the Sages'Learn- ing (Sheng xue zong chuan), an anthology of biographies and selected writings of eighty-two persons from remote antiquity to his own mentor Luo Rufang (1515-1588). Sixty years later, in the early Qing, Sun Qifeng (1586-1675) compiled Orthodox Transmission of the Learning of Principle (Li xue zong chuan), an anthology of over 140 Confucians from the Han to the late Ming. That the form of anthologies is important to their compilers is evident in the nature of the disputes among anthologists which focus on problems of how the contents of these texts are organized as often as questions of content.

Insofar as they purport to convey a coherent picture of both the details and general trends within Confucianism over a long period, these anthologies are historical representations of the Confucian past. As such, they are the precursor to twentieth-century historical writing on philosophy in China, such as Liang Qichao's Chinese Intellectual History of the Past Three Hundred Years (1923), Qian Mu's 1937 book of the same title, and Feng Youlan's History of Chinese Philosophy (1931). Some modem readers have found Chinese historiography long on quotation and short on systematic interpretation, particularly regarding the issue of historical causation (Gardner, 1938: 69-71). But there are many modes of historical interpretation that express differing conceptions of the nature of the past and how it is represented in books. If, as Dominick LaCapra has argued (1983: 23-71), historical interpretation is largely a contextualizing operation, then a key to understanding the Neo-Confucians' account of the Confucian past is to examine the contexts into which they placed their "data."

Wilson /NEO-CONFUCIAN USES OF THE CONFUCIANPAST 5

In reading Neo-Confucian anthologies as historical in nature, it is important to resist the view that they are imperfect declensions of such Western historiographic genres as "history of philosophy" or "intellectual history," for Neo-Confucian anthologists relied on their own codes and idioms to represent the Confucian past which differ funda- mentally from those used in Western historiography. It is important to excavate, as it were, the native tropes that Neo-Confucian anthologists used to speak about their tradition and the idiom in which this discourse was articulated.

On the surface, Neo-Confucian anthologies comprise a series of biographies and excerpts of writings organized in a roughly chronological sequence. But this chronological sequence is only approxi- mate, and anthologists deviate from this seemingly "natural" chronological mode of representation at crucial moments in their accounts. If the conception of historical sequence as strictly chronological is not wholly applicable to these texts, what then is the principle of sequence at work?

The language in these anthologies betrays a complex and sophisti- cated conception of the Confucian past; a conception that relies upon tropes that differ from those found in Western historiography. These tropes, and the idiom in which they were enunciated, were intelligible to, indeed had powerful resonance among, Neo-Confucian readers of these texts. A careful reading of these anthologies shows that the Confucian tradition was conceptualized as a specifically genealogical transmission of truth. Thus the Confucian Dao was believed to be intelligible largely by means of delineating sagely lineages or tracing the transmission through history of those doctrines which purportedly correctly expressed the Dao. The Neo-Confucian historian of the Confucian tradition was a genealogist of the "orthodox lineage of the Confucian Dao," or Dao tong. This conception of truth is graphically represented in genealogical tables such as Li Yuangang's (fl. 1172) "Table of the Orthodox Transmission of the Way" (Chuan Dao zhengtong tu) (Li, 1172) and Huang Juan's (fl. 1566) "Table of the Orthodox Lineage of the Transmission of the Dao" (Dao tong zheng xi tu) (Zhou, 1606), among others.2 Genealogical discourse on the tradition was not merely used to converse about a presumably anterior, objective reality called the Dao, but rather to construct its own reality

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in the very process of the conversation. It is not my intention here to scrutinize Neo-Confucian anthologies in order to assess their relative historical accuracy, that is, to evaluate which of these texts most correctly recounts the "real" Confucian tradition. Rather, I seek to explicate the logic and discursive rules that underlie the construction of the Confucian tradition as a genealogy in these anthologies.3

An important organizing category in Neo-Confucian genealogy is "Dao tong," conventionally translated as "tradition of the Way." But this translation is misleading since Dao tong does not signify a tradition as such, but rather a filiative lineage of sages who were regarded as the sole transmitters of the true Confucian Way. "Filiative" genealogy, as I shall show, is based on a strategy of enunciating doctrinal positions that legitimates those doctrines specifically by claiming filiation to a single, orthodox lineage of sages which simultaneously excludes doctrinally divergent lineages from the orthodox tradition. Characterizing Dao tong as "genealogical" suggests the trope of the "patrilineal descent lineage" (zong) as used by Song Confucians who called for the reinstitution of the ancient "patrilineal descent system" (zong fa) and genealogy compilation (pu die). The goal of reviving the patriline (zong) as the primary lineage within the larger clan, as Patricia Ebrey has shown, was widely shared among many Song Confucians. For example, Fan Zhongyan (989-1052) founded a common descent organization (Twitchett, 1959) and Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) and Su Xun (1009-1066) formulated rules for the compilation of clan genealogy (Ebrey, 1986: 40-50). The connection between clan genealogy and Neo-Confucian genealogy of the Way can be inferred from a comment on "lineage regulations" by the Dao School master Zhang Zai (1020-1077):

In order to control the human mind in the world, bring together the patrilineal relatives [zong zu], enrich popular customs and enable people to never forget their origins, it is necessary to clarify the genealogical lineages of the generations of agnates [ming pu xi shi zu] and establish the regulations of the "primary lineage-heir" [zong zifa]. If the lineage regulations are not established then the people will not know the origin of their lineage's system [tong xi]. Among the ancients, there were few who did not know their origins. But when the regulations of the "primary lineage-heir" . . . and genealogical compilation declined, people ... did not know their origins . . . , there was no unified tradition of the "bone and flesh" relatives and among even very

Wilson /NEO-CONFUCIAN USES OF THE CONFUCIAN PAST 7

close relatives only the slightest kindness was displayed [Zhang Zai, 1978: 258-259; cf. Ebrey, 1986: 37-38].

Zhang Zai's primary concern is not merely to list all agnates of an extended lineage (zu) but furthermore to specify their relations to the primary lineage-heir in order to establish genealogical divisions that separate the various subbranches into a social hierarchy. This goal of establishing social hierarchies by genealogical means is more evident in Cheng Yi's (1033-1107) comments on lineage regulations:

Today there are no regulations of the "primary lineage-heir" thus there are no eminent lineages of ministers at court. If regulations concerning the primary lineage-heir are established then the people will know to revere the patriarch and regard their origins as important ... In ancient times, sons and younger brothers obeyed their fathers and elder brothers, but now fathers and elder brothers obey their sons and younger brothers (sons and younger brothers hold power). This is because they do not know their origins.... To establish regulations on the primary lineage-heir is a Principle of Heaven. It is like a tree: there must be a single trunk that grows directly out of the roots (like the primary lineage) but there must also be peripheral branches [Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, 1981: 18/242; cf. Ebrey, 1986: 38].

The theories that underlie clan genealogy and Neo-Confucian genealogy of the Way are strikingly similar. Truth is believed to lie in a remote origin which has been lost or forgotten. The moral degenera- tion of the present age is a consequence of losing this original truth. The solution is to recover this origin by means of a genealogical operation of separating the main lineage from agnate lines and privi- leging the main lineage (da zong) as the true transmission. In Neo- Confucian genealogy the determination of the one legitimate lineage as the exclusive transmission of truth is literally central. In their figurative use of the language of clan genealogy, the Neo-Confucians expanded the meanings signified by words in the genealogical lexicon to speak about the Confucian tradition. It is important to point out that the organization of relatives into patrilineal descent systems is no less a social construction as the organization of the Confucian tradition into filiative lineages is an ideological construction; the principle of Heaven is invoked to legitimate both of these genealogical projects.

