Abstract
The point of departure for the following historical reconsiderations is the central importance of mimesis for the constitution of personal and to avoid repetition, I will attempt to present in capsule form some generic considerations that may be kept in mind for my discussion of three documents of ‘hero-worship’ in medieval China. Interpretive readings of these texts will be sketched in the main part of this study after a brief look at the hero in question and his image in the world of loyalist and official ideology. A minor purpose of these remarks will be to relate the documents chosen for analysis to a group of interpretive concepts recently developed by several authors and thus to indicate a plurality of vantage-points from which our texts may be considered as indicative for the constitution of meaning in history.
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Notes
Jean-Michel Oughourlian, Un mime nommé désir: Hysterie, transe, possession, adorcisme (Paris: Bernard Grasset, 1982); I will be referring to concepts developed on pp. 13-37,47-49,129-132,159-169,177-184, 228-232.
Edmund Husserl, Vorlesungen zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, ed. by Martin Heidegger, 2nd edition (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1980), p. 389.
Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Capitalisme et Schizophrenie: Mille Plateaux (Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1980), pp. 141–170.
Paul Ricoeur, Temps et récit, Vol. 1 (Paris: éditions du Seuil, 1983), pp. 85–129.
For the concept of ‘meta-history’ drawn on here, see specifically Christian Jambet, La Logique des Orientaux. Henry Corbin et la science des formes (Paris: éditions du Seuil, 1983), pp. 288-297. A pertinent discussion of the ‘meta-historical’ mode in Chinese historiography was presented in David S. Nivison, The Life and Thought of Chang Hsiieh-ch’eng (1738–1801) (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), esp. chapters 6 and 8.
Joseph R. Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate. Vol. 3: The Problem of Historical Significance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), pp. 124–125.
Pierre Vidal-Naquet, “Formes d’activité politique dans le monde juif principalement aux environs du Ier siècle de notre ère”, Les Juifs, la mémoire et le présent (Paris: FranÇois Maspero, 1981), p. 41 (English text in Yale French Studies 59,1980,105).
Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken Books, 1946), pp. 349–350. It may be worth noting that Scholem, like Levenson and Vidal-Naquet used the story in the function of an epilogue at the end of the works cited; here it would be in the place of a (second) prologue.
A summary of the milestones in Wen T’ien-hsiang’s career can be found in H. W. Huber, s.v., Sung Biographies, ed. by Herbert Franke (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1976), Vol. 3, pp. 1187—1201. Cf. Li An, Wen Tien-hsiang shih-chi k’ao (Taipei: Cheng-chung shu-chü, 1972), pp. 187-191 for one of many descriptions of the memorial temple in Peking. The complex bibliography of the Rezeptionsgeschichte of Wen has been dealt with thoroughly by William Andreas Brown, The Biography of Wen Tien-hsiang in the Sung Shih (Diss. Harvard University, 1962), of which a printed edition has been announced in Taipei.
The historical context of the intellectual currents that swept the thought of Chu Hsi into its later position as an unshakeable orthodoxy has been explicated by John W. Haeger, ‘The Intellectual Context of Neo-Confucian Syncretism”, The Journal of Asian Studies 31 (1972), 499–513; James T. C. Liu, “The Road to Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy: An Interpretation”, Philosophy East and West 23 (1973), 483-505.
The following considerations have been given a more restricted treatment summarizing the main documents in Horst Huber, Wen Tien-hsiang (1236—1283): Vorstufen zum Verständnis seines Lebens (Diss. Universität MÜnchen, 1983), pp. 8–22.
In the course of time, the relevant documents came to be included among the prefatory materials of several of the editions of Wen’s collected works; more recently the material was anthologized by Hsü Hao-chi, Wen Wen-shan ch’uan-hsin lu (Wu-hsing, 1932; repr. Taipei: Chung-hua shu-chü, 1972), ch. 4, pp. 7b—16b; an official summary is reproduced in Yang Te-en, Wen Tien-hsiang nien-p’u (Ch’ang-sha: Shang-wu yin-shu kuan, 1939), pp. 360-362.
A more specific, but still preliminary, discussion of Wen T’ien-hsiang’s significance for the development of Chinese loyalty concepts was attempted in Horst Huber, Wen Tien-hsiang, pp. 10–13 and 250—259. The victimisation of Confucian ‘dissidents’ towards the end of the Ming was discussed by Charles O. Hucker, “Confucianism and the Chinese Censorial System”, Confucianism in Action, ed. D. S. Nivison and A. F. Wright (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1960), pp. 208; and id., The Censorial System of Ming China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1966), pp. 284-285.
