The Establishment of Confucian Orthodoxy

By the Western Han Dynasty (206 BC-9 AD) (so called because its capital was Changan, west of the later capital Luoyang, when the dynasty was referred to as the Eastern Han, 25-220 AD), a synthesis of Confucian, Taoist/Daoist, and yin/yang  started to develop, and the Western Han Dynasty scholar Tung Chung-shu (Dong Zhongshu) had the emperor ratify the Five Confucian Classics: Book of Poetry, Book of Documents, Spring and Autumn Annals according to Mr. Tso (Zuo),  Book of Zhou Rites, and Book of Changes, which was the beginning of the canonization of Confucian learning in China, based on a synthesis of Confucian and other schools of thought. 

The severity of the founding emperor of the Qin/Chin Dynasty and the brevity of that dynasty (221-206 BC) made Han Dynasty rulers resort to an alternative to legalism and burning books/killing Confucian scholars.  Therefore when Dong Zhongshu proposed to establish Confucian orthodoxy to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the emperor gladly agreed.

1. "Correlative Cosmology: the School of Yin (feminine, water, shadowy, conspiratorial, negative as in electricity) and Yang (masculine, sunny, positive life force)" and the Five Elements

Besides the development of the different schools of thought in the Eastern Zhou Dynasty and the Warring States period, by figures such as Confucius, Lao Zi, Mo Zi, Zhuang Zi, and Mencius, among others, a new school of synthesis, called the School of Yin and Yang, or the "Doctrine of the Interrelation of Heaven and Man," started to develop in the Warring States Period, based on ideas developed earlier.  It is a form of correlative thinking that links the Chinese to nature.  Unlike divination, the yin-yang school was built on the correlation between physical elements and human life.

For Dong Zhongshu/Tung Chung-shu, yin and yang were concrete material forces resembling air or ether (Fung, 193).  They were the basic constituting elements of the universe besides heaven, earth, the Five Elements (water, earth, wood, metal, and fire), and humans. 

The universes of Mencius and Dong Zhongshu/Tung Chungshu

Compared with the Mencian description of the universe, where humans and the universe intermesh to form a continuous whole--where the ethical person's qi could fill the gap between heaven and earth, by the time of Dong Zhongshu, the universe was constituted of distinct entities, and followed distinct rules that humans followed as well.  These rules, however, did not originate from human nature, such as the yin and yang forces, and the five elements.  But humans now conformed to these rules.

Like his Warring States period predecessors Confucius and Mencius,  Dong Zhongshu's ultimate goal was government administration.  The Yin-Yang cosmology he promoted served as moral guidance or justification for the ruler--since the rulers' conducts should accord with the rules of the universe, if they did not, there would be heavenly reactions (e.g. natural disasters) as punishment for the rulers.  This Dong called the "correlation between humans and the cosmos."

The yin, yang, five elements and change

In Dong Zhongshu's writings, changes in the universe were brought about  by yin, yang, the five elements and their interactions.

The dynamic cycle of the five elements: water, earth, wood, metal, and fire, each corresponds to cycles of human history.  Each element wins an ascendancy over its predecessor, based on the observation of such ordinary natural phenomena as the quenching of fire by water and the melting of metal by fire.  This is different from either the Confucians or followers of Mo Zi.  The selection of these five elements may be because they are associated with agriculture.  These five elements all possess their own qi/chi.  Each season would see the dominance of one of the five elements.  The correlates in the realm of nature associated with each of the elements may include colors, seasons, or cardinal directions, and in the human realm such categories as ethical qualities, departments of government, and even and even various aspects of individual life.

The five elements were associated with directions and seasons:

  • wood: east; spring;
  • fire: south; summer;
  • metal: west, autumn;
  • water: north; winter;
  • soil: center.

The wax and  wane of yin and yang forces guided the transition from one element to an other.

Yin, Yang, Five Elements, dynastic successions, and human nature.

It was common for ancient Chinese writers to associate dynastic successions with the transitions from one element to another in the Five Element cycle, guided by the interactions of the yin and yang forces, though Dong Zhongshu was not one of them.  According to these writers, the excessive overdevelopment of culture under the Chou/Zhou Dynasty (yang), should lead to austere simplicity of culture in the later Han Dynasty (yin). Rulers should act according to the dominant chi/qi represented by one of the five elements, e.g. in the Chin/Qin Dynasty, the first imperial dynasty of China, the dynasty was associated with yin, thus with the severity of winter and darkness, which called for laws rather than moral rule in government administration.  This seems to contrast with Confucian and Mencian teachings that put goodness and rightness as ends in themselves.