In his Orthodox Transmission of the Learning of Principle, Sun Qifeng clearly speaks in this genealogical idiom:

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Learning's possession of a lineage [zong] is like the nation having a proper [monarchical] succession [tong] or a family having an ancestral lineage [xi]. [Just as] there are the main and minor [branches] of the ancestral lineage and there are the legitimate and illegitimate rulers in a nation's unified succession, in the lineage of a school there is Heaven and mind. Now, if one wants to inquire into the fortune of the nation, one must distinguish the legitimate succession [zheng tong]. In retrac- ing the origin of a family's roots [su jia zhi ben yuan] it is necessary first to identify the main lineage. Those who discuss the transmission of a school's orthodox lineage [xue zhi zongchuan] without tracing its origins to Heaven are not good scholars [Sun Qifeng, 1666: xu, 4a-4b].

In his preface to Sun Qifeng's anthology, Tang Bin (1627-1687) graphically evokes the essence of genealogy:

To receive the transmission [of the original mind] personally in the same ancestral hall is like the deceased paternal grandfather, the father, the legitimate son and grandson whose seminal spirit runs throughout the genealogy [Uing qi guan tong pu die]. The peripheral lines and branches dare not oppose the main lineage [da zong] even when they are all eminent at the same time [in Sun Qifeng, 1666: Tang xu, 3a-4a].

This discourse on the tradition was not just a philosophical exercise of stating which of the sages one preferred. It was a struggle among proponents of competing Confucian sects over the privilege to delineate the orthodox lineage. By the early Ming, the basic texts of Cheng-Zhu learning were also installed as the basis of the state examinations, a crucial component of the throne's ideological appara- tus. The Great Collection on Nature and Principle, compiled by order of the Yongle emperor (r. 1403-1425), integrated Dao School doctrines into the framework of educational institutions capable of reproducing an ideologically cohesive ruling class through the civil service examinations. As state orthodoxy, Dao School learning had a tremendous impact on Confucian education and profoundly shaped the nature of literati culture for five hundred years (Elman, 1991: 19-23). However, the Cheng-Zhu school was not merely a tool of the imperial govern- ment, for the school continued to be dynamic throughout the Ming and Qing. But to argue that state orthodoxy bears little doctrinal resem- blance to Dao School teachings ignores the fact that the promotion of the Dao School as state orthodoxy was enunciated on theoretical


grounds that were found in the writings of such major thinkers as Zhu Xi. Let us turn to an elaboration of these principles.

PRINCIPLES OF GENEALOGY OF THE WAY

Zhang Boxing (1652-1725), a major proponent of Cheng-Zhu learning at the Kangxi (r. 1661-1722) court, traced the genealogical practice signified by Dao tong to the final passage in the Mencius (7B.38),4 which says,

From Yao and Shun to Tang it was over five hundred years. Men like Yu and Gao Yao knew [Yao and Shun] personally Uian erzhi zhi], while those like Tang knew them only after hearing of them [wen er zhi zhi]. From Tang to King Wen it was over five hundred years. Men like Yi Yin and Lai Zhu knew [Tang] personally, while those like King Wen knew him only after hearing of him. From King Wen to Confucius it was over five hundred years. Men like Taigong Wang and Sanyi Sheng knew [King Wen] personally, while those like Confucius knew him only after hearing of him. From Confucius to the present it is over one hundred years. We are not far from the time of the sage and we are so close to his home, yet if there is no one who has anything of the sage, well then, there is no one who has anything of the sage [Lau, 1970: 204. trans. mod.].

The basic principle of Dao School genealogy is the conception of the Confucian tradition as a "transmission" (chuan) of doctrines within a "lineage" (zong) of sages. Mencius, however, does not explicitly mention transmission or a lineage in this passage. Zhu Xi rather insinuated these genealogical connotations into the text by saying,

Perhaps [Mencius] dared not say himself that he had already attained [Confucius'] transmission [de qi chuan], however he was concerned that later generations would lose [Confucius'] transmission. ... Therefore he described the lineage of the many sages in their sequence at the end of his book.... In this way he showed that the [ancient sages'] transmission had its place which could await the later sages for eternity [Zhu Xi, 1189: 7, 26b].5

This genealogical reading is absent in pre-Song commentaries. For example, in his explanation of this passage, the Han exegete Zhao Qi

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(d. 201) says that Mencius here is describing the difficulties of truly understanding the Sage after his death, yet there is no one in Mencius' day who "has anything of the Sage," even though only a little over a hundred years had passed since Confucius' death (Zhao Qi, 1965: 14/17a). Zhao's reading of this passage does not necessarily conflict with that of Zhu Xi-indeed, Zhu quotes, albeit selectively, from Zhao's commentary-but the absence of genealogical connotations in this Han commentary compels us to recognize that Zhu's genealogical reading is one of at least a few alternative interpretations. Zhang Boxing's contention that Dao tong can be traced back to Mencius is possible only if one reads this passage in the Mencius according to Zhu Xi's gloss. Zhu's reading is certainly valid, but Zhang can only explain the origins of Dao tong with the idea of Dao tong.

The origin of Confucian genealogical discourse is controversial largely because the only plausible antecedent is, from the Dao School perspective, heterodoxical. There was already a long tradition-dating back at least to the sixth century-in Buddhism of compiling genealogical anthologies before the emergence of Confucian anthologies in the twelfth century. During the eighth-century Chan Buddhist schism, Buddhist anthologizing projects became openly sectarian, excluding, for the first time, entire Buddhist sects from the patriarchal lineage, on the basis of doctrinal considerations (see Wilson, 1988: 103-129).

In the immediate aftermath of the outbreak of the Chan schism, the earliest Confucian genealogy was delineated by Han Yu (768-824). Han contended that Confucians of his day were deceived by Buddhists and Daoists into believing that Confucius once studied with Laozi and the Buddha. The real Confucian Dao, he maintained, was transmitted (chuan) from Yao through the sage-kings of the Three Dynasties to Confucius and Mencius. "When Mencius died," he said, "no one received the transmission. As for Xunzi [298-238] and Yang Xiong [53 BC-AD 18]: they chose from [the Way] but were not precise and they spoke about [the Way] but were not thorough" (Han Yu, 1935: 174). Though Han Yu did not specifically use the term "Dao tong," the sectarian agenda of Neo-Confucian genealogy is clearly adum- brated here: the true Confucian tradition is defined as an orthodox lineage which provides the justification for dissociating the Confucian Dao from heterodox lineages and also for excluding other Confucians (especially Xunzi) from this privileged lineage.


With the exception of Han Yu, pre-Song Confucians apparently did not delineate sagely lineages to exclude other Confucians. In Han- Tang times the major criterion for qualifying as a Confucian (ru), was to transmit the classics or write commentaries on them. Beginning in the eleventh century some members of the Dao School, such as Cheng Yi and others, regarded the category of the "Confucian" as too inclu- sive. In his eulogy of his older brother, Cheng Yi says that everyone regarded Cheng Hao as "the only person to transmit the Way of the sages after Mencius" (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, 1981: 639), thereby excluding all the Confucians who lived in the Han and Tang periods. Dao School proponents maintained that true Confucians did not simply talk about the Sage and read his books, but "resolved to learn to be a sage," which is the final sentence of Reflections on Things at Hand (Zhu Xi and Lu Zuqian, 1710: 346). It was necessary, these men believed, to separate those who set their wills on becoming sages from Confucian pedants (su ru), who merely wanted to read about it. When such Confucian pedants read the classics, Dao Schoolmen maintained, they failed to apprehend the Sage's original meaning or principle (yi li) that lay subtly beneath the surface of the text.