The selections are summarized and their contexts interpreted in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, pp. 15–17, and identified, pp. 262-243.
This case of intertextual ‘grafting’ is discussed in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, pp. 347–348.
The prefaces by Ou-yang HsÜn (1283—1357) and Chieh Hsi-ssu (1274—1344) precede Wang Yen-wu’s collection, Wu-wen kao (ed. Ssu-pu ts’ung-k’an); Wang’s “Devotion”, “Sheng chi Wen ch’eng-hsiang wen”, ibid., eh. 4, was also printed in Yang Te-en, Wen T’ien-hsiang nien-p’u, pp. 278-282.
Wang Yu-sun, “Sheng chi Wen ch’eng-hsiang hsin-kuo-kung wen”, found in Chi-an fu-chih (1876), ch. 49, p. 60a; a text preserved in Wen’s Chih-nan hou-lu, in Wen-shan hsien-sheng ch’iian-chi (ed. Ssu-pu ts’ung-k’an), ch. 15, p. 5a, is characterised in this way in a biographical text concerning Wen’s wife, née Ou-yang, which is part of the addenda to Wen’s Chi-nien lu, also in Wen-shan ch’üan-chi, ch. 17, p. 46a.
This is an historical hypothesis, which will require a separate study to clarify and document; it has been discussed in a preliminary way in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, pp. 33, 88 and 281, 320.
The death of Po I and Shu Ch’i, in the ‘political’ interpretation was in protest against the overthrow of the Shang monarchy by the Chou; but in an anthropological reading they are seen as the representatives of a tribe of people that was extinguished as the result of a campaign of forest clearance, a tribe in whose name the word “fox” has been recognised (Ku-chu); the tradition relating to the fox is also linked to the name of the mountain Shou-yang. Cf. the discussions of Ssu-ma Ch’ien’s Shih-chi, ch. 61, in Burton Watson, Ssu-ma Ch’ien: Grand Historian of China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), p. 239, and on Po I and Shu Ch’i generally, Wolfram Eberhard, Lokalkulturen im alten China, vol. I: Die Kulturen des Nordens und Westens (Leiden: Brill, 1942; Suppl. to Toung-pao 37), pp. 36—37, 41—44, 50. The proverbial Statements on the fox occur in Ch’u-tz’u, Chiu-chang, v. 32 of “Ai-ying”, Ch’u-Tz’u (ed. Ssu-pu ts’ung-k’an) ch. 4 p. 18a (D. Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u, p. 67), in Li Chi, Tan Kung, part 1 (S. Couvreur, Mémoires sur les bienséances et les cérémonies, repr. Paris: Cathasia, 1950, Vol. I, p. 131) and other early texts.
The autobiographical statement concerning Wen’s attempt to starve himself, in Chih-nan hou-lu, Wen-shan ch’iian-chi, ch. 14, pp. 2b-8b; in Yin-hsiao chi, ibid., ch. 15, pp. 5a—6b; in Chi Tu shih, ibid., ch. 16, pp. 4a-25b; it is further reported in the surviving portions of the Wen-biography by Teng Kuang-chien, which are appended to Chi-nien lu, Wen-shan ch’iian-chi, ch. 17, pp. 38a-39b, where Teng also quotes from a letter by Wen to his brother, in which the autobiographical account is repeated. Cf. also note 48 below. The episode in the Tso Chuan concerns Shen Pao-hsii, also one of the prototypical heroes in the loyalist tradition, 4th year of Ting Kung, Ch’un-ch’iu ching-chuan yin-te (Peking: Harvard-Yenching Institute, 1937), vol. I, p. 466. The two most famous cases of suicide by starvation among the loyalists at the end of the Sung dynasty are Ch’en Wen-lung, Sung Shih (Peking: Chung-hua shu-chii, 1977), ch. 451, p. 13279, and Hsieh Fang-te, ibid., ch. 425, p. 12690; Ch’en’s death occurred during his transport into captivity, whereas Hsieh starved himself to death, having been taken to the capital in an effort to press him into service; the similarity of these situations with those Wen had to go through is quite striking
The references and role-models have been identified an interpreted briefly in a tentative explication du texte of Wang’s “Devotion”, in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, pp. 24–38, 273-284.
This second “Devotion” by Wang Yen-wu is found in Wu-wen kao (ed. Ssu-pu ts’ung-k’an), ch. 4, pp. 10a—11a; also in Yang, Wen T’ien-hsiang nien-p’u, pp. 333-334.