Correlative cosmology especially took hold during the "revolutionary" period between 3rd to 1st century B.C.   It was also applied to calendars which described the proper ceremonial and practical orientation of the ruler to the tasks governing each month and season of the year.  "Each month is related to astronomical conjunctures, to the elements, and the the correlates of taste and musical notes, as well as to certain temporary presiding deities, and so on.  The ruler is admonished to see to it that the practical tasks of agriculture appropriate to the season are carried out." It emphasized proper rituals. 

The world of the five elements was concrete.  Unlike the world, say, of Chuang-tzu (Zhuang Zi), for whom ordinary human experience is also in some sense a world of  "appearance," and the real world, for Chuang-tzu (Zhuang Zi), was to be sought in the ineffable Way and not in the particles of the universe. 

For Dong Zhongshu, the dao guiding each dynasty remained constant, therefore he did not apply the Five Element cycle to describe dynastic changes.  Dynastic changes should only be in appearance, which he described with the symbolic changes in colors, an alternation in black, white, and red.  They were only superficial changes to illustrate a new mandate of heaven was given to a new ruler. (Fung, 199-200)

Unlike Hsun Tzu (Xun Zi), who believed human nature was evil, Dong assigned a neutral value to human nature.  Like Xun Zi, Dong believed it was humans who should conform to natural rules, instead of the other way round (c.f.  Mencius).  Dong's natural rules as described above, however, were not really "natural" or "objective" by our standards, though he thought they were objective.  Dong distinguished between human nature (hsing/xing) and human sentiments (ching/qing).  To him, human nature is in a neutral state that was capable of producing goodness.  It required education to bring that goodness into fruition.  Education (chiao) on the other hand, relied on the original human nature to make it effective. 

Turning Confucian social relationships into principles

 Just as Dong was developing a cosmology to describe Confucian rules governing human behavior, so he delineated principles out of Confucian social relationships, called the three cords (cords as in a fishing net; just as holding the cords--to which other strings are attached-- enables one to hold up the fishing net, so practicing these three cords would enable one to do everything else right.  A Chinese proverb goes: lifting the cord [of the fishing net] and the collar [of a shirt], meaning doing certain things was essential to success), and five constants:

Three cords (social ethics): sovereign to ministers, husband to wife, and father to son.

Five constant (virtues of Confucianism to be practiced by individuals): humaneness, righteousness, propriety/rituals, wisdom, and good faith, correlating to the five elements (wood/east, metal/west, fire/south, water/north, soil/center).

Correlation between heaven and government conduct

For Dong, even the government was patterned after the heavenly rules, e.g. the four rankings in the state corresponded to the four seasons.  And government misconduct would be censored by heavenly abnormalities.

The Chun-Chiu (Spring and Autumn Annals) as historical guidance

Dung Zhongshu's (mistaken) belief that Confucius compiled the Spring and Autumn Annals of his Kingdom of Lu led him to believe that history needed to be carefully studied in order to reveal Confucius's interpretation of history.  Interpretations of that history hence also became classics.  There were three major interpretive works to the Spring and Autumn Annals: the Tso Chuan (interpretation of the Spring and Autumn Annals by Tso); Kungyang Chuan (interpretation of the Spring and Autumn Annals by Kungyang), and Kuliang chuan (interpretation of the Spring and Autumn Annals by Kuliang).  This furthered a trend in Chinese history where scholars focused not on compiling their own works, but interpreting the classics by providing annotations to them.

2. The Five Classics.

In the Western Han Dynasty, five classical texts were labeled standard Confucian texts by the emperor.  These five, Book of Poetry (or Songs), Book of Documents, Spring and Autumn Annals according to Mr. Tso (Zuo),  Book of Zhou Rites, and Book of Changes, however, did not include Confucius's Analects, or the writings of Mencius.  Although the first two books and the Book of Zhou Rites were sometimes attributed to Confucius as either the compiler or the editor, all five shared the characteristic of establishing external moral standards for people to emulate and learn from, rather than focusing on introspective moral cultivation, as Confucius and Mencius emphasized. 

Book of Poetry: supposedly popular folk songs collected by Confucius, which we encountered in de Bary, they reflected what Confucius called a simple, natural, and unaffected lifestyle of the people, which was to set not only an example of life styles for posterity but more importantly, a style of literary writing.

Book of Documents: a history book by today's standards that records the words and deeds of lofty public figures such as the ancient sage kings Yao, Shun, and Yu, and the good Zhou Dynasty kings, among others.  Schwartz comments that their words were kind of transcendental revelations. Like the Book of Poetry and all the rest of the classics, the purpose of this book is didactic--to teach the proper thoughts and action.

Book of Zhou Rites: consisting of Zhou Dynasty rites (li).  The rites are not positive laws but rooted in the Confucian tao/dao.