In the final chapter of Reflections on Things at Hand, Zhu Xi lists the "sages and worthies" of the Confucian tradition, as well as several Confucians who were, in the words of Ye Cai (a thirteenth-century editor of the text), "unable to transmit this lineage of the Way" (wei neng chuan si Dao zhi tong) (Zhu Xi and Lu Zuqian, 1710: 327). This chapter of Reflections has rarely been scrutinized by scholars of Neo-Confucianism, who have tended, rather, to focus on the earlier chapters of the text, where the metaphysical, pedagogical, political, and ethical tenets of Dao School learning are elaborated. Chapter 14 of Reflections is important not only because it tells us about Zhu Xi's vision of the Confucian tradition but also because it was used by later Dao School proponents for explicitly sectarian aims. My primary concern then is to explicate the logical operations at work in the text by placing this book and Zhu's related writings, particularly his preface to Doctrine of the Mean, in the context of how it was historically read, rather than with the meaning that Zhu Xi, as its author, intended to express.6

The approach to reading texts proposed here differs from the conventional practice among intellectual historians who tend to inter-


pret texts by explicating the author's intended meaning, usually by placing philosophical treatises in the context of the lived experiences of their authors. Intellectual historians cum biographers have read Reflections in order to gain access to the mind of Zhu Xi (e.g., Chan, 1973: 59-87; Qian, 1970: 3/150-151; de Bary, 1983: 21-27). But such widely read texts as Reflections historically produce meanings that were not intended by the author. This is in part because language-the basic stuff of textuality-is a public tool for communication and not the exclusive possession of a single author. Thus a text does not exist in a historical vacuum; when it is read, it produces meaning which the author has no proprietary claim to limit or control. Zhu Xi himself may never have intended to enunciate an exclusionary conception of the Confucian past in the last chapter of Reflections, that is to say, to outline a history of Northern Song Confucianism that excludes many important thinkers on doctrinal grounds, but this is precisely how this chapter was understood by many of its Neo-Confucian readers. My argument that this chapter is part of a sectarian struggle for power and doctrinal legitimacy does not hinge on whether Zhu Xi himself intended to engage in such controversies. This and other writings by Zhu Xi do, however, adumbrate the principles of an exclusionary discourse that were used by many of his followers as a template for compiling other anthologies to claim the mantel of the Confucian Dao in order to legitimate their vision of truth and at the same time to silence conflicting versions of the Confucian tradition.

A practical application of these principles to reading Neo-Confucian anthologies is to describe how Zhu Xi's text was "reproduced"; to describe how the logic, form, strategies of quotation, and criteria of selection and omission that can be found in Reflections were redeployed in similar kinds of texts. This approach to the historical significance of Zhu Xi's Reflections is theoretically possible and extremely valuable largely because Reflections had an enormous impact on Confucianism in the 700 years since its compilation. It was read by virtually every educated Confucian at least since the early fifteenth century, if not earlier, and was reproduced, copied, and imitated many times (see Ji Yun, 1805: ch. 92-97). Most editions of Reflections interpolate Zhu Xi's comments from his collected works. Just as importantly, the same genealogical principles that shaped the

Wilson/NEO-CONFUCIAN USES OF THE CONFUCIAN PAST 13

last chapter of Reflections were invoked by scores of compilers of other anthologies well into the nineteenth century.

As noted above, an important category in Neo-Confucian genealogy is Dao tong, or orthodox lineage of the Dao. The locus classicus of this term is Zhu Xi's preface to Doctrine of the Mean, written in 1189, in which Zhu articulates several principles of genealogical discourse that were subsequently appropriated in sectarian disputes over the lineage. Zhu Xi begins his preface by saying "Zisi [Kong Ji] wrote [the Mean] because he feared that the learning of the Way would lose its transmission [shi qi chuan]." Zhu maintained that this learning of the Way was reducible to an "esoteric teaching" (mi zhi), which came to be called the "sixteen-word transmission," that was transmitted among the ancient sages from Yao to Yu. This esoteric teaching warns: "The human mind is precarious, the mind of Dao is barely perceptible. Be discerning and single-minded. Hold fast to the mean" (Zhu Xi, 1189: la-2a; cf. de Bary, 1981: 1-13; Gardner, 1989: 169- 171).7 Appropriating Mencius' words, Zhu Xi continues: Confucius later understood this warning, but when he taught these doctrines to his disciples, "only Yan Hui [Yanzi (b. ca. 521)] and Zeng Can [Zengzi] 'saw and understood' [ian er zhi zhi (Mencius, 7B.38)] the master. Only the transmission of Yanzi and Zengzi continued this lineage [zong]." By Zisi's time, heterodoxies had arisen and he "feared that the truth of this [teaching] would be lost as time passed, so he . . . wrote [Doctrine of the Mean] to instruct later students." Of the Mean Zhu says, "After the passage of generations and more than a thousand years, [Zisi's] words were no different [from those of Yao and Shun]; they fit together like two halves of a tally..... "The Mean "brought out the essential principles and gave voice to what was hidden and deep [in the sages' teachings]. From here it was again transmitted by Mencius, who was able to further illuminate this book and continue the transmission of the former sages. When he died the transmission was lost." During the long hiatus in the transmission after Mencius, Zhu Xi continues,

that upon which our Way depended was nothing more than what was spoken and the words in texts.... Heterodoxies arose daily to the point that Daoists and Buddhists emerged who brought great chaos to truth with their spurious principles.... [But] when the Cheng brothers exam-


ined [the canon] they were able to continue the untransmitted thread of a thousand years, and to gain a foundation upon which to rebuke the speciousness of [Buddhism and Daoism].... Were it not for the Cheng brothers, no one would be able to receive the mind of the sages through their words.... Although the explanations by the Cheng brothers' disciples are thorough and complete . . . some of them followed their masters' explanations but sank into Buddhism and Daoism [Zhu Xi, 1189: 2a-3a].

The meaning of the sages' learning, according to this text, is not ineffable, but can be articulated in words in the form of a doctrine (shuo). This doctrine articulates an unchanging, esoteric principle that is transmitted along a lineage of sages. Apprehension of this transmission is theoretically open to anyone, but in practice it is possible to receive the transmission only if one understands the sages' meaning correctly. Of Confucius' seventy immediate disciples, only the transmission of Yanzi and Zengzi apprehended Confucius' meaning. This is why distinguishing the Dao's correct lineage, or Dao tong, was so crucial: not knowing which of the many Confucians of the past correctly understood the Dao put one at risk of sinking into heterodoxy. As the Dao is transmitted through history, there are to be no changes, only further illuminations of the essential principles which are hidden and deep. Zhu Xi's genealogy of the Way is the transmission of an essence, an eternal, unchanging truth.