Fu Lo-shu, “Teng Mu, A Forgotten Chinese Philosopher”, T’oung Pao 52 (1965), 46–59, 81-85 gives a characterisation of Hsieh Ao and his loyalism in traditional terms.
David Hawkes, “The Quest of the Goddess”, Studies in Chinese Literary Genres, ed. by Cyril Birch (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), pp. 42–68. The ‘epic-elegiac’ poem Li Sao, in Ch’u Tz’u (ed. Ssu-pu ts’ung-k’an), ch. 1, pp. la—49a; David Hawkes, tr., Ch’u Tz’u. The Songs of the South: An Ancient Chinese Anthology (London: Oxford Unviersity Press, 1959), pp. 21—34.
“Hsi-T’ai T’ung-k’u chi chu”, in Sung i-min lu, ed. by Ch’eng Min-cheng (ed. Chih-pu-tsu chai ts’ung chu), ch. 3, pp. la–4a; a reading of this piece has been attempted in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, pp. 43-52,287-295.
The chronological problems are discussed, ibid., pp. 45–48.
See Fu Lo-shu, “Teng Mu”, p. 48, fn. 2.
For this point, see Huber, Wen Tien-hsiang, pp. 50-52; also J. J. M. de Groot, The Religious System of China (repr. ed. Taipei: Ching-wen, 1964), vol. I, pp. 248, 253-254.
“Chao Hun” and ‘Ta Chao”, in Ch’u Tz’u (ed. Ssu-pu ts’ung-k’an), ch. 9-10; Hawkes, Ch’u Tz’u,pp. 103-114.
Edward H. Schäfer, The Vermilion Bird. T’ang Images of the South (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 123–125, 259-265. Cf. now David W. Pankenier, “Astronomical Dates in the Shang and Western Chou,” Early China 7 (1981-1982), pp. 7-9,13-14.
On this dialectic, cf. Joseph R. Levenson, “T’ien-hsia and kuo, and the Transvalua-tion of Values”, The Far Eastern Quarterly 11 (1952), 447–457, and idem, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: The Problem of Intellectual Continuity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1958), pp. 95-104.
Chang’s notes are printed as an interlinear commentary with Hsieh Ao’s text, see above, note 25; the second poem by Hsieh is the “Tung-ch’ing shu yin chu”, Sung i-min lu (ed. Chih-pu-tsu chai ts’ung-shu), ch. 6, pp. 8a-8b.
The ‘hermeneutic’ situation of these appended comments, with some of their highlights, is discussed in Huber, Wen Tien-hsiang, pp. 53–60, 295-299; the list of the commentators who emphasise Chang’s role, ibid., p. 298, n. 129. Chang also authored one of the appended notes; it follows immediately after Hsieh’s text with Chang’s commentary, Sung-i min-lu, ch. 3, pp. 4a-5a.
This is Liu Yung, ibid., pp. 12b-13a.
(T’ieh-han) Hsin Shih (repr. Taipei: Shih-chieh shu-chü, 1955 and later).
William Theodore de Bary, Neo-Confucian Orthodoxy and the Learning of the Mind-and-Heart (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981). The emphasis on hsin is particularly notable in the Mencian strain; cf. Tu Wei-ming, “The Idea of the Human in Mencian Thought. An Approach to Chinese Aesthetics,” in Theories of the Arts in China, ed. by S. Bush and C. Murck (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), pp. 63-66. For aspects developed in Hsün-tzu and the syncretistic work Kuan-tzu, cf. Ru Xin, “Mind and Consciousness in Chinese Philosophy: A Historical Survey”, Analecta Husserliana,Vol. 17 (1984), pp. 77—86.
Hsin Shih, preface by Ou-yang chien, p. 2a.
For Cheng Ssu-hsiao’s biography in outline, see Chu-tsing Li, s.v. Sung Biographies, ed. by Herbert Franke (Wiesbaden L Franz-Steiner-Verlag, 1976), Vol. IV, Painters, pp. 15—23; for the attribution problems of the Hsin Shih, also John D. Langlois, Jr. “Introduction”, China under Mongol Rule, ed. by J. D. Langlois, Jr. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), p. 17, n. 41.
Cf. the references to publications by Charles O. Hucker above, note. 13.
The biographical summary on Wen T’ien-hsiang, Hsin Shih, Hsia, pp. 7a–15b is also reprinted in Yang, Wen T’ien-hsiang nien-p’u, pp. 363-371. The historical summation, “Ta-i lüeh-hsü”, or “Summary outline of the High Principle of Justness”, Hsin Shih, Hsia, pp. 44a-85a.