Spring and Autumn Annals according to Mr. Tso (Zuo): Spring and Autumn Annals was another history book, the official chronicle of the State of Lu (721-479 B.C.) , possibly written by Confucius, and had several annotated editions, one of which was by a man called Tso (Zuo). Confucius's careful selection of facts to illustrate what he thought were or were not rightful conduct of the ministers, and the focus was the sinister consequences of the decay of legitimate authority, whether from below or by the authority holders themselves. This book basically established the tradition of history in ancient China: that it was to serve as a moral mirror to teach posterity what to do and not to do, instead of just telling a story.  Historical details that do not accord with the moral lesson will not be included, therefore.

Book of Changes: Some people even argue that Confucius compiled this book, although the content of this book was more ancient than Confucius, and was primarily concerned with signs of divination: made up of broken and unbroken lines, which then were combined into eight permutations of trigrams and 64 sets of hexagrams, each of which has its assigned names and meanings. These trigrams and hexagrams could have originated from the cracks on tortoise shells and ox bones which had been thrown into the fire in divination.  And they are ways to "read" meanings into these cracks. 

Further, these trigrams and hexagrams were assigned yin and yang qualities, showing the influence of the school of Yin and Yang. In his "The World of Thought in Ancient China," Benjamin Schwartz comments that the "system offers the possibility of a kind of science of situations which enables the individual or group to adapt itself correctly to the demands of unfolding situations since the situations themselves belong to certain general classes of situations."

These five classics, Schwartz concludes, use external examples (e.g. history) and external signs (e.g. trigrams and hexagrams) to indicate the correct moral path.  As such, they spelled out an explicit moral standard that accorded with the general teachings or spirit of Confucius.

Eventually, however, this focus on external moral standards met a backlash in the 12th and 13th centuries in the Song Dynasty when Zhu Xi (Chu  Hsi) established the "Four Books:" The Great Learning, the Golden Mean, the Analects, and the Mencius, as supplements to the five classics and that eventually overshadowed the classics.  These four books focused more on the Confucian and Mencian emphasis on inner cultivation and were used to battle against the Buddhist influence in Chinese culture.

3. The Old and New Text Schools

In the Han Dynasty, two Confucian schools split over which Confucian texts were authentic and which were apocrypha.  The dividing line was the Qin/Chin Dynasty (221-206 BC) when most Confucian texts were burned at the order of the first Qin emperor.  The OLD TEXT SCHOOL claimed they unearthed Confucian texts from some walls of houses of Confucius and his descendants.  Since Chinese handwriting underwent a change under the first emperor of the Qin Dynasty, the script used to write the old texts were different from the script of the Han Dynasty, thus deciphering the script became a daunting task that lasted into the 20th century A.D.  The NEW TEXT SCHOOL refers to Confucian texts recovered from the memories of Confucian scholars after the Qin Dynasty bonfire in the new script of the Qin Dynasty.  Besides a difference in source and script, the two schools also differed in their orientations.  The Old Text School emphasized a literal adherence to Confucian teachings, while the New Text School incorporated many new elements into Confucian learning, such as the Yin-Yang and Five elements interpretation of history and the universe.  They both waxed and waned in history and their differences still can be seen in Chinese scholarship today.

Authenticity aside, the old and new texts, Fung argues, reflects two strands of Confucian learning already existent before the Qin Dynasty bonfire: the idealistic wing of Mencius, and the realistic wing of Hsun Tzu (Xun Zi).

4. Confucian learning, Daoism, and Buddhism

Starting from the 1st century AD, with the introduction of Buddhism came the mutual borrowing of Buddhist and Daoist denominations in China.  Their similarity in both's refrain from naming the dao or ultimate reality ("thinking into the not-not", Fung, 212) turned them into some sort of allies.

Fung argues that it was in the Old Text School's battles against the Yin-Yang School's influence on Confucian learning that led to the revival of Daoism in China. (Fung, 210-211).  The Old Text School refuted that human conduct could evoke a response from heaven because of human insignificance, which seemed to correspond with the human insignificance of the Daoists. 

The rise of Confucian learning was a result of a response to the harsh legalism practiced in the Qin Dynasty.  Early Han rulers practiced Daoism as a way to compromise the harsh rules of their predecessors whom they overthrew. (Fung, 213-214)  But the retreat to nature doctrine of the Daoists could not provide effective guidance of government administration, hence the revival of Confucian learning as an alternative to Legalism.  It is interesting to note that the school of Confucian learning that triumphed in the Han Dynasty, the New Text School led by Dong Zhongshu, no longer relied on individual intuition alone to implement moral virtue, but established uniform principles (the three cords and five constants) analogous to the uniform laws of the Legalists, so these principles could be carried out in a more uniform way throughout the vast Chinese empire.