Zhu Xi's statement that only Mencius received the Dao from Confucius after which the transmission ceased-a notion earlier enunciated by Han Yu-implicitly excludes from the transmission such major Confucians as Xunzi, Dong Zhongshu and the Confucian exe- getes of the Han and Tang. The justification for such exclusions was that by failing to understand principles as the real meaning of the sages, these men failed to understand the true Dao itself. This was epistemo- logically possible because the Dao was a truth to which the words in the classics could only refer. Words could be relied upon to describe the Dao, but understanding the words in the canon did not ensure apprehension of the Way itself-language and truth were not synon- ymous-so that when no one transmitted the Way after Mencius, it only existed precariously in the words of the canon. The Han classi- cists, according to this logic, transmitted the words of the canon but failed to transmit the Way itself (Tang, 1966: 1-69; Ch'ien, 1986:


191-194). This principle of exclusion was not only used to elide Confucians who, by merely transmitting the classics, fell short (bu ji) of transmitting the Dao, but also those who went too far (guo), such as the disciples of the Cheng brothers, who were admittedly close to the truth, but who ultimately sank into heterodoxy. To alter or modify the learning of Dao even in the slightest is tantamount to losing the transmission and thereby necessitating exclusion from the orthodox lineage.

The manner in which Zhu Xi expressed his claims about the tradition indicates that the genealogical mode of speaking about the Way and the idiomatic language used to articulate these claims had already been an integral part of how Dao School Confucians understood the Way. Neo-Confucian genealogy based on Dao tong was not an idea invented in a moment of genius, for there are no systematic explanations or justifications for discussing the Way in this manner recorded in their writings. Nor was there any attempt to explicate formally the terms of genealogical discourse. Although the idea of Confucian genealogy is probably first enunciated by Han Yu, genealogical discourse came to dominate Dao School discussions of the Confucian tradition in the twelfth century. By the early Ming, genealogical discourse was so pervasive in Confucian writings generally that it was virtually invisible to those who spoke in this idiom. Genealogy was "naturalized" to the point that Ming Confucians were unable to recognize it as a historically specific discourse unique to its time and place.

GENEALOGYAND SECTARIANISM IN THE MING AND QING

Having described how Neo-Confucians constructed the tradition of the Dao as a lineage by means of genealogy, it is important to understand how genealogy was used in sectarian controversy. Because the number of genealogical issues is conceivably quite numerous, I shall limit my comments to one specific issue, which is one of the most controversial in Neo-Confucianism: the so-called "differences and similarities between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan" (Zhu Lu yi tong). As a sectarian and genealogical issue, this question, in its most simple

16 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY1994

formulation may be stated as "should Lu Xiangshan be included in the orthodox lineage as delineated by Zhu Xi and his followers?" and if so, "under what circumstances?" Before the sixteenth century, Dao School genealogists simply excluded Lu from the orthodox lineage. This was possible largely because Lu had so few disciples, but once this exclusion was affected, a resurgence of support for Lu's teachings became increasingly unlikely. The specific details of why Zhu Xi and his followers disagreed with Lu Xiangshan's teachings has received considerable attention in the scholarly literature and need not be repeated here (e.g., Qian, 1970: 3/359-488; Mou, 1968: 1/357-415; Ching, 1974: 161-178; Chan, 1963b: ch. 33). The issue I shall address here is how Lu Xiangshan's exclusion from the orthodox lineage was achieved.

There are many key texts which deploy the principle of exclusion enunciated by Zhu Xi, one of the most important of which is the Great Collection on Nature and Principle, the officially approved anthology used by examination candidates since the early Ming. To say merely that the editors of the Great Collection favored Zhu Xi or were biased against Lu Xiangshan does not begin to address how it was rhetorically possible to produce in this text a certain type of knowledge about Zhu Xi and another type about Lu Xiangshan. The section on Zhu is composed entirely of biographical statements by his teachers and disciples, one of the longest of which is by Huang Gan (1152-1221), Zhu's chief disciple, in which Zhu is represented as the true heir to the Dao.8 The Great Collection quotes Huang's scarcely veiled reference to the Zhu Xi-Lu Xiangshan dispute:

There are those who are excessive in their search for the Way. They criticize the use of commentaries and recitation as a burden and believe that it is possible to know the mind and nature without a textual foundation, to enter the Way and become virtuous without taking the time to correct one's conduct. They hold to falsely clever disputes and obscure the reality of Heavenly Principle, they borrow Confucian words to give expression to Daoist and Buddhist doctrines. Students delight in their simplicity and convenience, blaspheme the sages and worthies, cast aside the classics and wildly cry out and mutter. They take their stubborn perversity for enlightenment. . .. Master [Zhu Xi] rebuked such people so that they could not cause chaos to our Dao and delude the world [Hu Guang, 1415: 41/6b].9


Although Zhu's voice rarely appears in Huang Gan's account, he remains the indirect speaking subject of his own biography. Zhu Xi may never have spoken these words himself, but he might as well have.

Conversely, the section in Great Collection on Lu Xiangshan is composed entirely of statements by Zhu Xi-primarily from Master Zhu 's Categorized Conversations (Zhuzi yu lei)-and as such amounts to an extension of the Dao School's critique of Lu's learning as already articulated by Zhu Xi himself. The Great Collection quotes extensively from Zhu's systematic rebuttal of Lu's faith in the self- sufficiency of the mind-and-heart to achieve enlightenment based on Lu's teaching of "that which comes immediately from the self is correct" (dang xia bian shi) and Lu's alleged rejection of "learned knowledge" (wen er zhi zhi) in favor of "innate knowledge" (sheng er zhi zhi).'0 Moreover, the life behind Lu Xiangshan's teachings has become irrelevant, for no biographical texts on Lu are included. It is the voice of Zhu Xi who speaks here as the final judge of Lu's place in the Confucian tradition. This is precisely the same rhetorical strategy found in chapter thirteen of Reflections on heterodoxies, where the reader never encounters any Buddhist writings, but rather the Dao School critique of Buddhism. Thus the position of the authorial voice in the Great Collection in relation to Lu Xiangshan is quite different than its relation to Zhu Xi. Zhu's voice-his position on doctrinal matters-resonates throughout the Great Collection, whereas Lu Xiangshan is never more than a mute object of his Dao School critics. Lu was never entirely unknown before he was purportedly rediscov- ered by Wang Yangming, for anyone preparing for the state examinations read all about Lu in this anthology. But the reader is not permitted here to listen to his voice even though elsewhere one may read his writings; Lu Xiangshan is not eradicated by genealogical discourse, but he is surely silenced.

When the schools associated with the followers of Wang Yangming flourished in the sixteenth century, Dao School learning had been established as the basis of state orthodoxy for at least two hundred years. By this time the Dao School conception of the Confucian tradition had been long entrenched in the political culture of late imperial China and had shaped the language in which discussion of the tradition was conducted. Wang's followers in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-

18 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY 1994

turies sought to legitimate his doctrines by reconstructing the tradition of the Dao as determined by Dao School genealogists with a particular emphasis on the lineage in the Song period. Wing-tsit Chan and Theodore de Bary maintain that the original inspiration for Wang Yangming's doctrinal innovations came from Zhu Xi rather than Lu Xiangshan (Chan, 1970: 42-45; de Bary, 1989: 88-123), but Wang nonetheless "claimed" Lu and evidently believed that the latter's inclusion in the Dao tong legitimated his own teachings. This re- construction necessitated revising the genealogical status of Lu Xiangshan to include him in the Dao tong. By including both Lu and Zhu, the Wang Yangming version of the tradition was nominally broader than that of the Dao School. But proponents of the reconstructed lineage did not construct a pluralistic lineage, as one might have expected, because they did not question the principal assumption of Dao School genealogy: that there could only be one legitimate Confucian lineage that transmitted a singular, orthodox set of doctrines. This was the same principle that had earlier authorized exclusion of Lu Xiangshan from the tradition. Since Zhu and Lu clearly had fundamental doctrinal differences, it was necessary for Wang's sup- porters to alter the historical significance of Zhu Xi in the orthodox lineage; to make Zhu Xi mean something other than what most Dao School proponents understood Zhu and his writings to mean.