Ch’en Hung-hsü, Han-yeh lu (ed. Hsüeh-hai lei-pien), Chung, pp. 9–1 la.
For the Chinese system of such correspondences, cf. Manfred Porkert, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1974).
Chao-chung lu (ed. Ts’ung-shu chi-ch’eng); the work was characterised by Herbert Franke, in A Sung Bibliography (Bibliographie des Sung), ed. by Y. Hervouet (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1978), p. 124. The notice on Wen T’ien-hsiang and other resistance leaders, pp. 17-22, was also reprinted in Yang, Wen T’ien-hsiang nien-p’u, pp. 375-381.
Cf. Wolfram Eberhard, “Studies of Near Eastern and Chinese Folktales” Sinologica 1 (1947), 144–151, and particularly Herbert Franke, “Der gerechte Richter. Eine vorderasiatische Anekdote in chinesischem Gewände,” Asiatische Studien 4 (1950), 55—59, and “Westöstliche Beziehungen im Zeitalter der Mongolenherrschaft,” Saeculum 19 (1968), 91-106.
A General History of the Turks, Moguls, and Tatars, Vol. II: An Account of the Present State of Northern Asia (London: J. and J. Knapton, J. Darby et al., 1729), pp. 478–480.
Hsin Shih, Hsia, pp. 40–41a; cf. the somewhat more detailed reading in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, pp. 76-81,310-313.
It is important to note that the reference to the “unmoved mind” (pu tung chih hsin), in this context is tantamount to a reference to the “overbounding spirit-substance” (hao-jan chih ch’i), Mencius’ perfection of all the arts of attaining the unmoved mind; in Neo-Confucianism (Ch’eng I and Chu Hsi), Hao-jan chih ch’i came to be identified with the “Spirit-substance of Correctedness” (Cheng ch’i). Through Wen T’ien-hsiang’s death and his poem Cheng-ch’i ko, Hao-jan chih ch’i and Cheng-ch’i came to be closely tied to the tradition of’ suicidal’ loyalism.
The surviving passages from Teng Kuang-ch’ien’s account of Wen T’ien-hsiang are preserved in Wen’s ‘autobiographical’ dossier, Chi-nien lu, identified as parts of the appended materials under the years wu-yin (1278), chi-mao (1279), jen-wu (1282). Teng (cf. also Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, p. 122, 476-477) was commissioned by Wen to write the text of his funeral inscription (Chi-nien lu, in Wen-shan ch’üan chi, ch. 17, hsin-ssu (1281), pp. 40b), and it is gratifying to note that such an inscription has been unearthed in Chi-chou in 1980, see Ch’en Po-ch’üan, “Yuan chih-yüan erh-shih-i nien [1284] Wen T’ien-hsiang mu-chih ming”, Wen shih 17 (1983), p. 240. This find corroborates Teng Kuang-chien as an authoritative source on Wen’s life, as will be shown in a forthcoming study. The episode we are concerned with is recorded in the Chi-nien lu under chi-mao (1279), addenda, pp. 38b; the poems and notes of Wen’s are in Yin-hsiao chi, Wen-shan hsien-sheng ch’üan-chi, ch. 15 pp. 10b-lia; cf. Ch’en Yen-chih, Wen Wen-shan shih chu (Ch’ang-sha: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1939), pp. 307-308.
Hsieh Ao’s selection, “T’ien-ti chien chi”, in Hsieh Kao-yü hsi-fa i-chi (ed. Kuo-ts’ui Ts’ung-shu), p. lb.
Some specific references for the Buddhistic terminology adduced here are given in Huber, Wen T’ien-hsiang, p. 311, notes 197,198.
Ch’en Pang-chan, in Wen Wen-shan ch’uan-hsin lu, ch. 7, pp. 18a–18b.
The phrase is from the poem of Wen’s quoted above in note 48; it is a further indication that the feeling of existing “in-between” life and death was a fairly frequent component of Wen T’ien-hsiang’s life experience; cf. my previous paper included in Analecta Husserliana, Vol. 19 (1985), pp. 101-128.
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Huber, H.W. (1986). The Hero as the Spiritual Legacy of His Culture: Wen T’len-Hsiang and His Admirers. In: Tymieniecka, AT. (eds) The Phenomenology of man and of the Human Condition. The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, vol 21. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-4596-8_17
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