There were at least two goals of this Wang Yangming revisionism. First, to show that late in his life Zhu Xi regretted his earlier teachings, particularly those which based the moral rectification of the mind-and- heart on the investigation of external principles, and second, to atten- uate and possibly even conceal any evidence of difference between Zhu and Lu Xiangshan. Thus Wang Yangming and his followers differed with the reigning Dao School conception of the Confucian tradition, not over whether the Dao could be represented as a filiative lineage, but rather over who else should be included in the Dao tong. Therefore, the legitimation of Lu and Wang amounted to a mediation project (tiao ting) which downplayed and often concealed the differences between Zhu Xi, on one hand, and Lu and Wang on the other, and once again constructed a singular, "monologic" version of the Confucian tradition." This stands in curious opposition to their per- sistent criticisms of many Cheng-Zhu doctrines as inconsistent with the original teachings of the ancient sages, illustrated, for example, in


the disputes over the proper sequence of learning described in the Great Learning.

Earlier, Cheng Minzheng (1445-c. 1499) attempted to reconcile doctrinal disputes between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan in his anthology called The Way is One (Dao yi bian). But the definitive mediation statement was Wang Yangming's controversial "Master Zhu's Con- clusions of his Later Years" (Zhuzi wan nian ding lun), an anthology of thirty-three passages from Zhu Xi's letters which records Zhu's alleged realization in his later years that his learning was fragmented (zhi li) and required greater emphasis on inner cultivation (Wang, 1959: ch. 3/83-91; Chan, 1963a: 263-267). Wang's "Master Zhu's Conclusions" is not exactly a genealogical text-a construction of the Confucian tradition-but it has unambiguous genealogical implica- tions. By articulating his own conception of moral self-cultivation through Zhu Xi's words, Wang in effect mediated the differences separating Zhu and Lu, bringing them together into a singular, unified tradition and by extension, legitimating his own teachings. Wang's insistence that there should not be any disagreements between Zhu and Lu resorts to the same monologic strategy in Reflections on Things at Hand and Great Collection on Nature and Principle. Wang was quickly challenged by Luo Qinshun (1465-1547) for misrepresenting Zhu's meaning (Luo Qinshun, 1978: ch. 4/4-9; Bloom, 1987: 179- 184), and was later systematically repudiated by Chen Jian (1497- 1567) as a "Buddhist in Confucian disguise" (Chen Jian, 1548: qian bian). One might argue that the aim of mediation is doctrinal synthesis, which is not always compatible with historical representation. This is precisely the point, for the aim of synthesis is not to represent the historical disparity of other scholars' original intentions, but to reshape their words into something else: a single teaching which is internally coherent and unified. The original aims of the persons included in such texts as Wang's "Master Zhu's Conclusions" and Zhu Xi's Reflections on Things at Hand, are at best secondary, despite, or perhaps because of the anthologist's claim that he has brought to light the true Way in their writings.

If chapter 14 of Reflections on Things at Hand became the arche- type of subsequent Dao School accounts of the Confucian tradition, Wang Yangming's "Master Zhu's Conclusions" established the terms of the mediation agenda of genealogists who sought to legitimate

20 MODERN CHINA / JANUARY1994

Wang Yangming and the schools associated with his name. One of the most comprehensive mediation anthologies is Orthodox Transmission of the Sages 'Learning, completed in 1606 by the Taizhou scholar Zhou Rudeng, a disciple of Luo Rufang. Zhou prefaces his anthology with a genealogical table by Huang Juan in which Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming are merged with the orthodox lineage of the Dao School. The accompanying essay entitled "Inquiry into the Dao tong" records a conversation in which genealogical discourse is deployed to place Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming in elevated statuses in this lineage. Someone asks why Yang Shi, Li Tong, Wu Cheng, and Hu Juren were included in the lineage, which draws the response:

I have observed in the sacrificial ceremonies that the patriarchs of the main lineage do not change even every one hundred generations and that the patriarchs of the minor lineages change every four generations. Yang Shi . . . and Li Tong are the patriarchs of minor lineages and Zhu and Lu are the patriarchs of the main lineage.... Wu... and Hu are the patriarchs of minor lineages and Wang Yangming is the patriarch of the main lineage [Zhou Rudeng, 1606: Dao tong wen, 2b].

Zhou's text is important for at least two reasons. As regards the question of genre, it is one of the earliest extant anthologies that comprises biographies and selections of writings divided into chapters devoted to individual figures. Zhou's Orthodox Transmission of the Sages' Learning includes sections on eighty-two persons from the culture hero Fuxi to Luo Rufang. Before this time genealogists largely redeployed the topical template found in Reflections on Things at Hand. 12 Reflections-which includes very brief biographical passages in the final chapter-implicitly separates thought and action, the latter being the principal subject-matter of Zhu's biographical anthology called Origins of the Yi Luo School (Yi luo yuan yuan lu). It is significant that, like Reflections, Zhu's Origins (which includes virtually no selections of writings) was also repeated in a number of expansions compiled by Dao School proponents. If the unification of action and thought implicit in the anthologies of biographies and writings compiled by followers of Wang Yangming was the result of a conscious change in textual strategy to express Wang's doctrine of the "unity of knowledge and action," they have remained silent on the issue. An equally plausible reason for this shift is that the topics in


Reflections reflect particularly Dao School concerns that were not compatible with Wang Yangming's doctrinal reorientation. There were some "Reflections-type" anthologies of Wang and his followers (e.g., Yun Richu, Liuzi jie yao [Ji Yun, 1805: ch. 96, 1991]), but these are rare. Orthodox Transmission of the Sages 'Learning is also important because Zhou Rudeng's selection of Zhu's writings repeats Wang's "Master Zhu's Conclusions" thesis and is based almost entirely on the letters Wang designated as articulating this purported final position. The first text in the chapter on Zhu in this anthology an- nounces that he (Zhu) now recognizes his earlier error of his fragmented learning (9/7a). Although Zhou Rudeng concludes his selections with some of Zhu's other essays, his account is a testament to Zhu's alleged later reconciliation with Lu Xiangshan.

Sun Qifeng's Orthodox Transmission of the Leaming of Principle (Li xue zong chuan), compiled in 1666, a much more widely known text, differs from Zhou's anthology in many details. Sun omits pre-Han persons and in his selections of Zhu's writings Sun begins with such key essays as "Explanation of Observing the Mind" and "Explanation of Humanity." But in his anthology, Sun also mediates the doctrinal disputes that separated Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan, in part by concluding his selections of Zhu's writings with letters from Wang's "Master Zhu's Conclusions of his Later Years."'3 Neither Zhou Rudeng nor Sun Qifeng explicitly address the mediation agenda that underlies Wang's selection of Zhu's letters nor the controversy that it provoked. These letters are treated, rather, as straightforward selections of letters written by Zhu's hand. Moreover, in his account of Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan, Sun Qifeng consistently avoids or defuses such disputes as their meeting at Goose Lake in 1175, when their differences first became apparent.

Although he does eventually discuss the Zhu-Lu controversy, Sun Qifeng does not mention their disagreements in his biography of Zhu Xi. Sun's biography of Zhu repeats the standard account of Zhu's life, but just before Zhu encounters Lu Xiangshan at Goose Lake in 1175, Sun's narrative turns to a summary of Zhu's official career taken from Zhu's biography in the Song History. In Sun's biography, Zhu meets Lu for the first time in 1181, when Lu gave a lecture on righteousness and profit at the White Deer Grotto Academy that pleased Zhu so much


that he had Lu's lecture engraved onto stone tablets. Sun's biography of Zhu also does not mention the renewal of disputes in the mid- 180s over Zhou Dunyi's "Diagram of the Supreme Ultimate."'4

Included among the commentaries at the end of Sun's chapter on Zhu Xi is a passage from Wang Yanggming's preface to his "Master Zhu's Conclusions," in which Wang relates that after his enlightenment, he (Wang) found that the details of his personal awakening disagreed with Zhu Xi's teachings. But after searching through Zhu Xi's writings, Wang found that, "in his later years, Master Zhu Xi clearly realized the mistakes of his earlier doctrines. He regretted them so deeply that he said that he could not be redeemed for the crime of having deceived others as well as himself." Generations of scholars, Wang continued, have read only Zhu's writings of his middle years and did not know about "Zhu Xi's teachings after his awakening. Is it any wonder that my words are not accepted and that Master Zhu's mind has not revealed itself to later generations?" (Chan, 1963a: 265-266 trans. mod.; Sun Qifeng, 1666: 6/38b; Wang Yangming, 1959: ch. 3/83). Sun omits several passages which, if included, apparently would have undermined his mediation agenda. For example, in his preface to "Master Zhu's Conclusions," Wang says that Zhu's later followers have "trod over obstacles and fallen into ditches. In the final analysis, their doctrines are inferior even to those of Buddhism and Daoism. It is no wonder that the world's brilliant scholars have gotten tired of Confucianism and rushed to them [Buddhism and Daoism]. Is this the fault of Buddhism and Daoism?" Sun also omits Wang's response to those who charge that he has "established strange doctrines," which reads: " . . . but [these people] compete with one another in making endless noise to confuse the correct learning without realizing that they themselves have entered heterodoxy [yiduan]" (Chan, 1963a: 265-266 trans. mod.; Wang Yangming, 1959: ch. 3/83).

It is not until his biography of Lu Xiangshan that Sun Qifeng raises the problem of the Zhu-Lu controversy. In the final third of this biography Sun argues that the real dispute was not between Zhu and Lu, but between their disciples who were excessive. Sun says Lu's followers relied on "the self-sufficiency of the mind-and-heart and thus blasphemed the sages and worthies and abandoned the classics," while Zhu's students were "narrow in their daily study of philology


and punctuation, thus what they preserved [was not important in self-cultivation]" (Sun Qifeng, 1666: 7/5b). "After Lu died," Sun continues,

Zhu's disciples raised and exposed [Lu's] shortcomings. The conten- tious sectarians went so far as to rebuke Lu as heterodoxical and bitterly cast him away while ignoring his strengths. When Lu and Zhu could not agree in their disputes over the "Diagram," Lu responded to a question that, even if "there was no Zhu Xi from Jian'an and no Lu Xiangshan from Qingtian [there would still be a disagreement over the "Diagram"]." And when a student rebuked [Lu] in a letter to Zhu, Zhu Xi responded, "Since [the Song court] moved south only Lu Xiangshan and myself have gained a thorough understanding and comprehend concrete practice. I certainly respect him as a person; one cannot dispute him lightly." In another letter, Master [Zhu] said, "I feel that recently my moral practice is much stronger and that I have not repeated my former error of fragmentation. I do not know whether [Lu and I] would still have any differences at some other time" [5b-6a].'5

In the last section of the chapter on Lu Xiangshan, Sun Qifeng includes statements on Lu by other thinkers that differ from concluding assessments found in the Great Collection on Nature and Princi- ple. He quotes Zhu Xi saying Lu's "learning is concerned only about the original goodness of the mind-and-heart. No words can be added to this. It is only that people can be blocked up by their selfish desires. If one can apprehend the mind-and-heart then all things will flow forth without any added effort. [Lu Xiangshan] indeed actually saw what principles were, so he feared neither Heaven nor Earth, but only cried out and yelled" (Sun Qifeng, 1666: 7/24b; Zhu Xi, 1270: ch. 124/2981). This passage by Zhu Xi is followed by a statement from Lu's disciple Yuan Xie (1 144-1224) who says,

The essence of learning and inquiry is only to apprehend the original mind. The root of the mind has never been anything but good. Mencius often said this. It was only with master [Lu] that this was first greatly illuminated like guiding a lost traveler or medicating an old illness. Students who personally received the teacher's instructions now know the sages and worthies are originally the same as us, whereas previously they gazed upon them as if separated by ten thousand li [7/24b].

These two comments work well together for Lu Xiangshan. Sun Qifeng leaves it to Zhu Xi to point out that Lu is concerned with the


original goodness of the mind. Because Lu himself understood the mind he had no fears himself. Sun then has Yuan Xie immediately remind his readers that Mencius frequently spoke of the mind's original goodness. In this context, Zhu's statement that "people can be blocked up by their selfish desires" is not an accusation, which may have been originally intended, but a warning against potential error, for which Lu's instructions can act as a guide for students, as if they were lost travelers in need of directions.

In his concluding comment at the end of his chapter on Lu Xiangshan, Sun says,

The differences and similarities between Zhu and Lu have been argued back and forth for five hundred years. From the point of view of their differences, Zhu intended to teach people to first inquire extensively after which they were to return to essentials. Lu intended to teach people to first illuminate one's original mind, after which they were to inquire extensively. Zhu thought Lu's method of teaching was too easy and simple so Zhu tended toward the "path of inquiry and learning." Lu thought Zhu's method of teaching was fragmented so Lu tended toward "honoring the moral nature." In the end, when the essentials follow extensive inquiry, this is precisely how the "path of inquiry and learning" "honors the moral nature." When extensive inquiry follows the essentials, this is how "honoring the moral nature" never leaves the "path of inquiry and learning." This is to seek how [Zhu and Lu] have never violated the Way, that is all .. . Ultimately the two masters were brave scholars: different but yet the same, the same but yet different. This is the middle and correct insight [Sun Qifeng, 1666: 7/26a].

This account of the relation between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan is particularly interesting because Sun Qifeng explains the doctrines of each as the essential complement of the other. Because Lu emphasized honoring the moral nature, one aspect of the learning of the profound person as defined by Doctrine of the Mean, Zhu emphasized the other: the path of inquiry and learming. It is only together that their learning constitutes a complete account of the Way of the Sage. The only way later students can hope to apprehend the Dao is by doctrinal mediation.

In his preface to Orthodox Transmission of the Learning of Princi- ple, Sun Qifeng explicitly attempts to construct a seamless lineage that included both Cheng-Zhu and Lu and Wang. Paraphrasing Wu Cheng (1249-1333), a Yuan proponent of Cheng-Zhu learning, Sun says the


orthodox tradition down to Wang Yangming underwent three phases which he explained in terms drawn from the first hexagram of the Book of Changes:

The great origin of the Dao came from Heaven and was continued by august sages.... The origin [yuan] of the Dao in remote antiquity was emperor Fuxi, its growth [heng] was Yao and Shun, its flourishing [li] was Yu and Tang and its completion [zhen] was [kings] Wen and Wu, and the Duke of Zhou. The origin of the lineage during middle antiquity was Confucius, its growth was Yanzi and Zengzi, its flourishing was Zisi and its completion was Mencius. The origin of the lineage during recent antiquity was Zhou Dunyi, its growth was the Cheng brothers and Zhang Zai and its flourishing was Zhu Xi. Who is the completion in modern times? . . . It has been two thousand years from the death of Confucius to the present. It has been more than five hundred years since Lian-Luo [Zhou Dunyi and the Chengs]. Yaojiang [Wang Yangming] could not but be the completion of Ziyang [Zhu Xi] [Sun Qifeng, 1666: xu, 4b-6b].

Sun Qifeng's as well as Zhou Rudeng's most fundamental diver- gence from the Dao School account of the Zhu-Lu controversy was the insertion of Lu Xiangshan's voice into the tradition by including him in their anthologies. This marks a reversal of Dao School commentaries on Lu Xiangshan, because Zhu's "earlier" teachings, which conflict with those of Lu, are effectively silenced in Sun's account. In these mediation accounts, Lu assumes a positive role in the Confucian tradition as a subject of his own words.16 Moreover, Sun ameliorates the doctrinal confrontation between Zhu and Lu by merging a small number of Zhu's writings with the letters which articulate his alleged "final position." The Zhu Xi that is constructed in Sun Qifeng's anthology is doctrinally consonant with the teachings of Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming.

This mode of representing the tradition amounts to a genealogical mediation which merged Lu Xiangshan with the Cheng-Zhu lineage and thereby legitimated Wang Yangming's teachings. This infiltration finally brings the previously silenced Confucians, whose teachings were not always compatible with the Dao School as elucidated in such texts as Great Collection on Nature and Principle, into the orthodox discourse of the Dao School. However, the effect of this strategy was to legitimate Lu and Wang while simultaneously reaffirming the


central, legitimating authority of the Dao School. The subtle disso- nance of conflicting views is, for the filiative genealogist, an unac- ceptable paradox because there can only be one single lineage which transmits a unified doctrine signified by Dao tong. As Tang Bin says in his preface to Sun's Orthodox Transmission, "What Heaven confers upon us is not of two Principles and that which the sages continued from Heaven is not in two schools [or "teachings" (xue)]" (in Sun Qifeng, 1666: Tang xu, la).'7 He continues,

From Tang, Wen, Wu, the Duke of Zhou and Confucius to Yanzi, Zengzi, Zisi and Mencius, there was only this Dao of "self-perfection and the completion of others" [Mean 25]. From most ancient times to the present there is only this learning.... Master Zhou [Dunyi] rose loftily in Chongling and directly received [Mencius and Confucius]. From the Cheng brothers, Zhang [Zai], Shao [Yong] and Zhu [Xi] to [Wang] Yangming, although some of their realizations were deep and others shallow, and there were minor differences in their natural endowments, they all mutually authenticated one another [xiang yin] with what they attained for themselves in their mind-and-hearts [Tang xu, 2b-3b].

Because Sun Qifeng includes Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan in the same lineage, Orthodox Transmission of the Learning of Principle is rela- tively ecumenical. But by subsuming disparate sects under a single Dao tong, this ecumenicalism dissolves doctrinal differences. Sun's legitimation of Lu and Wang is achieved at a high price, for Sun does not affirm their authenticity as an independent school based on doctrines that were admittedly contrary to reigning orthodoxy, for to do so would undermine his mediation goals. This mediation legitimates Lu and Wang by emphasizing affinities with Cheng-Zhu teachings and obfuscating differences among members of the whole lineage. This is still filiative genealogy.

DAO SCHOOL RESPONSE TO MEDIATION

Sun Qifeng's reversal of Dao School strategies to reconstruct a sagely lineage that included Lu and Wang did not go unanswered. By the early Qing, Dao School genealogists separated lineages which had infiltrated the Dao tong in mediation accounts from the orthodox


lineage by constructing discrete hierarchies within the Confucian tradition. In 1685, Xiong Cili (1635-1709), for example, compiled The Tradition of Learning (Xue tong). Like the mediation genealogists, Xiong represents the tradition according to a linear mode, rather than the division by categories found in the Reflections anthologies, but he hierarchizes the tradition into discrete lineages. Xiong separates the section entitled "orthodox lineage," which includes only nine orthodox figures (Confucius, Yanzi, Zengzi, Zisi, Mencius, Zhou Dunyi, Cheng Hao, Cheng Yi, and Zhu Xi), from sections entitled "assisting the tradition" (yi tong), which includes twenty-three Confucians, such as Han Yu and Zhang Zai who were excluded from the main orthodox lineage but who were nonetheless claimed by orthodox genealogists. This is followed by a section called "appending the orthodox lineage" (fu tong), which includes over a hundred Confucians, ranging from the numerous disciples of Confucius and Mencius, Han-Tang exe- getes, to later literati such as Xie Liangzuo (1059-1103), Lu Dalin (1044-1093), Lu Zuqian and Wu Yubi (1392-1469), whose affinities, according to Xiong, lie somewhere between Zhu Xi and Lu Xiangshan. All other learning remains outside of the tradition as either "heresy" (za xue), which includes Xunzi and Yang Xiong, or "heterodoxy" (yi xue), which comprises Daoists and Buddhists, among others. Lu Xiangshan, Wang Yangming, and their followers are excluded altogether. In this way, the non-Cheng-Zhu figures who had infiltrated the Confucian tradition were still excluded from the orthodox lineage and thus could not act as heretical sources for later Dao School thinkers.'8 Thus in the very structure of the text the "orthodox lineage" is genealogically separated from and prior to all other secondary or heretical schools such as those that had infiltrated the tradition in the anthologizing projects of Zhou Rudeng and Sun Qifeng.

Reminiscent of Chen Jian's condemnation of Wang Yangming's Buddhism disguised as Confucianism, Lu Longqi (1632-1692) argued that the secreting of Buddhist doctrines into the teachings of the sages was the source of Wang's real danger to scholarship and society:

Since the time when Mr. Wang Yangming espoused the doctrine of "innate knowledge of the good," he promoted the concrete teachings of Chan Buddhism under the pretense of the name Confucianism, and compiled "Master Zhu's Conclusions of his Later Years" in order to illuminate his own learning as though it were no different from Master


Zhu's. The disciples of Wang Longxi [Ji (1498-1583)], Wang Xinzhai [Ken (1483-1541)], Luo Jinxi [Rufang], and Zhou Haimen [Rudeng] followed and expanded it. The learning of Mr. Wang covered the realm and was almost taken for the revival of a sage, but yet the ancient sages' and worthies' inherited method of "achieving greater learning through basics" [xia xue shang da] was extinguished and fractured without cease. Scholarship was despoiled and popular culture followed. This is the fault of [Wang and his followers] [Lu Longqi, 1702: 2/2a].

According to Lu Longqi, Wang's apparent proximity to the truth threatened the Dao and needed to be repudiated:

Today it is said that Yangming, and Cheng and Zhu all take Confucius and Mencius as their masters and all speak of humanity and righteousness; although their opinions are slightly different, they are all disciples of the sages. Why is it necessary to so strongly repudiate and deeply oppose him [Yangming]? Supposing he had dissociated himself from Confucius and Mencius and humanity and righteousness, then everyone would see his spuriousness. Why would they need me to refute him? It is precisely because he is like Confucius and Mencius but yet is not Confucius and Mencius, and because his teachings are like humanity and righteousness but yet are not humanity and righteousness. This is what is called losing a hair's width at the beginning and missing the target by a thousand li. This is why one cannot but refute him! [2/2b-3a; see also de Bary, 1989: 165-166]

In the Dao School critique of the mediation agenda, the Confucian Dao, as ultimate truth, has become the exclusive possession of one school; it has become inseparable from Dao School learning. To understand the truth, according to this logic, one must transmit Dao School doctrines. This claim to exclusive possession of the Confucian Dao, though always implicit in the Dao School agenda, has become explicit in the hands of Dao School proponents of the early Qing who lived in an increasingly complex world of sectarian controversy, but yet spoke with a sense of confidence that only imperial support could provide. The emergence of the Wang Yangming school in the sixteenth century as a genealogically coherent and ideologically formidable interlocutor with the Dao School in the discourse on the tradition marks an important change in the condition of Confucian genealogy that had existed since the establishment of Cheng-Zhu orthodoxy in the early Ming period. Previously the Dao School genealogists had engaged in a monologue because all other systems of thought, Bud-

Wilson /NEO-CONFUCAN USES OF THE CONFUCIANP AST 29

dhism as well as Confucian "heretics" such as Lu Xiangshan, had been effectively marginalized. The followers of Wang Yangming, by infil- trating the orthodox lineage, forced Dao School genealogists into a dialogic encounter which was implicitly recognized by including Lu and Wang in Dao School anthologies, whereas they were earlier simply excluded altogether. But the Dao School construction of hierarchies and concomitant relegation of Lu and Wang to a secondary and sometimes heretical status effectively blocked their entrance into the orthodox lineage. This textual strategy was but a further refinement of the Dao School monologic strategy aimed at systemically restricting dialogue and perpetuating its genealogical purity.

Despite Sun Qifeng's attempts to enlarge the orthodox lineage, his anthology did not affect a reconceptualization of the Confucian tradition that would legitimate the Yangming school independently of the Dao School. Because his reconstructed lineage was firmly centered upon the Dao School conception of the tradition as a flliative lineage, Sun was unable to (nor was he inclined to) legitimate Wang Yangming without ultimately relying upon the long-standing notion of Dao tong as a monologic and exclusionary tradition which was capable of transmitting only one teaching. The textual form of Neo-Confucian genealogies as records of the Dao tong was straining from the pressure of its expanding content. The impact of Sun's doctrinal mediation was ultimately limited by his reliance on the underlying logic of Dao School genealogical discourse which posited a singular, orthodox lineage as the trope of the Confucian tradition and left him easy prey to the response enunciated by Xiong Cili and Lu Longqi whereby Lu and Wang were returned to the margins of the Confucian tradition, muted by their relegation to the status of Buddhists in Confucian disguise.

NOTES

1. I am suspicious of the term "Neo-Confucianism" because of its sectarian connotations but find it virtually unavoidable. I use the term "Neo-Confucian" to refer to Confucians from the Song on who embrace the revivalist claim that Song Confucians were the first to receive the Dao of the ancient sages after the death of Mencius. I use the term "Dao School" (Dao xue) to refer to the narrower version of the Yi-Luo school as determined by Zhu Xi, Huang Gan (1152-1221) and others.


2. For other genealogical tables, see Li Youwu (fl. 1261), Dao tong chuanshou zhi tu (Li, n.d.: 5a-Sb); Xiong Jie (inshi 1199), Chuan Dao zhi pai tu (Xiong, 1685); Zhao Fu (c. 1206-99), Chuan Dao tu (Zhao, 1856: AI8a-8b); Zhang Huang (1527-1608), Dao tong zong tu, Li xue zhu ru zhi pai (Zhang, 1613); Wang Qi (1565-1614), Dao tong zong tu (Wang, 1847).

3. My use of the term "discourse" draws from Foucault (1972: 31-76). 4. Zhang Boxing (1708: zong lun, 1). The only other ancient citation listed is Analects

20.1. 5. According to Otsuki Nobuyoshi (1976: 584), this understanding of the final passage of

the Mencius was new in the Song. 6. This latter approach is based on the "metaphysics of the text" which asserts that there

is and must ultimately be one certain meaning of the text. For a critique of this, see Bennett (1987: 68-71).

7. This entire passage appears only in the "Counsels of the Great Yu" (Da Yu mo) chapter of the "Documents of Yu" (Yu shu) in the Documents. That a virtually identical passage distinguishing the human mind from the mind of Dao appears in Xunzi (jie bi, ch. 21) is not mentioned. In his commentary on the Analects 20.1, Zhu Xi simply says, "This can now be seen in the 'Counsels of the Great Yu' in 'Documents of Yu,' which is more detailed that this" (Zhu Xi, 1189: 20).

8. The first two biographies are by Zhu's teachers, Liu Zuhui (1101-1147) and Li Tong (1093-1163). These are followed by texts by Zhu's immediate disciples, Huang Gan, Li Fangzi (jinshi 1214), Wu Shouchang (n.d.), Chen Chun (1153-1217), and Wei Liaoweng (1178-1237) (Hu Guang, 1415: 41/la-17a).

9. Also quoted in Xiong Cili (1685: ch. 9/190-191). 10. For Zhu on dangxia bian shi see Hu Guang (1415: 42nb-8a, quoted from Zhu Xi, 1270:

124/2980-2981); for Zhu on wen er zhi zhi see Hu (1415: 42/5a-5b, quoted from Zhu, 1270: 124/2976-2977).

11. My use of "monologism" is based on Bakhtin (1984: 79-85). 12. In an earlier anthology entitled Zhu ru xue an (Cases of the Learning of Several

Confucians), probably not extant, the Taizhou scholar Liu Yuanqing (1544-1606) was said to have mediated Lu Xiangshan and Wang Yangming with the Cheng-Zhu school. In this text, he selects the recorded conversations (yu lu) of twenty-six figures from Zhou Dunyi to Luo Rufang (Ji Yun, 1805: ch. 96/1984).

13. See also de Bary (1989: 126). My interpretation of Sun's anthology as a mediation text differs from the conclusions of several scholars (e.g, Huang, 1984; Chen, 1983) who argue that Sun breaks from the sectarianism of earlier anthologists and that Huang Zongxi (1610-1695) largely follows Sun's approach in his Cases on Ming Confucianism (Ming ru xue'an) (Wilson, 1988: 166-191).

14. Of the meeting at Goose Lake, Zhou Rudeng simply says, "In [1175] Lu Zuqian visited Zhu Xi ... to edit the Reflections. Then [Zhu] accompanied Lu to Goose Lake. Lu Xiangshan and his brothers arrived and they discussed their knowledge. They could not agree so they stopped" (Zhou Rudeng, 1606: 9/2a).

15. The final passage is from a letter to Lu Xiangshan; the eighth letter in "Zhuzi wannian

dinglun" (Wang Yangming, 1959: ch. 3/85). 16. Zhou's Shengxue zong chuan and Sun's Li xue zong chuan similarly base their accounts

of Lu on his biography by Yang Jian, Lu's chief disciple, written in 1194, and on the Song History (Sun Qifeng, 1666: 7/lb; see also Yang Jian, "Xiangshan xiansheng xingzhuang," in Lu, 1980: ch. 33/388).

17. According to Wing-tsit Chan (1975: 554), Tang Bin was a staunch supporter of state orthodoxy, but his orthodox credentials were suspect enough that Tang Jian (1778-1861) devoted


considerable space in his anthology of Qing Confucianism to refute allegations that Tang Bin favored Yangming learning (Tang Jian, 1845: 3/la-2b).

18. In the early Qing, Zheng Guangxi compiled Reflections on Things at Hand, Continued (Xujin si lu), in which he separates four Cheng-Zhu figures of the Ming from six others, one of whom is Wang Yangming (Ji Yun, 1805: ch. 97/2006).

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Thomas A. Wilson is an assistant professor of history at Hamilton College. He recently completed research in China and Taiwan on the ideology of canonization in the Confucian temple. His book Genealogy of the Way: The Construction and Uses of the Confucian Tradition in Late Imperial China will be published by Stanford University Press this year

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